Saturday, February 2nd, 1:00 - 4 p.m.
Encuentro5 Community Space
9A Hamilton Place, Boston, MA 02108
encuentro5 (e5), DigBoston, UjimaBoston and Agaric Cooperative invite your participation in an important discussion on Technology and Revolution. The event is part of a series of discussions being held nationwide and coordinated by May First/People Link and the Center for Media Justice—leading up to an international convergence in Mexico City later this year.
Notable participants include: Alfredo Lopez, author, Puerto Rican independista, and co-director of May First/People Link; and Rajesh Kasturirangan, mathematician, cognitive scientist, and professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in India.
What is Our Response to the Rise of Tech Giants?
Over the last few decades, technological advances have not only radically changed methods of human communication but have also started to change humanity itself in ways that grassroots organizations on the political left have been slow to address. To the extent we have done so, it has been mostly to advocate for disenfranchised communities’ access to computers and broadband internet service.
But we have largely failed to grapple with issues beyond the rise of the internet and huge corporate social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. And we’ve barely scratched the surface of those key changes, let alone put much thought into analyzing the effects of newer technologies like robotics, artificial intelligence, big data, and genetic engineering on our communities. This is all the more alarming because rapid technological has aggravated the inequalities about which the left has traditionally cared.
Nonetheless, social-change movements continuously emerge, often in unexpected spaces, but especially in artistic and youth spaces or from insurgent social movements of the oppressed and exploited. They create campaigns to challenge potentially negative technological developments and propose more helpful community-centered technologies in their place.
Questions We're Discussing
In the interest of promoting these movements and their just agendas, this gathering will convene organizers for an afternoon of sharing and thinking together. We will be sharing information and analyses about these topics in short, plain-spoken, manageable conversations. Our thinking together will be strategic, asking and answering straightforward questions:
- What are the most urgent and important challenges connected with technology?
- What are the key areas for intervention?
- Who are our allies?
- What are our resources?
- Before we can talk about joint and/or coordinated campaigns and targeting, what do we need?
More information at https://techandrev.org
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