Interactive slides removed for upload - Why care matters for technologists and our usage of technology: How do we make technology mediated spaces human spaces? How does the technology we choose shape interactions? What are the risks, and rewards, for opening these spaces?

1. Care, emotion, and the challenge
of technology.
June 2021
Paul Treadwell – Cornell Cooperative Extension
Authentically connected:

2. I would like to begin by acknowledging the Indigenous Peoples of all the lands that we are on today.
While we meet today on a virtual platform, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the
importance of the lands, which we each call home. We do this to reaffirm our commitment
and responsibility in improving relationships between nations and to improving our own
understanding of local Indigenous peoples and their cultures.
From coast to coast to coast, we acknowledge the ancestral and unceded territory of all Native
American people that call this land home. Please join me in a moment of reflection to acknowledge
the harms and mistakes of the past and to consider how we can each, in our own way, try to
move forward in a spirit of reconciliation and collaboration.
Land acknowledgement

3. Questions for today
• How do we make technology mediated spaces human
spaces?
• How does the technology we choose shape interactions?
• What are the risks, and rewards, for opening these spaces?

4. Why care about care?
• As technologists, why does care
matter?
• Tech has been key to holding back
(some of) the isolation of the
pandemic.
• Human connection keeps us
grounded.
• As we encounter increasing
disruptions to ‘normality’ we need
to understand how to be human
online.

5. 2020: The End Is the Beginning, and Yet You Go
On
Brenna Clarke Gray
Thompson Rivers University
I’ve always known the university cannot love me, but now I feel it, and I’m sheepish to admit how
much this has rocked me. I am not surprised but I am enraged, as much at myself as anyone: I
should have known better. I thought I did. But the answer can’t be despair. Instead, we have to love
each other, to extend care and grace where none has existed before.
We need to change the norms of our profession, to centre each other, to celebrate health, to
eschew overwork and grind, because if we don’t learn grace, if we don’t reverse course now,
nothing will save the academy. If we can’t find a way now to build space for each other, for different
kinds of scholars, for different kinds of conversations, we never will.
The university cannot love us and it will not save us. And it has never pretended to. In this moment,
we can finally see how precarious, how unsustainable it all is. But we can love each other.
This is an excerpt. The full article/reflection is here.

6. Freire quote
• "Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention,
through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human
beings pursue in the world, with the world and with each other."
• Freire, P. (2002). Pedagogy of the oppressed (pp. 72). Continuum.

7. • Rose: A success. What’s
working well.
• Thorn: A challenge. What’s
not working.
• Bud: Potential. What’s
something to develop.

8. Our tech
imposes itself
on interactions
• Primary boundaries
• Who has access?
• What actions are permitted?
• Who, if anyone, profits from our use?

9. A simple
example of
bounded
interactions
• Zoom webinar vs meeting
• A webinar imposes a set of restrictions on participants:
• A lecture model:
• Video sharing is restricted to host and panelists
• Audio restricted by default
• Participant list only visible to host and panelists
• Meeting reactions are limited
• 3 roles: Host, panelists and attendees
• Typically, webinar attendees do not interact with
one another.

10. Feeding the algorithms?
• Or why I am not a big fan of Facebook for this sort of thing
• So much of the environment is beyond our control when we use facebook
• Issues with user privacy and monitoring
• Monetizing users is a major effort of the platform
• Flawed algorithms control what is seen by participants
• Shifting the online public sphere to a privatized space has had
(unintended?) consequences.

11. Opening space
online for
caring
• Is a process, not a product
• Is slow
• Can be messy
• Can be scary
• Is a shared thing

12. • Our fears arise from the sense that community is not present or
possible, that we are not related to each other in a way that allows us
to be vulnerable without being damaged.
• Palmer, P. J. (1983). To know as we are known: Education as a spiritual
journey.

13. Factors affect trust in online communities

14. Tending the garden of community
• Developing shared goals and a common vision
• Creating a governance struture
• Accepting and giving silence

15. Comrades, colleagues, compañeros
• I, as someone who lives their life in technology, have been increasing
aware of how we name each other.
• Users, attendees
• Not to get too abstract but our online worlds are constructed as
language acts.

16. Thank you!
THIS IS ONLY ONE MOMENT
IN AN ONGOING INQUIRY.
CONTACT:
PT36@CORNELL.EDU