The Tech Cartographies is a platform to kickstart a debate about technology that goes beyond the field of ‘digital rights’ to encompass the concepts and concerns of feminisms and socio-environmental justice movements. Throughout 2023, the map was presented at RightsCon, in Costa Rica, and at theGlobal Digital Compact Americas Multistakeholder Consultationheld in Mexico, organized by the Mexican and German governments in cooperation with the Office of the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology. At the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) at Kyoto, we launched a newinteractive online version of the Map, currently available in English andPortuguese. This version was showcased during a Workshop we conducted in partnership with Minha Campinas and Casa de Cultura Fazenda Roseira, in Brazil, with the support of Heinrich Böll Stiftung Brazil.
Access the platform here.
This is the key question of Not My A.I., an ongoing project that seeks to contribute to the development of a feminist toolkit that questions algorithmic decision making systems that are being deployed by the so-called Digital Welfare States. In a partnership of Paz Peña and Joana Varon, and with the support from FIRN - Feminist Internet Research Network - from APC, a series of AI projects that are being deployed by the public sector in Latin America were mapped, and a feminist framework to question these systems was developed. In an attempt to update the research on the implementation of AI in the Brazilian public sector, we submitted a series of FOIA requests to the same 45 federal public entities that we previously consulted in 2022, inquiring about the use of AI systems. With the support of Meedan, the gathered information resulted in the article "Artificial Intelligence: 2023 retrospect and what's to come". Additionally, the Not My AI project provided inputs for discussions and debates at all the events we participated in during 2023.
Access the platform here.
The Branch Magazine published an interview by Joana Varon with Alana Keline, indigenous from the Manchineri indigenous people and communications coordinator at the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations in the Brazilian Amazon - COIAB . The conversation was about topics such as access to the Internet in the Amazon region, big tech exploitation of indigenous knowledge and territories and the struggle against the "Marco Temporal". It also brings many reflections about how addressing climate change depends on protecting indigenous rights and how technology plays a role in it.
Read the interview here.
Together with legislators, activists, and civil society organizations, we discussed the impacts of the use of these technologies in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, at the Legislative Assembly of the State of Rio de Janeiro - ALERJ. The seminar was an initiative led by State Deputy Dani Monteiro in partnership with Coding Rights, data_labe, Aqualtune Lab, LabJaca, CESeC, and the campaign "Tire Meu Rosto da Sua Mira" (Take My Face Out of Your Target).
Article by Joana Varon and Vanessa Koetz in which some results of the research "Whatsapp pay: The next frontier for the expansion of data monopoly"are discussed. It was originally published in Portuguese in the"Perspectivas e Controvérsias da Inovação Regulatória no Sistema Financeiro de Pagamentos" book, a compilation of articles that offer significant insights into the relationship between technology and the financial system.
Written by Joana Varon, this article was published in the book “Resisting Data Colonialism: a practical intervention”, produced by Tierra Comun Network and Institute of Network Cultures.
“The Compost engineers and sus saberes lentos” (to be launched) is another research in progress seeking alternatives, led by Joana Varon and Lucía Egaña Rojas. Initiated as a small piece for the Feminist AI Research Network, but intended to become a book, it has the goal to flag what is left behind in terms of decolonial imaginaries when we use the term “AI”. A terminology loaded by Hollywood and Silicon Valley industries to historically entail a metallic silver white male-led future. Instead, we propose the figuration of the compost as a reconnection to the land and with ancestral technologies that are regenerative to our territories.
