By Adrianna

Thanks Jen and Sean for all the readings! I especially enjoyed “Dismantling Tech as a Bad Romance in Its Continued Master-Slave Relationship”. The Bina48 section gave me a lot to consider and I went down a rabbit hole researching other takes on the term “Black Siri”. In my search I came across this GIF (sorry! I could only attach its image format) and article. In a nutshell, it discusses how some people have felt validated by the updated “diverse” versions of virtual assistant voices. Yet, it has also brought up concerns about gendered and racial biases. Is it really better to have a woman or a person of color act as your virtual assistant? I’m not sure where I stand with this. Either way, the article reinforces what the Bad Romance piece tells us. It’s essential that we start opening up spaces for more diverse persons in these positions of power, so that they (with their own lived experiences) can improve the technology we have and hopefully even make it accessible to more people.

Tuka Al-Sahlani

I was not expecting the idea that technology is the slave and we are the master in Dori Tunstall’s essay. It is intriguing to read about the Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence Working Group and only when the idea of Indigenous practices of “all my relations” did I understand why we need to reconsider this master/slave relationship. Initially, I was resistant to the idea of technology as equal– I am not sure I would agree with using the term equal–but I do see the value in enhancing interconnectedness instead of engagement. Interconnectedness would benefit the humans and the Earth. I think of technology and humanoid robots as inanimate objects, so the interconnectedness for me would be, as Tunstall suggests, to rethink and redesign technology with BIPOC consciousness to eliminate the biases and the notion that technology is inconsequential.

I believe the flawed notion that technology is inconsequential is why the Tech Learning Collective and the FemTechNet exist. It is the humanists who are interrogating technology that have allowed us to rethink power and technology. But, as one of the many who use technology without mindfulness, how am I using it with the FemTehNet manifesto in mind? I think, what I am asking is, in what small ways can we modify our technological usage and sponsor or promote these smaller conscious changes in our families, within our friend circles, and communities? I connect these questions to Walsh’s reading because I have seen the damage in employee moral and work environment when an administrator decides ”let’s add new software to [insert field/task/skill here] and everyone must use it” with the promise of technological software as a utopian fixer upper to all educational and work issues.

Thank you Jen and Sean for these readings!

Katina Rogers

Many thanks to Jen and Sean for putting together this thoughtful selection of materials for our discussion this week! A few questions/thoughts that came to mind for me while reading:

• In what ways are certain skills coded as conveying power? In what ways is the opposite true—can you think of instances where *not* understanding a given skill or tool is a power move? How is this fluency (or lack thereof) used strategically?
• The literal colonial elements of digital tools are so important—the physical and environmental footprint of server farms, the stolen land on which they operate, the water they use and the soil and air they pollute.
• I am not sure that I’m convinced by the main argument of the “Dismantling Tech” piece. Is a sense of mastery/ownership over our tools the overarching problem with tech? Would a different relationship with, e.g., AI tools really shift the colonial dynamic of server farms and resource use? I’m not sure. I think that may be a midstream problem, rather than a foundational problem. The ‘master-slave’ comparison also makes me really uncomfortable, as it seems to be comparing non-sentient computer code with real human abuse and suffering. Did anyone else feel unsettled by this? (and, as I write that, is ‘unsettling’ perhaps part of the point?)
• FemTechNet: What do we make of the fact that FemTechNet isn’t really active anymore? What is required for the care and maintenance of feminist technology? Or is it ok for things to bloom and fade?
• Collective action, peer-to-peer learning, mutual aid models, interdependence—these distributed and relationship-focused approaches seem to offer the greatest promise for ethical tech (and just ethical social engagement in general). They’re also actively anti-capitalist. How do we make space for this kind of work in systems that are antithetical to the kinds of space and time that relational work requires?

To that last point, I love the use of institutional materials to think through reclaiming power. How can we bend those systems in ways that they may not be intended, but that better serve the goals and values that we hold? As one friend and colleague puts it, how can we practice ‘activist administration’—knowing when to work within, push against, or outright flout the norms and structures to which we feel beholden?

That’s all from me for now—looking forward to reading/hearing others’ reflections, and to discussing together in class tomorrow.

Brie Scolaro

Captured in written note, my mind reflects this week on power and powersharing primarily in academia (which is what I am discussing in my Pedagogy class) and how these dynamics show up in the field I work in (for-profit mental health care). The role of one’s “Ego” is strong here – someone worked hard to be in charge, to feel this power, and what does one gain by equalizing that power. In my mind, there is so much to be gained in society, in the economy, in our intelligence/science from collaboration, ideation, and open access to all knowledge.

This week’s materials were interesting, seeing the breakdown of prioritization across CUNY’s budgeting. Working in CUNY, I feel like I am involved in conversations about budgeting a lot, such as with the CUNY Commons and its struggles with funding or more typical cases like how money for roles/projects is distributed throughout office units via my position at Lehman. It is, however, always jarring to see the discrepancies in certain investments by the administration. For example, as someone working with teacher education programs currently, I was immediately drawn to the budget for Smart Classroom and Digital Technology upgrades. They stated they would be putting 8 million dollars towards the senior colleges and only 2 million dollars towards the community colleges. Not only does that number (while large, don’t get me wrong) seem small for a technology investment at the world’s largest urban university system to begin with, but to then provide the most accessible of our institutions with the least resources, feels not so good. This seems to be a trend across the budget, however. Having worked at LaGuardia and City Tech, where entire floors are unavailable, or 3/8 elevators are working at any given time, it’s unsurprising to see the numbers laid out as they are, but it’s still disappointing.

SeeThroughNY is a tool I’ve encountered before and hadn’t visited in a while, mostly because when I first found it, I was a very early graduate student doing the CUNY Juggle (working and adjunct’ing at about 2-3+ schools at any given semester), and it made me sad. I do think it is a very positive thing in that transparency can foster a healthier relationship between institutions and the public. I appreciate it for a lot of reasons, but I can also see the argument for privacy, too. We’ve made it a cultural norm not to ask people how much money they make, for example, and so to have it publicly available due to it being publicly funded, while fair, almost grants more privacy and, by extension, more social power to private institutions. Ultimately, I think it’s a good thing, but you have to wonder what kind of [drastic] shift would occur if suddenly everybody had to be transparent about their finances.

SeeThroughNY:

My initial thoughts are that this is a wonderful idea to show some transparency on salaries. However, i feel that the main audience will be fellow employees. It can be beneficial if there were to be a download/export functionality in order to see/interpret the data as a group instead of individuals. This can also be seen as in the FAQ, many of the questions are related to individuals instead of a group. Citing that FOIL is the reason that this is a public record.

FY21/23 CUNY Budget:

This is a standard financial statement for large organizations. 5.2M -> 5.6M in revenue is a good. Even after the pandemic. There is even a drop of operating cost, from 5.4M -> 5.1M. Is this a sign that leadership will ok with downsizing staff? around 200K in drop of full time instructors or a reduction of part time instructors.
These types of documents are meant to be compared to prior financial statements over a five year period.

http://www.cuny.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/page-assets/about/administration/offices/budget-and-finance/The-City-University-of-New-York-Fiscal-Year-2018-Audited-Financial-Statements-Notes-and-MDA.pdf
For 2018, we see 4.9M in Revenue and 5.0M in expenses. So we can see that they are changing the way how they spend/receive.

my main takeaway is that these organizations are similar to banks in the “too big to fail” and will always have a backup somewhere.

Brie Scolaro

• My first attempt was a 5 minute voice memo that I cannot yet figure out how to attach.
• My second attempt was to upload a PDF of this document that I wrote, to no avail.
• Here I have finally uploaded my questions from the week – I have deeper reflections, but after 4 hours of driving and multiple attempts, alas, this is what ya get!

• Organizations do not ask for money unless they need money. In what ways do systems of power protect White Supremacy through accepting and rejecting various documentation of organizational needs, accomplishments, budgets – who is to say what is deemed worthy and unworthy. Can money ever be given without a power imbalance between the grantor and the grantee? What are examples of best practices of folx that do things DIFFERENT (because this current way just aint working…)

I really appreciated the facility with which we are able to find and navigate information on SeeThroughNY and the CUNY budgets. Financial transparency is a commitment to accountability to the public that is meant to be benefitting from these programs. I couldn’t help but notice the missing data, particularly on SeeThroughNY. I wonder why, for example, all charter school data is not readily available, despite the fact that charter schools are publicly funded in similar ways as public schools? It seems like charter schools in upstate New York were included, but not the major charter management organizations most present in NYC (KIPP, Uncommon, Success, Achievement First, Ascend). How do these organizations circumvent inclusion on a site like SeeThroughNY, and more importantly why? What kind of an impact does obscuring this kind of data have on the relationship between institutions and community? And finally, what do these organizations owe their communities in terms of transparency?