Keynote Preview: Mr. Brian Merchant

by Dan Krutka

Civics of Tech Announcements

  1. 3rd Annual Conference Announcement: We are excited to announce that our third annual Civics of Technology conference will be held online on August 1st, from 11-4 pm EST and on August 2nd, 2024 from 11-3pm! Our featured keynotes will be Dr. Tiera Tanksley and Mr. Brian Merchant. You can register, submit proposals, and learn more on our 2024 conference page. Proposals are due last week—by June 14th, but we will continue to consider submissions on a limited basis.

  2. June Book Club on Tuesday, 06/18/24: For our next book club we will Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein! The book club will be led by Dr. Marie Heath. We will meet at 8pm EDT on Tuesday, June 18th, 2024. You can register on our events page. Another summer book club is coming too.

  3. Monthly Tech Talk on Tuesday, 07/11/24. Join our monthly tech talks to discuss current events, articles, books, podcast, or whatever we choose related to technology and education. There is no agenda or schedule. To avoid July 4th holiday conflicts, our next Tech Talk will be on Tuesday, July 9th, 2024 at 8-9pm EST/7-8pm CST/6-7pm MST/5-6pm PST. Learn more on our Events page and register to participate.

We are looking forward to our third Annual Civics of Technology Online Conference be held online on August 1st, from 11-4 pm EST and on August 2nd, 2024 from 11-3pm! We are excited that we received a large number of proposals and we will be working through submissions in the next couple weeks. If you were not able to submit a proposal by the June 14th deadline, please do so as soon as possible and we will still consider it.

In anticipation of the conference, we’d like to direct the Civics of Technology community toward the work of one of our keynotes, Brian Merchant.

Mr. Brian Merchant is a tech journalist and award winning and best selling author of Blood in the Machine and The One Device. His work examines technology, work, climate change, utopian dreams and dystopian realities and the things that lie in between. We are already familiar with Brian’s work because we held a book club on his recent book, Blood in the Machine The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech in December of 2023. It is a unique book because the first part of the book is a deep historical inquiry into the story of the Luddite rebellion against factory owners and their automated machines in 19th century England. The latter part of the book brings the issues of big tech into the present. We highly recommend the book. We were honored that Brian was able to join our book club chat, and we decided to ask him back for a conference keynote. Antero Garcia along with Civics of Tech contributors Charles Logan and Phil Nichols wrote an excellent review for the Los Angeles Review of Books. We also have an Inquiry Design Model (IDM) lesson which Scott Metzger and I designed built around the question, should we be more like the Luddites? Obviously, Mr. Merchant’s work is intricately related to the questions we’re asking her at Civics of Tech.

Finally, we highly recommend Mr. Merchant’s newsletter, which you can find and subscribe to at https://www.bloodinthemachine.com. I read every one and take away quite a few insights into contemporary tech issues. For example, his most recent post is titled, “Understanding the real threat generative AI poses to our jobs.” His post dispels a lot of the panic that AI companies seem to want, provides some historical context, and as always, a bit of wit. We’re looking forward to the keynote. The more you read Mr. Merchant’s work, the more excited you’ll be too.

We will post a similar blog for our other keynote, Dr. Tiera Tanksley, soon.

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Keynote Preview: Dr. Tiera Tanksley

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New Lesson: Lewis Latimer and the Invention of the Electric Light Inquiry