Writing about technology and social justice.
The amazing organizing and coalition-building going on around stop and frisk policies in New York City inspired me to write “Stop. Frisk. Double-Click.” for the MIT Press Blog yesterday. Stop and frisk is a controversial policy where officers detain and search people based on subjective evaluations of public behavior: furtive movements, “casing” a location, and … Continue reading Stop. Frisk. Double-Click.
About three stops into my spring 2011 book tour, I learned that I could ask, “Where’s my Radical Reference?” and a corner of the room would invariably erupt into waves and laughter. Yesterday, I was sponsored for a talk at Simmons College in Boston by the student group from the Graduate School of Library and … Continue reading Three Cheers for Radical Libarians!
I’ve been lucky to spend much of the spring and early summer touring in support of Digital Dead End: Fighting for Social Justice in the Information Age. It’s an especially exciting time to be thinking and talking about the relationship between technology and social justice. The questions asked by audiences from Concord, NH to New … Continue reading Liberation Technology Tour
Is it too old-school Women’s Studies professor-y of me to point out that the eG8 — the “historic conference on the internet and the future of the digital ecosystem” that preceded the 37th annual G20/G8 summit in France — was a total sausage party? Of 109 speakers, 10 were women. Yep. That’s a whopping 9%. … Continue reading eG8 Sausage Party
One of the things that audience members at readings and events for Digital Dead End seem most eager to know is what they can do. If technology isn’t the solution to our social justice struggles, what is? The women in the YWCA of Troy-Cohoes community had amazing insights into the structural nature of high-tech inequality, … Continue reading The High-Tech Equity Agenda, Part 1…
My very bright grad student, Megan Rolfe, recently forwarded me a link to Kentaro Toyama’s provocative article, “Technology Is Not the Answer,” in the March issue of The Atlantic. I’m intrigued by his experience, and sympathetic to his point that technology serves as an amplifier of underlying values and social structures. In fact, I was … Continue reading If Technology Is Not the Answer, What Is?
The rules have changed. In a single generation, revolutions in technology have transformed the way we live, work and do business. Steel mills that once needed 1,000 workers can now do the same work with 100. Today, just about any company can set up shop, hire workers, and sell their products wherever there’s an Internet … Continue reading A Sputnik moment?
