the proposal
The idea behind this handbook is that having better conversations about technology leads to better decision-making about technology. Having better conversations about technology is a critical part of pushing back on hype, pressure, and the ongoing sense of inevitability about the role of computers in the future. By better conversations, I mean: slower, historically grounded, full of questions, and making all efforts to engage from a posture of confidence or openness rather than fear.
As a facilitator, I know that there are structures, processes, and tactics that can help support productive conversations and decision-making about computer use. I learned about and practiced facilitation in the context of public engagement, situations where governments have to engage the public in decision-making. Conversations about computers are not the same thing (unless it's a public consultation on computer regulation or policy), but I have still found a number of approaches from public consultation methods to be helpful in supporting all kinds of different conversations about technology. For that reason, it seems worth it to share them out beyond the work that I do with other people directly. I also hope making this handbook available will allow for it to keep being adapted/updated/edited based on feedback and ongoing use.
Conversations are particularly important in the context of building confidence to engage with technology. So many times, people hold back from speaking up about their feelings and concerns with new technology because they fear being seen as ignorant, out of touch, resistant to change - the list of reasons to stay quiet is long. But when someone else steps forward to break the silence, the relief is deeply felt, opening up space to challenge and question what kind of progress, exactly, is on offer?
Regardless of the specifics of the context, the idea that conversation matters is at the heart of the strategies and tactics in the pages that follow. If we can't talk about the issue, we can't change it. To put technology in its appropriately-sized box, we need to break the fixation we have with the supply-side of the computer equation. As IBM was famous for saying in the 1960s, "Computers aren't bought, they're sold"*. In many senses, computers are indeed inevitable, especially when you consider how deeply their development is tied into military investments, and how long we've had a dominant culture that sees new things as inherently progressive. We also have a dominant culture that keeps mixing up science (learning about the world) with the application of science for industrial and commercial gain.
The use of computers impacts all of our relationships - those we have with ourselves, with each other, and with our environment. As such, we should be careful to heed technologist Ursula Franklin's warning about how technology can reduce and/or eliminate reciprocity**. Reciprocity is a critical part of relationships, one that needs explicit protection, particularly in the context of democracy.
As Franklin also believed, just because you can't solve a hard problem doesn't mean you shouldn't bother to talk about it. This handbook is designed in agreement and support of this belief. It's an offer to anyone in any context that wants to talk more about if and how we use computers, and also for those that want to take those conversations and use them to make more confident, informed, and careful decisions about computer use in a range of different places, from home to workplace, from union to non-profit organization. There is no one size fits all method, but in the pages that follow there are repeatable approaches to organizing these conversations at different scales and in different spaces.
Finally, it is clear that the use of computers has so many cultural and social implications that will never get managed through regulation, policy, and law. As such, this is also a call to self-organize and to shift our attention from the computers and their makers to each other and our power.
*source: Computer: a history of the information machine. Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray. 2004.
**source: Franklin, Ursula M. The Real World of Technology. CBC Massey Lectures series. Toronto: CBC Enterprises, 1990.