A new open-access book from the University of Ottawa Research Chair in Technology and Society seeks to amplify voices that are often ignored in digital spaces, bringing fresh ideas to some of today’s most pressing digital technology issues.
Can’t Compute: Moving Towards an Equitable Digital World is a collection of essays that highlights technology issues that are increasingly relevant to members of equity-seeking groups. While digital progress has unquestionably brought scores of benefits to our daily lives, technological advances may also reinforce systemic biases and compound social injustices. The range of ways our lives are affected by digital technology is, simply put, something we “can’t compute” without reaching out to those who are otherwise unrepresented in mainstream conversations about the digital world.
Edited by Professor Suzie Dunn of Dalhousie University, Nasma Ahmed, Director of the Digital Justice Lab, and Common Law’s Dr. Florian Martin Bariteau, who holds the University of Ottawa Research Chair in Technology and Society, this collection gives a platform to a diverse collection of voices that engage with digital issues through scholarly articles, personal narratives and even short fiction. The authors – who include academics, activists and storytellers – explore the ways in which technology affects Black people, Indigenous people, People of Colour, people living with disabilities, women, gender minorities, and members of the LGBTQ2S+ community. Topics include online abuse, sexual violence prevention and support apps, the limits of digital services, pronoun identification on digital platforms, and how the use of artificial intelligence may conflict with Charter rights, among others. The collection uncovers how digital technologies are already impacting equity-seeking groups, while giving readers much to think about in terms of how we will grow and change with the digital advances of the near future.
The essays featured in Can’t Compute were written during the early stages of the pandemic, at a time when global inequities were intensified and when our dependence on technology as a way of maintaining human connections had reached an unprecedented level. Appropriately, the chapters in this collection demonstrate how technological tools can both connect people by creating digital spaces for community building, while also isolating them when those digital spaces do not provide adequate representation or when they become unsafe.
This project was funded by Dr. Martin-Bariteau’s University of Ottawa Research Chair in Technology and Society through a series of mini-grants awarded to the authors.
Learn more about Can’t Compute, download a PDF version, or read it online by clicking here.