2025: A Year of Civics of Tech
Civics of Technology Announcements
Next Tech Talk: Please join us for our next Tech Talk where we meet to discuss whatever critical tech issues are on people’s minds. It’s a great way to connect, learn from colleagues, and get energized. Our next Tech Talk will be held on Thursday, January 8th at 12:00 PM Eastern Time. Register here or visit our Events page.
Privacy Week Webinars: On January 22 (note the updated date) and 29 - see our Privacy page to learn more!
Latest Book Reviews: Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, by Cory Doctorow, 2025.
Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, by Liz Pelly, 2025.
Shell Game, podcast hosted by Evan Ratliff, 2024-Present
Celebrating Ian: As a Civics of Tech community, we'd like to congratulate Ian Linkletter for the end of Proctorio's lawsuit against him! You can read Ian's update here, where he states, "There are no other restrictions on my freedom of expression. I am free to continue criticizing Proctorio’s harmful product... I fought for this right, and have given many talks over the years to assert it. One I am especially proud of is “Centering Student Voices in Resisting Surveillance”, about the harms of Proctorio and the thousands of brave students who dared to resist, at the Civics of Technology conference in August." It was a great presentation worth re-sharing!
2025… What a Year!
By Jacob, Marie, and Dan
It has been a busy year for Civics of Technology! We had a fantastic annual conference with a record number of attendees and session proposals. We held 8 book clubs, hosted 12 tech talks, and had a truly amazing set of contributions to our blog/newsletter. Thank you for being part of our community, whether that has meant contributing to the blog, attending the conference, or just being a regular reader of our newsletter.
As we welcome 2026, we are sure that there will be lots of great things yet to come for Civics of Technology. Before we rush to the next thing, though, we want to pause and take stock of some of our accomplishments of the past year.
Below, we highlight some of our most popular blog posts, new content on our site, and give our yearly “financial report.”
Lots to celebrate, and much to look forward to in the coming year.
Most Visited Blog Posts
No AI Gods, No AI Masters, by Olivia Guest, Iris van Rooij, Barbara Müller, Marcela Suárez
Stop Calling it AI Literacy if it Doesn’t Teach History, by Evan Shieh
Resistance, Rebellion, Refusal: 7 Tips from Librarians for Navigating “AI,” by Michelle Reed, Hayley Park, Justin White, and Mike Nason
When Education Serves the Machine: The Technocapitalist Capture of Universities, by Bruna Damiana Heinsfeld
Want to contribute to our blog/newsletter? You can propose your idea here!
New Curriculum Resources
Critical AI Quotes: An AI-focused update to our popular Critical Technology Quotes activity. Get critical conversations started by engaging with a wide range of perspectives on AI.
Technoskeptical Investigations of Generative AI: Geared toward post-secondary students, these investigations demystify and critically examine the impacts of several generative AI technologies on learning and thinking.
Data & Justice: Data aren’t neutral, and this lesson introduces illustrative examples and key principles of data justice.
Lots of Reviews
The Sirens’ Call, by Chris Hayes: How “attention technologies” have changed the way we think, individually and collectively.
Superbloom, by Nicholas Carr: Why “social” technologies have failed to deliver on their promises.
More Everything Forever, by Adam Becker: A deep dive into the philosophies and worldviews of the leaders of Big Tech.
The Mechanic and the Luddite, by Jathan Sadowski: How technology has been yoked to capitalist logic, and how we can fight back.
Enshittification, by Cory Doctorow: Once-useful technologies have gotten steadily worse, and this book explains why.
Mood Machine, by Liz Pelly: How Spotify and streaming technologies have changed how music is made and experienced.
Shell Game, by Evan Ratliff: What happens when you try to put AI agents into the world?
The 2025 Financial Report
This year, we raised a total of $1147.69 (net funds after payment processing fees) from our supportive community, primarily during our conference. We thank you all! Here were our expenditures:
$1,000 went to our outstanding conference keynote speakers: Dr. Chris Gilliard and Audrey Watters
Yearly website cost: $336
Yearly domain cost: $15
So, your funds primarily allowed us to compensate our keynote speakers, with the rest helping to keep our website running.
If you would like to support our work, please do so here!