Welcome to the real world.
This is the first post for the Civics of Technology project and we have to start with The Matrix, right? The Wachowski sisters created a technological dystopia where almost all humans are plugged into a digital simulation while they really serve the interests of machines. Taken literally, it seems far fetched. When viewed metaphorically, it feels uncomfortably accurate.
Without our consent or most people's knowledge, companies like Google and Facebook claimed our data as theirs (Zuboff, 2019). When we search online, use social media, or talk around “smart” speakers, we often serve up the machines the data they need. Class Dojo requires behavioral data about students and teachers feed it (Williamson, 2017). Behavior is judged through the sociocultural lens of a primarily white teaching field and turned into data. Considering disproportionate discipline of students of color in schools, teachers might be more likely to produce a New Jim Code whereby discriminatory practices are extended or amplified while pitched as more objective (Benjamin, 2019).
But maybe this is just an intensification of a long tradition of humans fulfilling the needs of machines. Once humans use a technology they tend to do what the technology wants. We traded denser, walkable, and more sustainable cities for the pavement sprawl and drive-in franchises that cars required. Our wealth, health, and environment all suffered for it (Speck, 2013; see TED Talk). The harms are not distributed equally as the shift from walking and public transportation to individually owned cars burdens the poor and has allowed the rich to drive outward to more segregated enclaves.
What if we designed cities for people instead of cars?
Are educational technologies much different? I often initiate discussions about educational technologies by asking teacher candidates: Do educators use slides or do slides use them? I ask them to reflect on the ways they have experienced presentation slides throughout their educational careers. The discussion almost always is therapeutic. They share stories of teachers tethered to their text heavy slides who view responding to students’ interests or questions as a diversion from their pre-planned presentation. Teachers become stressed if they cannot complete their slides and students are increasingly bored and disconnected if they do. Students in underresourced schools are probably more likely to get any form of education, like pre-made slides, that is standardized and requires passive obedience.
We do not have to serve technologies. We can find our educational Zion. Our five critical questions about technology, for example, can help educators and students critically inquire into what it might look like to align technologies—in and out of schools—with our human values of education, democracy, and justice. Maybe our cities could prioritize people over cars and our slides could prioritize stories over telling?
Technologies are often treated as neutral tools, but this project starts with the assumption that technology is not neutral and neither are the societies into which they are introduced. Educators and students should critically inquire into the the effects of technology and society for just futures. This is our hope for the Civics of Technology project.
We offer this website and our newsletter (please sign up on our homepage!) as the start of a conversation. Please check out our mission, curriculum, and resources. More is coming… maybe from you if you too seek to unplug from the machines.
Welcome to the real world.
References
Benjamin, R. (2019). Race after technology: Abolitionist tools for the New Jim Code. John Wiley & Sons.
Speck, J. (2013). Walkable city: How downtown can save America, one step at a time. Macmillan.
Williamson, B. (2017). Decoding ClassDojo: Psycho-policy, social-emotional learning and persuasive educational technologies. Learning, Media and Technology, 42(4), 440-453. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2017.1278020
Zuboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for the future at the new frontier of power. Hachette Book Group.