Book Talk : What Technology Can't Fix by Nanjala Nyabola

WISER and the Programme of African Digital Humanities invite you to join us for a book talk by Nanjala Nyabola : "What technology can't fix."

VENUE :  WISER Seminar Room, 6th Floor, Richard Ward Building, Braamfontein Campus

Copies of Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics (Chicago & Zed, 2018) will be available for sale.  Please indicate your interest in purchasing a copy at R270 by recording your details here.

Abstract: In it's 2019 World Development Report "The Future of Work", the World Bank echoes the perhaps overly optimistic line that technology "brings opportunity, paving the new way to create jobs, increase productivity, and deliver effective public services". Those who build the platforms that increasingly control the intricacies of our daily lives want us to believe that all technological progress is good - from social media platforms to voice activated smart speakers; from state-built panopticons that siphon terabytes of citizen data, to smartphones and laptops that manage our bank accounts and pay our bills while listening in to our personal conversations even when we'd rather they didn't. But their opponents are increasingly raising their voices - technology is not and cannot be a panacea for problems that societies, communities and their leaders choose not to fix. Technology has its limits and challenges defined primarily by the contours of the community in which the technology is deployed.  Primarily drawing from the Kenyan experience, this talk will focus on these limits - on what technology can't fix. It will discuss three general issues:.that technology cannot unite a society that is determined to remain divided; technology cannot uncorrupt a system that power would rather keep corrupt for profit; and technology cannot build movements or fix social problems without offline momentum. These points may seem banal, but it is increasingly important to emphasise them, particularly as tech-optimism increasingly outweighs founded skepticism in key sectors like governance, development and humanitarianism. This talk will urge an honest and earnest reflections on some of the key limits of technology and bring us back to a more meaningful medium so we can focus better energies on what technology can fix.

Bio: Nanjala Nyabola is a writer, independent researcher and political analyst currently based in Nairobi, Kenya. Her work focuses on conflict and post conflict transitions, with a focus on refugees and migration, as well as East African politics generally. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, Al Jazeera, World Politics Review, as well as chapters in edited collections. She is the author of "Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics: How the Internet Era is Transforming Kenya" and the co-editor of "Where Women Are: Gender and the 2017 Kenyan Elections". Nanjala holds a BA in African Studies and Political Science from the University of Birmingham, an MSc in Forced Migration and an MSc in African Studies, both from the University of Oxford, which she attended as a Rhodes Scholar, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.