Digital technologies have undeniable broad-reaching impacts on a planetary scale. From ecological to social change, digital technologies represent one of the main ways in which humanity projects its footprint on our world. Too often, though, we find ourselves in the situation where we have people with great thoughts about technologies (philosophers, writers, …) and people that have great ability to create technologies (engineers, programmers, …), but the intersection of those that can _both_ think in depth and create meaningful artifacts remains sparcely populated.
In this talk, I share key insights from my practice as a scholar, teacher, hacktivist and creative practitioner on how to “sensitise” those that engage deeply with technologies — especially students in computing disciplines — to the social and planetary impacts of their practices. I jokingly refer to this as “getting the techies to care” because this sentence has two meanings: the “techies” should not just “care” in the sense that they should think about this, they should “care” in the sense that they should engage in a relationship of care towards other people, our society, and the planet as a whole.
Computing practitioners, I argue, should have conceptual tools to think critically about the effects of the technology; conversely, deep thinkers should learn how to build technologies. Both approaches are fundamental, and the way forward I propose is to go against the current trend of hyper-specialisation and keep broad interests.
In this talk, aside from sharing my research, teaching, and insights, I invite participants to join me in a structured conversation on sharing practices of care, and on imagining concrete actions that computing practitioners could do to reimagine their actions under a lens of care.
