If the constant stream of headlines and scandals exposing the dark side of digital technology are making you uneasy, you may want to listen to Critical Technology, a brand new podcast produced and hosted by Associate Professor Sara Grimes, Director of the Faculty of Information’s Knowledge Media Design Institute (KMDI).
It was prompted, Grimes says in the podcast’s trailer, by the “sudden and massive shift to online everything following the arrival of Covid-19.
“There’s a growing sense of urgency that we really need to know more about the impacts of digital technologies on our lives, our communities, our society.”
While there’s plenty of academic research exploring these issues, Grimes says it can be hard to find and interpret. The podcast is an opportunity for her to interview scholars and colleagues whose work she views as “game changing for understanding the culture and politics of digital technologies,” and provide a virtual alternative to KMDI’s annual Speaker Series.
Sara Grimes’ Cultural Technology podcast will return shortly. Follow the @kmdi Twitter account to find out when new episodes air.
In the first episode, Grimes talked to Assistant Professor David Nieborg about cultural production on digital platforms. Episode two was a conversation with Assistant Professor Negin Dahya about educational technologies in refugee camps. And the third episode, which was the final one for 2020 before the podcast resumes later this year, featured Associate Professor Beth Coleman discussing the city as platform. All three of Grimes’ guests for the inaugural installment of the series, published between November and December 2020, have graduate appointments at the Faculty of Information.
As much as the pandemic was a catalyst, KMDI had already been planning on setting up a podcast recording studio pre-Covid and had hosted a small group of people making podcasts for most of the 2019-2020 school year. Grimes, who took podcasting courses as well as attending a bootcamp, worked with students with years of professional experience to set up both the podcast and a video-recording space for faculty members to use to assemble lectures. Unfortunately, before the latter could operate, changing public health regulations ruled out non-essential visits to campus.
In non-pandemic times, KMDI, which has explored the complex relationships between technology and society since 1996, also operates a makerspace in the Faculty of Information’s Inforum, where students are encouraged to get creative with technologies ranging from sewing machines and 3D printers, to Arduinos and Raspberry Pis – open source prototyping platforms and simple computers, respectively.
In addition to continuing production on season 1 of Critical Technology, Grimes is preparing for the launch of her book, Digital Playgrounds, next summer. It is a critical synthesis of Grimes’ research to date, conducted over two decades, on key developments, trends, debates, and controversies that have shaped children’s play in commercial digital games and other online spaces.
Her expertise on children in the digital world led Grimes, along with Professor Leslie Shade who researches older teens’ digital practices, to partner with the RErights project, a global children’s consultation conducted for the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) recent review of how to apply the Convention on the Rights of the Child to the digital world. In the summer of 2019, the two professors organized a series of workshops to talk to kids about how they use digital technology in their daily lives, and the opportunities and challenges that technology brings.
The information they collected helped inform the drafting of the CRC’s new “General Comment” on these important issues. Once feedback is received, the final version will be published next year.
“It’s going to have a number of significant implications for regulators, and for the producers of the various digital services and applications that are used by children,” says Grimes. “There will be massive repercussions for the Canadian government, who have fallen way behind when it comes to protecting and supporting children’s rights online and vis-a-vis connected or smart technologies.” As an example, she cites the lack of special considerations for children in the Privacy Modernization Act that was recently introduced Canadian Government, which is currently in the public consultation phase.
On the plus side, she says, “I think the kids who participated in the children’s consultation, which included 709 children from 28 countries around the world, will be really proud of themselves when they see the report and the positive impact they made on the advancement of children’s rights.”
