Digital Development

In this post I will discuss communication for development in a world of internet communication. The ultimate goal with COMDEV is to have a better world with less poverty and more equality. If we throw in sustainability as well it will sound nice, but it is hard to see a world where every family has a washing machine and a car and ten pairs of pants for each family member. And that we are living environmentally sustainable.
Leaving sustainability for another discussion, it is now time to look at how we as humans can communicate to work together for a better world, or to uplift regions or people who are suffering. How can we do that? For starters, do we have the same means to communicate if we are a rich university student from Sweden and an average textile industry employee in Bangladesh?
One thing that I have noticed when it is more and more common to have meetings online, is that those of us that are blessed with unlimited data seem to want to meet often, while participants in countries where you buy the data simply cant afford to meet on Zoom or Skype every day.
Abeba Birhane (2018) argues in the study The Algorithmic Colonization of Africa, that ”Technology in general is never either neutral or objective; it is a mirror that reflects societal bias, unfairness, and injustice.”
So, when we meet and discuss development issues, regardless of social status or material things, the aim is for everyone to have equal opportunities. Bu do we really have that? One danger when technology is expensive and data is scarce is that the voices of the blessed are taking over the conversation. And people like myself, who was never really hungry, can I fully understand the social issues around poverty and what hinders development. Of course people who are already living in a developed area or region should have a place in the discussion. But should we set the agenda and do most of the talking? It might be that we get lost then and that we are missing the point of communication for development.
When IT is not really for all the resourceful can have good intentions, but without knowing it coming up with erroneus conclusions and suggestions that are totally off.
Birhane takes an exemple of a UN conference, where a delegate showed work to combat online counterterrorism. Here the only terrorism that was being fought was Islamic. Probably some technologically blessed christians found that there was only Islamic terrorists out there and missed a whole bunch of otheres. According to Birhane ”over the past nine years, there have been 350 white extremist terrorism attacks in Europe, Australia, and North America; one third of all such attacks in this time period in the U.S. are due to white extremism. This illustrates the worrying point that stereotypically held views drive what is perceived as a problem and the types of technology we develop in response. We then hold what we find through the looking glass of technology as evidence of our biased intuitions and further reinforce stereotypes.”
So, if us individuals that are already helped, developed or empowered want to call ourselves change agents, we have to be careful that we barge forward with a narrow perspective. If we dont listen to other views or take other people into our discussions, we will turn from change agents to misguided missiles.
So people who are already developed, but want to contribute to a better world, what can we do? It is not easy to have an all embracing perspective. That is only for gods and oracles. One thing we can do as rich whites at least, is to look into some academic literature that is not all white. Can that lead us somewhere? Let us see.
Cave and Dihal (2020) studies artificial intelligence in the paper The Whiteness of AI, and ”argue that to imagine machines that are intelligent, professional, or powerful is to imagine White machines because the White racial frame ascribes these attributes predominantly to White people”.
This seems to be an issue. In the field of COMDEV we are supposed to talk on equal terms, both as aid workers, marginalized women in the countryside somewhere, and a group of researchers at a university. How are we supposed to meet in an IT world if our tools of communication are designed to see people not as equals?
Cave and Dihal looks into how the ideology of race is a force not to underestimete when it comes the creation of artificial intelligence. To explain racialisation, they use words from Joe Feagin (2013) who notes that:
”Among the most important ingredients of this frame are: (1) the recurring use of certain physical characteristics, such as skin colour and facial features, to differentiate social groups; (2) the constant linking of physical characteristics to cultural characteristics; and (3) the regular use of physical and linked cultural distinctions to differentiate socially “superior” and “inferior” groups in a social hierarchy”.
So how do we go about if we want to work for development, less poverty, more education, less dictatorships, less colonization and no terrorism? If it is true what Cave and Dihal and Feagin says, the question is, how do we raise awareness about this to change the designs of artificial intelligence? It seems as a knight who wants to fight a windmill. Where do we start? Do we send an email to Google as a customer complaint, ”Your computer programs are unfair, and we are trying to talk about development here, but some of us are being left out”?
The world of social media and internet is big, maybe bigger than before, when we were just citizens in a country. Then at least in a fair democratic country we had the theoretical chance of getting our voices heard, or the ability to become politicians and speak up about the unfairness we saw. What do we do today?
If the whole system we are supposed to use to communicate is biased, how are we supposed to understand each other? Cave and Dihal see how the machines behind artifiaial intelligence can actually be racialized. They talk about how it affects how we use communication: ”Given the sociopolitical importance of the racial frame in structuring people’s interactions, if machines are really being racialised, then we would expect this to have an impact on how people interact with these machines.”
In my earlier blog posts here on Digging Digital Development I have touched on these subjects. It is sad to say that the more you read about talking on equal grounds, the more clear it becomes that we are not doing so. I could name this post The Myth of the Digital Revolution. This course of events that is often being discussed is surely digital. But is it revolutionary? It would be interesting to hear some voices of the people that dont have access to unlimited data, to let them have unlimited time and space for voicing what they want to see as a developed future.
Lets go on and read som more non white literature on the subject. What does for example Janine Jackson have to say? In the radio show titled ”Black Communities Are Already Living in a Tech Dystopia” she discusses issues of racism and technology with Ruha Benjamin, associate professor of African-American studies at Princeton University.
Here she tells example of technology can be racist, for example and asian blogger with a Nikon camera that kept asking ”did anyone blink?” when the blogger wanted to take a picture. Other issues in this style is when Google or Flickr are tagging black people as apes and gorillas. Jackson calls this discriminatory design. And it does not stop with image recognition gone bad:
”Some examples of discriminatory design are obvious, which doesn’t mean the reasons behind them are easy to fix. And then there are other questions around technology and bias in policing, in housing, in banking, that require deeper questioning”.
So, if whole societies have built in racial bises towards people, how do we go about it? Maybe the design of artificial intelligence has no evil thoughts behind it, but are just a picture of a society where we simply cant see each other as equals. At least not from the white anglophone point of view.
In Namibia for exemple, Ineke Mules (2018) writes that 70 percent of the land belongs to the former white colonizers, decendants of Germans and White South Africans. These two groups make up only six percent of the population. Still, 31 years after independence, the whites have such an advantage ofer blacks in this country:
”The Namibian government has sought to correct past colonial wrongs and pursue social equality. Up until now, white farmers only had to sell their lands back to the state on a voluntary basis. But this principle had not worked.”
It seems that racial preference does not discrminate. It is flowering in both a mid income contry like Namibia, and a top scorer in GDP like the United States. How do we then work it out if we want to talk on equal grounds?
We could propagate for free internet access for all people in the world. Like the work for education for all, this could at least give some disadvantaged individuals a more level playing field if we want to move forward and create prosperity for all.
Despite the biased AI miachines out there, at least education for all and free internet for all could take us somewhere further.
Lets see what a white critical thinker has to say. Is it going to give us more hope for the future? Probably, we are going to hear some arguments of a critical nature. But lets hear it.
Michael Kwet writes in Digital colonialism: the evolution of American empire, that: ”We live in a world where digital colonialism now risks becoming as significant and far-reaching a threat to the Global South as classic colonialism was in previous centuries. Sharp increases in inequality, the rise of state-corporate surveillance and sophisticated police and military technologies are just a few of the consequences of this new world order. The phenomenon may sound new to some, but over the course of the past decades, it has become entrenched in the global status quo. Without a considerably strong counter-power movement, the situation will get much worse.”
So, instead of a digital revolution, we might need to focus on a digital counter revolution. Despite the racist machinery that hold people back and the lack of affordable internet access. We need to come together, and fight the system globally. It is not a science fiction movie. It is happeing now. Where do we start? Who do we fight? Kwet seems to know some of our opponents:
”Today, Eduardo Galeano’s “open veins” of the Global South are the “digital veins” crossing the oceans, wiring up a tech ecosystem owned and controlled by a handful of mostly US-based corporations. Some of the transoceanic fiber-optic cables are fitted with strands owned or leased by the likes of Google and Facebook to further their data extraction and monopolization.”
Let us start to find our enemies. Are they a handful of US corporations, or can we fight in a smaller scale? In the comments, please come with suggestions on how to form a digital fair counter revolution for all.

 

References:

  • Birhane, A. 2019: The Algorithmic Colonization of Africa, Real Life Mag, 9 July.
    Cave, S.; Dihal, K. 2020: The Whiteness of AI, Philosophy & Technology 33, 685-703.
    Jackson, J. 2019: Black Communities Are Already Living in a Tech, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, 15 August.
    Kwet, M. 2021: Digital colonialism: the evolution of American empire, ROAR, 3 March.

Internet sources:

  • Mules, Ineke, Namibia: Who owns the land?, retrieved from https://www.dw.com/en/namibia-who-owns-the-land/a-45740852 2021-11-02