Join Us for Tech Imaginaries at our 3rd Annual Civics of Technology Online Conference!

by Marie K. Heath and Dan Krutka

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! We are delighted to share our featured keynotes are Dr. Tiera Tanksley and Mr. Brian Merchant. We would like to thank Loyola University Maryland School of Education’s Center for Equity, Leadership, and Social Justice in Education for sponsoring our keynotes.

Dr. Tiera Tanksley is an Op Ed Public Voices Fellow for Technology in the Public Interest with the MacArthur Foundation and Post-doctoral Fellow for Youth, Technology, and Public Policy at UCLA. Her work simultaneously recognizes Black youth as digital activists and civic agitators, and examines the complex ways they subvert, resist and rewrite racially biased technologies.

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.

The third annual conference theme is Tech Imaginaries. Our themes the last two years have been Visioning Just Futures (Year 1) and Liberatory Tech Actions (Year 2), and this year we'd like to turn toward surfacing, confronting, and playing with how imagination works to create tech futures. This theme builds on our project motto, “Technologies are not neutral and neither are the societies into which they are introduced.” 

We were inspired, as we often are, by Dr. Ruha Benjamin’s new book, Imagination: A Manifesto. We just read her book for our April Book Club and were struck by the ways she frames imaginaries. Playing with the notion of imaginaries, she writes:

I want more than anything for your imagination to run wild. In that spirit, my use of the word is undisciplined, promiscuous, and porous. … I go back and forth between imagination and imaginaries--conceptual kin, related but not identical. Although a bit jargony as a noun, imaginary refers to collective projections of a desirable and feasible future. I find myself invoking imaginaries when I want to cast a critical light on the imposition of a dominant imagination that presents itself as appealing and universal. You’ll see, too, that I refer to imagination interchangeable with dreams and dreaming, ideas and ideologies. I invoke stories and speculation as surrogates, playing and poetry as proxies, and myths, visions, and narratives all as riffs on the imagination. 

In most cases, I am implying the idea of a collective imagination, as when we imagine different worlds together, writing shared stories and plotting futures in which we can all flourish. But this “collecting” of our imaginations is not always a good thing, as when the powers that be endeavor to download their dreams from on high. We must learn to protest our imaginations.(pp. ix-x)

In her book, Dr. Benjamin shows how the imaginations of Silicon Valley CEOs often create worlds we don’t want to live in, and thus emphasizes the importance of imagining the just futures we desire. Similarly, our keynote speakers have invested their time and thinking in imagining alternate technological futures, and we hope it will also inspire your submissions to our conference!

Call for Proposals

We seek proposals that advance the conference theme of Tech Imaginaries. This may include proposals which seek to…

• dream of the just futures we need for our students, educators, and communities;

• uncover the hidden or unintended imagination behind the technology that pervades human lives—past, present, and future;

• confront the oppressive ideologies that undergird much of the emerging tech coming out of Silicon Valley today;

• identify and make explicit how imagination undergirds the work you’re already doing!

We welcome proposals that utilize a variety of formats, including presentations, workshops, round table discussions, panels, or other creative options. Presentations can address issues, share curriculum, or review research. 

You can register for the conference and/or submit a proposal for a conference session here.

Proposals are due by June 14th, will be reviewed, and invitation letters will be sent by early July. We can’t wait to see what you imagine!