Side Hustle/ Activism

The Civic Technology Day

  • Pau Todó

Technology seems to be neither good, bad nor neutral. But we keep blaming “the Internet” for everything that goes wrong in our democracies. Is it time yet to sit and talk about the politics of technology? Internet is showing the political repercussions of our technologies in a rather schizophrenic way: on the one hand, we panic over the apocalypse of democracy and the progressive idiotization of humankind. On the other, we assume that algorithms are ethically neutral and that they represent the force of progress that will, inevitably, bring us closer to some kind of future. It’s just that we aren’t sure anymore if that’s the future we want to get close to. Technology is political; it’s built upon politics and ruled by policies. It creates and delivers politics. Why don’t we just sit and talk about it in a neutral land? Say… Zürich? The next March 30th at Karl der Grosse we’ll bring academics, professionals and politicians together to discuss how to enlighten the politics of technology. https://civictechday.jamon.digital

Presentation / Long version

Several weeks ago, during a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum, the CEO of the largest advertising agency in the world announced that, according to his latest statistics, the two major concerns of the population regarding the digital economy were, first, data privacy, and secondly the future of employment. As for the first issue, the advertiser seriously warned Alphabet’s CEO to publicly acknowledge once and for all that Google was a media company, not a technology firm. As for the second, he said, it was all due to a raising wave of “populism” in Western politics.
While it is completely understandable that Sir Martin Sorrell’s biggest concern is Google’s (still) unofficial plan to lead the advertising business at a planetary scale, jeopardising the supremacy of WPP, it seems frankly unfair to resolve that the rest of the world’s doubts about the future of work are just a matter of demagogy.
The fact that “a generation from now, a quarter of middle-aged men could be out of work”, if the automation trend continues (according to the former Treasure Secretary of the United States in an article for the Wall Street Journal), makes Mr Sorrells’s words not only unfortunate, but also a rather misinformed opinion.
Meanwhile, far away from Davos, a senior researcher at the RAND Corporation, another decisive strategic center worried about the control of information technologies, published around the same time an article at the company’s blog on how opportune would be for the US to initiate “information warfare activities” given the ambiguity of the current international law. The analyst wasn’t talking about cyberattacks and its countermeasures (or not only), but particularly about all those activities that “fall short of international definitions of aggression” such as psychological and cyber influence operations using the social media networks.
Both cases illustrate quite well the current battle taking place at the most influential and strategical institutions, not only in an intent to centralize and control both technology and the Internet for economic purposes, but even to weaponize them against the population.
Yet, “populism” or “luddism” still seem to constitute the two main arguments against any possible political interrogation about what’s broadly defined as the Technology debate. A debate, on the other hand, that was never as present, mediatic and persistent as it has been for the last two years.
We pretend to go beyond that political denial proposing a civic debate among academics, professionals and other key agents of the industry, during a one-day series of open discussions around the political impact of Technology and the Internet.
With their expert contribution, we hope to peek through the armoured glass walls of “political neutrality” and “unregulated & neoliberal” truisms that seem to protect Technology and the Internet from a critical civic examination.

Program cover

What is "The Civic Technology Day"

Four debates, during one day, about the politics of technology. We'll have sociologists, activists, journalists, computational scientists, political philosophy experts and entrepreneurs.

Who is talking?

Felix Stalder
Professor of digital culture and network theories at the Zurich University of the Arts
Sophie Mützel
Professor of Sociology, Media and Networksat University of Lucern
Hein Schellekens
MA in Political, Legal and Economic Philosophy, University of Bern
Nicolas Zahn
Co-founder and leader of the working group for digitalization of Operation Libero, expert in Political Science, Digital Government and political participation through new technologies
Adrienne Fichter
Swiss political scientist and editor at the online magazine Republic. Author of "Smartphone Demokratie"
Rafael Grassi
Artists and member of PODEMOS circle in Zürich
Evangelos Pournaras
Scientist in the Professorship of Computational Social Science, at ETH Zurich
Rasmus Nuthorn
Founder of human&kind and CEO of #Ricolab. Direktor des Center for Digital Transformation am SGMI Management Institut St. Gallen

Some materials I used to communicate the event