Payal Arora is a Professor of Inclusive AI Cultures at Utrecht University, and Co-Founder of FemLab, a feminist future of work initiative. She is a digital anthropologist and an author, speaker and consultant. Her expertise draws from two decades of user experiences among low-income communities worldwide to shape inclusive designs and policies. She is the author of a number of award-winning books including “The Leisure Commons” and more recently “The Next Billion Users.” Engadget (Top 5 in the ‘Technorati top 100’ and Times endorsed ‘best blogs on tech’) stated that her book is one of “the most interesting, thought-provoking books on science and technology we can find.” Forbes named her the “next billion champion” and “the right kind of person to reform tech.”
A few words from Payal:
“I was midway through the book when I arrived at the Bellagio Center. Discussions with U.S. politicians visiting Bellagio on their views of the term “pessimism” made me rethink how to frame my argument for a wider audience.”
Quote from From Pessimism to Promise:
“The West is suffering from pessimism paralysis — a negative bias toward all things digital — that can derail the drive to change the status quo. Negativity does not inspire change. Pessimism is for those who are privileged and can afford to live with despair. Imagine if Martin Luther King, Jr., started his speech by saying, “I have no dream.” It is not naive to be optimistic about our digital future. It is our moral imperative to design with hope.”
Synopsis:
A radical paradigm shift in the way we think about AI and tech, taking hope and inspiration from the aspirational users of new technologies around the world.
When it comes to tech, the mainstream headlines are bleak: Algorithms control and oppress. AI will destroy democracy and our social fabric, and possibly even drive us to extinction. While legitimate concerns drive these fears, we need to equally account for the fact that tech affords young people something incredibly valuable — a rare space for self-actualization. In “From Pessimism to Promise,” award-winning author Payal Arora explains that, outside the West, where most of the world’s youth reside, there is a significant different outlook on tech: in fact, there is a contagion of optimism toward all things digital. These users, especially those in marginalized contexts, are full of hope for new tech.
As AI disrupts sectors across industries, education, and beyond, who better to shine the light forward, Arora argues, than the Global South, the navigator of all manner of forced disruptions, leapfrogging obstructive systems, norms, and practices to rapidly reinvent itself? Drawing on field insights in diverse global contexts such as Brazil, India, and Bangladesh, Payal describes what drives Gen Z to embrace new technologies. “From Pessimism to Promise” discusses the shift to relationally-driven approaches to design; how to create “algorithms of aspiration”; how to reimagine the digital space for sex, pleasure, and care; and, what we can learn from feminist digital activists and women’s collectives in the Global South on shared digital provenance and value, as well as indigenous approaches to sustainability, that challenges sacred ideas on degrowth, circular economy, and the doughnut economy. Arora also takes heart in the power in numbers, as the users from the majority world infuse algorithms with everyday aspirations, pushing for a new digital order. Timely and urgent, “From Pessimism to Promise” makes a deeply compelling case that it is not naïve to be optimistic about our digital future. On the contrary, it is our moral imperative to design with hope.
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