Technology and Power Curriculum

This course examines the interactions of technology and power, in particular, how technology enforces and extends both state and privatized forms of power.

We will explore how under the existing context of capitalism and colonialism, state and corporate interests are inextricably linked and perpetuated through technological developments, and investigate how such technologies systemically harm marginalised communities.

This 13-week curriculum will end by investigating the emancipatory potential of technology, how it can be used to subvert traditional power dynamics, and whether it can be truly extricated from capitalism. We recommend you go through the content in this curriculum alone or with a group and follow along every week for 13 weeks, having discussions with colleagues about what is coming up for you.

These modules present both arguments and counter-arguments within a topic. This is intended to provoke dialogue, both external and internal, to query how technology is embedded within capitalism, the material harms it produces, and how to effect change. The texts within a module are generally ordered by their content, or the positions they take.

If you are an educator, teacher, or professor and would like to include any or all of this content in your syllabus — we encourage you to do so! Let us know if you come up with discussion questions that are particularly interesting and we’d love to include them in this curriculum for future educators to use!

While reading through this curriculum, feel free to use the hashtag #RAIcurriculum on twitter to discuss your thoughts or ask questions to the community.

Special thanks to the mastermind behind this curriculum, one of our Spring 2021 interns, Lena Wang. Connect with Lena on Twitter @lenayiwang!

Part I: Technology and Capitalism

Week 1: Automation, The Digital Economy, and Labour


This week will examine what work is like within the technology industry. In particular, we will examine the stratification of different classes of tech workers, from the tech elite—CEOs, executives, board members—to those exploited by technology, including those experiencing precarious work in the gig economy. How does automation under capitalism oppress workers? What parallels are drawn between workers and machines under capitalism? Are the changes to technology in the 21st century unique challenges, or do they follow the arc of innovation for profit?

Readings & Multimedia Content

Radical AI Podcast Episodes:

Texts

  • Wendling, A. (2009). Karl Marx on Technology and Alienation. Springer.

  • Gray, M. L., & Suri, S. (2019). Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass. HMH Books.

  • Prassl, J. (2018). Humans as a Service: The Promise and Perils of Work in the Gig Economy. Oxford University Press.

  • Tarnoff, B., & Weigel, M. (2020). Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do--and How They Do It. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

  • Markham, L. (2018, June 20). The Immigrants Fueling the Gig Economy. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/06/the-immigrants-fueling-the-gig-economy/561107/

Week 2: Democracy and Misinformation

Much has been said on the capacity of technology, in particular, social media, to spread misinformation and harm democratic processes. Prominent examples are that of Cambridge Analytica during the US elections, and the media bargaining code in Australia. This module will examine the meta-narrative that pervades through such discussions, asking: can democracy exist under capitalism? Should we delete our social media accounts? What kinds of solutions are presented for misinformation, and what are their pros and cons?

Readings & Multimedia Content

Radical AI Podcast Episodes:

Texts

Digital Echo Chambers and Misinformation

Democracy and Capitalism 

Week 3: Privacy and Surveillance

Extending last week’s discussions, this week will examine privacy concerns under the current technology apparatus. We will explore several case studies in surveillance, demonstrating how they promote state and/or private power, and their ramifications on marginalized groups. Such cases include (1) smart home technology, and its effects on domestic violence and police power, (2) the use of smartphone data and backdoor access in police investigations, (3) technologies used in the War on Terror. How does surveillance function as an apparatus for state/private control? Who does it affect, and what systems does it entrench?

Readings & Multimedia Content

Radical AI Podcast Episodes

Texts

Part II: Technology and Colonialism

Week 4: The Military-Industrial Complex 

The advent of new technologies have applications in military contexts—e.g. Drones, cyberweapons, and autonomous robots—that accelerate colonialist and capitalist interests in geopolitical conflicts. Indeed, technology is often developed for a military purpose. This week will examine the new kinds of war enabled by these new technologies, and study the relationship between military interests and privatised profit incentives. What new kinds of war are enabled by these technologies, and what are the geopolitical and human effects of their development? What is the relationship between military interests and the privatised profit incentives of weapons manufacturers? 

Readings and Multimedia Content

Radical AI Podcast Episodes

Texts

New Warfare

Big Tech and the Military

  • Black, E. (2001). IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation. Crown Publishers.

  • Tiku, N. (2018). The Line Between Big Tech and Defense Work. Wired. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/story/the-line-between-big-tech-and-defense-work/

  • Leslie, S. W. (1993). The Cold War and American Science: The Military-industrial-academic Complex at MIT and Stanford. Columbia University Press.

  • Poulson, J. (2020). Reports of a Silicon Valley/Military Divide have been greatly exaggerated. Tech Inquiry. Retrieved from Tech Inquiry website: https://techinquiry.org/SiliconValley-Military/

Week 5: Digital Colonialism and Imperialism

This week will take a broader examination of how technologies are used to perpetuate colonialism. Big tech products, created by predominantly western countries, proliferate in the Global South, and such users are beholden to and generate profit for western industries. What are the parallels between western imperialistic expansion and technological innovation? How is technology used to perpetuate colonialism, imperialism, and orientalism?

Readings and Multimedia Content

Radical AI Podcast Episodes

Texts 

Digital Colonialism

Technology and Imperialism

  • Kalluri, P. (2019, December). The Values of Machine Learning. Presented at the NIPS 2019. NIPS 2019. Retrieved from https://slideslive.com/38923453?ref=og-meta-tags

  • Roh, D. S., Huang, B., & Niu, G. A. (2015). Techno-Orientalism: Imagining Asia in Speculative Fiction, History, and Media. Rutgers University Press.

  • Zhang, Y. (2021). ‘Barbarising’ China in American trade war discourse: The assault on Huawei. Third World Quarterly, 0(0), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2021.1894120

Week 6: Indigenous Technology and Western Appropriation 

Knowledge and science is often understood within western frameworks and ideologies. This week will explore examples of Indigenous technologies and deconstruct western systems of understanding. How does western technology appropriate Indigenous technologies? How does it prevent Indigenous sovereignty over data collection and use? 

Readings and Multimedia Content

Radical AI Podcast Episodes:

Texts

Appropriation of Indigenous Technologies

  • Roht-Arriaza, N. (1996). Of Seeds and Shamans: The Appropriation of the Scientific and Technical Knowledge of Indigenous and Local Communities. Michigan Journal of International Law, 17(4), 919–965.

  • Pascoe, B. (2018). Dark Emu. Magabala Books.

  • Sutton, P., & Walshe, K. (2021). Farmers Or Hunter-Gatherers? Melbourne University Publishing.

Indigenous Data Sovereignty

  • Lewis, J. E., Abdilla, A., Arista, N., Baker, K., Benesiinaabandan, S., Brown, M., … Whaanga, H. (2020). Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence Position Paper [Monograph]. Honolulu, HI: Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence Working Group and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. Retrieved from https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/986506/

  • Smith, P. L. T. (2013). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Zed Books Ltd.

  • Taylor, J., & Kukutai, T. (Eds.). (2016). Indigenous Data Sovereignty. ANU Press. https://doi.org/10.22459/CAEPR38.11.2016

  • Walter, M., & Suina, M. (2019). Indigenous data, indigenous methodologies and indigenous data sovereignty. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 22(3), 233–243. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2018.1531228

  • Walter, M., & Andersen, C. (2013). Indigenous Statistics: A Quantitative Research Methodology. Left Coast Press.

Part III: Intersectional Readings on Technology

Week 7: Algorithmic Oppression and “Bias”

This week, we will explore the concept of Algorithmic Oppression—how algorithms replicate injustices in historic data. We will also investigate the assumption that inclusive algorithms are beneficial. What material conditions do these algorithms enact? Is an ethical algorithm one that is simply unbiased? What does bias mean within the systems of oppression that exist?

Readings and Multimedia Content

Radical AI Podcast Episodes

Texts

Algorithmic Oppression

  • Buolamwini, J., & Gebru, T. (2018). Gender Shades: Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classification. Conference on Fairness, Accountability and Transparency, 77–91. PMLR. Retrieved from http://proceedings.mlr.press/v81/buolamwini18a.html

  • West, M., Kraut, R., & Chew, H. E. (2019). I’d blush if I could: Closing gender divides in digital skills through education. UNESCO. Retrieved from UNESCO website: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000367416.page=1

  • Noble, S. U. (2018). Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. NYU Press.

  • Katz, Y. (2020). Artificial Whiteness: Politics and Ideology in Artificial Intelligence. Columbia University Press.

“Ethical” algorithms under capitalism

Week 8: Carceral technology

This week will examine the uses of machine learning in predictive policing and surveillance, and its effects on marginalized Black and Indigenous communities in western countries.  We will investigate particular instances of predictive policing, such as the Suspect Target Management Plan in Australia, and discuss the role of technology in police violence. How is technology used to perpetrate a carceral state? What effects does it currently have on Black and Indigneous communities?

Readings and Multimedia Content

Radical AI Podcast Episodes

Texts

  • Vitale, A. S. (2017). The End of Policing. Verso Books.

  • Benjamin, R. (2019). Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Wiley.

  • Eubanks, V. (2018). Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. St. Martin’s Publishing Group.

  • Stop LAPD Spying Coalition. (2018). Before the Bullet Hits the Body – Dismantling Predictive Policing in Los Angeles (pp. 3–24). Retrieved from https://stoplapdspying.org/before-the-bullet-hits-the-body-dismantling-predictive-policing-in-los-angeles/

  • Browne, S. (2015). Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness. Duke University Press.

  • Sentas, V., & Pandolfini, C. (2017). A study of the Suspect Targeting Management Plan. Youth Justice Coalition. Retrieved from Youth Justice Coalition website: https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-2567986627

Week 9: Critiquing Neoliberal D&I 

Technology companies, in a bid to address public concerns with Algorithmic Oppression, reinforce the rhetoric that a diverse group of engineers is enough to produce algorithms without bias. This week, we will investigate the shortcomings of industry diversity and inclusion initiatives that seek to increase representation of marginalised groups. Where do these initiatives place the burden of change? How are minorities treated to maintain company profit?

Readings and Multimedia Content

Radical AI Podcast Episodes

Texts

Week 10: Technology and Disability

This week will examine the social model of disability, and critique technologies that reinforce an individualized onus on disabled people to conform. We will investigate the role accessible technology plays within this context. What are the metanarratives around accessible technology in the industry? Do these narratives adhere with the social model of disability?

Readings and Multimedia Content

Radical AI Podcast Episodes:

Texts

The social model of disability 

Accessible technology 

  • Morris, M. R. (2020). AI and Accessibility: A Discussion of Ethical Considerations. Communications of the ACM, 63(6), 35–37. https://doi.org/10.1145/3356727

  • Lupton, D., & Seymour, W. (2000). Technology, selfhood and physical disability. Social Science & Medicine, 50(12), 1851–1862. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-9536(99)00422-0

  • Moser, I. (2006). Disability and the promises of technology: Technology, subjectivity and embodiment within an order of the normal. Information, Communication & Society, 9(3), 373–395. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691180600751348

  • Bennett, Cynthia L., Burren Peil, and Daniela K. Rosner. "Biographical prototypes: Reimagining recognition and disability in design." Proceedings of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference. 2019.

  • Bennett, C. L., Gleason, C., Scheuerman, M. K., Bigham, J. P., Guo, A., & To, A. (2021). “It’s Complicated”: Negotiating Accessibility and (Mis)Representation in Image Descriptions of Race, Gender, and Disability. Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–19. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445498

Part IV: Technology as Liberation

Week 11: “Decolonial” Technology 

This week examines the way “decolonial” technology is portrayed, whether such kinds of technology really can exist and what liberatory effects they may have. We will juxtapose how deeply entrenched technology is in the western state with how technologies are used by Indigenous activists and artists to help their communities envision decolonial futures and form pockets of resistance. Can technology ever be truly liberatory and decolonial? How do we wrest technology away from its oppressive history? 

Readings and Multimedia Content

Radical AI Podcast Episodes

Texts


Week 12: Data Feminism

The internet is often thought of as a democratic space, but in the western imaginary, this “neutral” space is unquestionably a white, male one. Data feminism posits, in contrast, cyberspace as a domain in which to question and subvert dominant hierarchies of power, in which women, PoC, and LGBTQ+ people can thrive. Can the master’s tools be used to dismantle the master’s house? Is the internet a place of resistance for minorities?

Readings and Multimedia Content

Radical AI Podcast Episodes

Texts

The “Neutral” Internet

  • Barlow, J. P. (1996). A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. Retrieved 3 June 2020, from Electronic Frontier Foundation website: https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence

  • Nakamura, L. (2013). ‘Where Do You Want to Go Today?’ Cybernetic Tourism, the Internet, and Transnationality. In B. Kolko, L. Nakamura, & G. Rodman (Eds.), Race in Cyberspace. Routledge.

Cyberfeminism and the Internet as Liberation 

  • Hester, H. (2018). Xenofeminism. Wiley. Retrieved from https://www.wiley.com/en-au/Xenofeminism-p-9781509520626

  • Jackson, S. J., & Foucault Welles, B. (2015). Hijacking #myNYPD: Social Media Dissent and Networked Counterpublics. Journal of Communication, 65(6), 932–952.

  • Russell, L. (2020). Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto. Verso.

  • D’Ignazio, C., & Klein, L. F. (2020). Data Feminism. MIT Press

Week 13: Technology Beyond Capitalism

In Capitalist Realism, Fisher argues that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Technology operates under capitalism, and it is difficult to imagine its potential outside of it. What alternative futures can technology provide? What tools does it provide to dismantle capitalism? And are these alternatives viable, or do they ignore the reality of power relations?


Readings and Multimedia Content

Radical AI Podcast Episodes

Texts & Resources

  • Costanza-Chock, S. (2020). Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need. MIT Press.

  • The Oracle For Transfeminist Technologies

  • Fisher, M. (2009). Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? John Hunt Publishing.

  • Bastani, A. (2019). Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto. Verso Books.

  • O’Shea, L. (2019). Future Histories: What Ada Lovelace, Tom Paine, and the Paris Commune Can Teach Us About Digital Technology. Verso Books.

  • Odell, J. (2019). How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. Melville House.

  • Mostafa, J. (2019, July 23). The Revolution Will Not Be Automated. Sydney Review of Books. Retrieved from https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/review/zuboff-bastani/

  • Tsing, A. L. (2015). The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton University Press.

Congratulations on finishing Radical AI’s Technology and Power Curriculum! Let us know what you thought on Twitter by using the hashtag #RAIcurriculum to discuss your thoughts or ask questions to the community.

Did you think of great discussion questions during any of the modules? Any additional readings or multimedia content that would be relevant to a particular topic? Let us know! We’d love to make this curriculum a community-based effort, and love hearing ideas from all of you! DM us on twitter @radicalaipod or email us at podcast@radicalai.org with the subject line “Technology and Power Curriculum”.

Special thanks to the mastermind behind this curriculum, one of our Spring 2021 interns, Lena Wang. Connect with Lena on Twitter @lenayiwang!