Tech Won't Save Us: Reimagining Digital Technologies for the Public

Abstract

Critical information scholars continue to demonstrate how technology and its narratives are shaped by and infused with values, that is, that it is not the result of the actions of impartial, disembodied, unpositioned agents. Technology consists of a set of social practices, situated within the dynamics of race, gender, class, and politics. This talk, stemming from the recent book, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism, addresses the issues of racial equity and public interest technologies that could foreground civil and human rights in the 21st century movements for AI.