#teaching agency in a programmed world

The video above is a recording of my keynote for !!ConWest 2020 at the University of Southern California, Santa Cruz. Slides can be found here.

From our living rooms to the workplace, digital surveillance and control are on the rise.  How did computing become so scary, and how might we work towards a more just, democratic, and joyful computerized world?  In this talk, I’ll draw on the tradition of critical pedagogy and research in edtech to show the disturbing relationship between digital practices at institutions of education and the broader rise of digital oppression.

There is, however, an alternative: philosopher and educator Paulo Freire’s concepts of dialogue and praxis lead me to offer a theory of digital liberation!  I’ll point to projects in libraries and higher education that embody that theory, and make suggestions for how all of us might help teach digital agency in our increasingly programmed world!

For related write ups, see my talk  “Open Access in an Age of Surveillance Capitalism: Fighting for Ground in the Public Imagination” or my blog post “Ten Weird Tricks Against Surveillance Capitalism in the Classroom.”