Beyond Counting Accountability
Xiaowei Wang has a new article in Just Tech, titled "Beyond Counting Accountability." In the article, Xiaowei casts some well-needed scepticism on the much-lauded notion that our technology provides accountability, arguing that this computer-generated metric-based version is likely to miss valuable context and relationships.
From the article:
Activists at Stop LAPD Spying and Free Radicals remind us that the opposite of surveillance is relation, and it is through relation that such forms of accountability without surveillance might grow. Most recently, I am grateful for the Logic School space that I help steward, which provides a space to practice accountability regularly within the world of tech work. As a community-driven school, we meet weekly and remind each other that although we work for companies or institutions headed by executives, our accountability is to each other and to the communities we are part of outside of work, and we learn to care for each other in workplaces as the basis of organizing. While blockchain-enabled NFTs, profit-driven digital health, and data centers may promise us accountability or justice someday, a more just tech is not only possible—it is already being worked toward, every day.
Read the article here!