2nd Annual Conference Review: What liberatory tech action will we advance?
by Dan Krutka
NOTE: We are emailing this blog post to all conference participants. Please sign up for our weekly newsletter on our blog page to keep up with Civics of Tech throughout the year.
CoT Announcements
Next Book Club on 09/21/23: We are discussing Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by Cathy O’Neil on September 21, 2023 @ 8:00 p.m. EDT. Register for this book club event if you’d like to participate.
Next Monthly Tech Talk on 09/05/23: Due to the conference being the same week, we did not hold a monthly tech talk in August. Our next one will be on Tuesday, September 5th, 2023 at 8-9pm EST/7-8pm CST/6-7pm MST/5-6pm PST. Learn more on our Events page and register to participate.
We once again felt such gratitude to see so many critical scholars show up and show out at the 2nd annual Civics of Technology conference. We cannot begin to capture the brilliance of all the critical work seeking to advance liberatory tech action. Instead, we’ll provide you ways to revisit these sessions:
Our 2023 Conference page is updated, open and available for viewing. Based on presenters’ preferences, we have uploaded either the recordings of sessions or the session slides. In some cases, presenters preferred not to share the recording or, well, we forgot to hit record.
We’d like to provide a special shout out to our two keynotes! Dr. Luci Pangrazio opened the conference with her talk, “The importance of critical digital literacies: A manifesto for action.” Dr. Roxana Marachi closed the conference with her talk, “Breaking Free from Blockchaining Babies and ‘Cradle-to-Career’ Data Traps.” Both talks are linked on the conference page, but also uploaded to YouTube for easier sharing with audiences. We knew these talks would be powerful and they both delivered!
Shout out to the students of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab. The students dove into the most pressing justice issues of our time—policing, immigration, labor, health, and education. Their sessions focused on the people who are marginalized by oppressive systems and then imagined ways toward justice. They also showed up to support each other. Big shout out to Associate Director of the lab, Cierra Robson, and Founding Director, Dr. Ruha Benjamin! We are inspired by their work, and they remind us that educators have so much to learn from young people as we advance just futures!
We want to remind all presenters that they retain the rights to their work. We are happy to change access to recordings, slides, or anything else. You can use our contact page to request changes.
In this upcoming school year, we hope you find big and small ways—in your personal lives, in your classrooms, through your communities—to make big and small moves of liberatory tech action that imagine and create just futures.
Critical Consciousness Study Reminder
As we mentioned in last week’s blog and during sessions, we (Jacob Pleasants, Dan Krutka, Marie Heath, and Charles Logan) are conducting a research study that seeks to understand the ways that people have developed critical perspectives on technology. We want to better understand what leads people to take on such an outlook. Thus, we are seeking participants who self-identify as holding critical views toward technology to share their stories by answering the following questions:
To you, what does it mean to take a critical perspective toward technology?
How have you come to take on that critical perspective?
We know the conference was a busy event, and many folks may not have had time to sign up. Please consider participating in our study via our survey:
https://ousurvey.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5osO8GhUQBx9UKq
You are welcome to share with others. Thank you!