Posted by As all know…technology is ever shaping our shared world. What is the right “stance” for social workers? Lean into new tech opportunities – explore, experiment or develop new applications? Or resist, interrogate and complicate deployment of tech and datafication of modern life? The truth is that the answer is probably “both,” and definitely not “hide and avoid it all…” Most urgently – social workers need to plug in and learn with gusto. Tech remains a fast moving space with huge implications for justice, solution-building, equity, access to resources and more. Tech justice-related learning should be a regular priority for every social worker in practice and every social work student. This is a list of some of my favorite and most important learning spaces/tools/resources!
- Amy Webb’s books the Big Nine and the Genesis Machine – two great resources to learn about the power of big tech companies and the future of AI, as well as the emerging futures of synthetic biology and biotech and the implications it may have on the future of humanity.
- New White House Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights (October 2022) – developed by the The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).
- Oracle for Transfeminist Technology game and resource. Learning tools and community.
- Technologies for Liberation: Toward Abolitionist Futures (2020) – Astrea Lesbian Foundation for Justice
- More good reads:
Danielle Citron – The Fight for Privacy
Nita A. Farahany – Battle for Your Brain
Orley Lobel – The Equality Machine
Kate Crawford – The Atlas of AI
Safiya Noble – Algorithms of Oppression
Ruha Benjamin – Viral Justice (and MUST READ: Race After Technology)
Caroline Criado Perez – Invisible Women
Meredith Broussard – More Than a Glitch
Cathy O’Neil – The Shame Machine
Julie Cohen – Between Truth and Power
6. Research Institutes:
UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry
Algorithmic Justice League (MUST WATCH related film: Coded Bias)
Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society
New America’s Open Technology Institute
7. ACLU’s Algorithmic Equity Toolkit
8. Disrupting the gospel of tech solutionism to build tech justice and related Just Tech Network
9. Articles/Reports: What is Data Justice? The Case for Connecting Digital Rights and Freedoms Globally (2017). Linnet Taylor – and – Exploring Data Justice: Conceptions, Applications and Directions (2019). Lina Dencik, Arne Hintz, Joanna Redden & Emiliano Treré, Humanitarian Digital Ethics: A Foresight and Decolonial Governance Response (2022), Aarathi Krishnan.
10. United Nations Strategy on New Technologies
P.S. If you want more…here’s my much more indepth scan from 2021 – includes many more detailed issues specific to social work and is AI-specific.
Social Work Futures 
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