(Not Quite) Monday Resistance Update #3
Having been off for the last week or so on my holiday's I've missed a couple of these so figured a Thursday catch-up would be good. Will be back on schedule next week.
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Event - Low-Tech, Luddism and Liberation: reclaiming technology for the collective good (Latvia)
First off an excellent looking, week long summer session in Latvia. Should be interesting but unfortunately not the cheapest. I'm aiming to go myself and possibly apply to present something but need to check through the money stuff first.
Event - Resisting Big Tech Empires (London)
Also coming up in London is a day long programme of talks featuring some anti-AI voices, as well as some who are critical if not necessarily opposed. Dan McQuillan, Nick Srnicek, Cory Doctorow - it's a mixed bag but definitely looks interesting. Will also be interesting to see how Doctorow fits in with the more overtly anti voices given his slightly limp approach to challenging extractive tech (not against him, just not entirely for him either).
Event - If you’re not paying, you’re the product (London)
Sorry for the geographic bias today but what can I say? London is anti-AI. Another event which is irritatingly on the same day as the one above focuses on tech alternatives to the most extractive and ethically barren platforms out there. It's really good to see stuff like this going on - switching over isn't an easy process, especially when you're not all that tech savvy, but it is worth doing and the more resources people have to guide them through that the better. Some of my own suggestions for better platforms are over here, including a link to a piece by Doctorow along the same lines.
Event - Refugees & AI (Online)
Seems to all be events today but obviously people are full of the fire of AI criticism at the moment. This one is at least online and so more accessible.
"Centering the lived experiences of refugees and their power building work in fighting against surveillance technologies.
Our world is interconnected. Automated surveillance and killing machines experimented on Palestinians, for example, are exported to the EU and the US and used to harass refugees. Our refugees are canaries in the coal mine who warn about horrific surveillance systems that are first experimented on them before getting unleashed on everyone else."
Another one I'm eager to tune in for and if you're after more which touches on the same topics I'll never be done recommending the book Technocolonialism by Mirca Madianou.
At last, not an event, but a resource instead. Sloptracker traces instances of AI 'artists' appearing on Spotify and relates them to the revenue drain they're placing on real, actual artists. Spotify is, course, a trash platform which everyone should leave but it definitely illustrates a point well as the deluge of hollowed out nonsense sends the tide rising.
Resource - Data Centre Impact Dashboard
US focused for now this is a very cool effort to map data centres, their impacts and reactions/resistance towards them. Engaging with that community resistance there's a huge scope here for expressions of friction and pushback.
- Dylan