Designing from within / How to facilitate participation, agency, equity, social justice in socio_technical worlds

Computing artefacts must comply with the formal logic and core functional principles of computers - at the same time they are situated in sociocultural contexts. Socioinformatics stresses this double character and demonstrates making a clear cut between the social and the technical is a false statement. Yet, we still find dichotomies (social-technical, human-computer, developer-user, expert-non-expert) to be formative for research design, curricula building and system development. Furthermore, these dichotomies relate to and reinforce societal power dynamics, e.g. regarding the question of "who has a say" in the development of a specific technology, the defining of stakeholders or the setting up of infrastructures.
My talk draws on perspectives from research fields and design practices that address social power dynamics in the making of socio_technical worlds. These perspectives are concretized through examples and suggestions for action.

For further information on the talk and the lecture series see the website of TU Berlin or their app.