Gender and Race in the Making of Global Tech Innovation

Catalog description

The speed and scale of emerging AI technologies in the 20th and 21st centuries has especially created an interconnected world in which the mobility of people, knowledge, and know how transcend national boundaries and geographic distance. Technology is a tool that can bring about tremendous benefit or harm to human life depending on many factors. How do ideas about identity and power shape technological innovation, the kinds of products that tech companies bring to market, the labor force that produces the products, and access to technology? Who gets to see themselves as "a computer person," and how do early childhood and educational experiences shape our perceptions of our relationship to technology and the digital world that surrounds us? This course explores these questions by examining case studies of how data about, ideas about, and experiences of race and gender shape the making of Silicon Valley and technology hubs around the world, including Bangalore and Delhi, London and Berlin, Seoul, Johannesburg and Nairobi. We will explore how local culture in these varied hubs shape these dynamics, manifesting in different answers to these questions and yielding different outcomes. We will also explore global debates on the question of AI technology and the perpetuation or disruption of existing hierarchies related to gender, race, and personhood. Co-taught by experts in computer science and studies of gender and race , this course explores multidisciplinary perspectives and tools to problem-solve pressing ethical dilemmas in tech production and use. This course teaches op-ed writing and hands-on practice conducting ethnographic research in education and tech workplace settings.