Announcing the 2026 Civics of Tech Conference
Against Tech Hype
Hype, hope, disappointment.
Hype is the rhetoric of tech billionaires, of VCs, of tech-pushers, of AI boosters and AI doomers. Hype is about attention, grabbing it, holding it. Hype is about resources, gathering them, directing them. Hype is about control.
Tech hype is a problem for our society and our schools. It points our time, our energy, our attention, and our resources in the wrong direction. It obstructs our reasoning and impedes our decision-making.
Join us as we work against tech hype, and toward humane and just futures.
Join us for our annual Civics of Technology Conference.
Our fifth annual Civics of Technology conference will be held online on August 6th and 7th, 2026, from 11-3 Eastern Time. We are delighted to share our esteemed keynote speakers: Dr. Meredith Broussard and Ms. Natasha Singer!
Image Credit: Bella Wang Photography
Thursday, August 6 Keynote: Dr. Meredith Broussard is a data journalist and professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University and the research director at the NYU Alliance for Public Interest Technology. She is the author of More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech(A CoT book club book!) and Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World, and appeared in the 2020 documentary film Coded Bias. Her work provides a powerful corrective to dominant “technochauvinist” narratives. She has challenged the presumed neutrality of technology and researches AI ethics and data analysis for social good.
Friday, August 7 Keynote: Natasha Singer has covered tech industry influence in schools for The New York Times for more than a decade. Her early reporting on school tech helped prompt California to enact the Student Online Personal Information Protection Act (SOPIPA), a landmark student privacy law. This year she is reporting on how tech giants like Google and OpenAI are driving A.I. adoption in schools while teachers are working to equip students to ask deeper questions about the societal impacts. Her recent work includes stories about the tech backlash in schools, teens’ use of AI chatbots, and efforts to promote AI literacy. Her forthcoming book, "Coding Kids: Big Tech's Battle to Remake Public Schools," will be published by W.W. Norton in September. (We will be hosting a book club for it!)
Call for Proposals
We invite your proposals to share your work and ideas at our conference! We welcome proposals that align with our conference theme, but that is not required. We will be offering sessions across a variety of formats, including traditional presentations, workshops, panels, or other creative options. Sessions can address current issues, share curriculum, present research, or engage our community in other meaningful ways.
Submit your proposed conference session here
Proposals are due by June 14th, will be reviewed, and invitation letters will be sent by early July. Note that we have a limited number of conference sessions available, so we may not be able to accept all of the proposals that we receive.
Support the Conference!
As in previous years, our organization is fully committed to making our conference free to all.
But for those who are able and willing, we would greatly appreciate financial support from our community. If you are willing and able to support our conference and our ongoing work, please consider doing so here.
Donations help us to:
Provide stipends to our conference keynote speakers
Pay the overhead costs of our online platforms
Offer additional events for our community (e.g., digital film screenings like our recent Ghost in the Machine event)
We will always be transparent about how donations are spent and you can see our financial reports on our website.