Digital Futures Lab/Issue #7: T20 India, Designing for Justice & Call for Art Proposals!
Blink and it’s gone! 👁
As quick as it was, the first month of 2023 allowed for ample opportunity for the DFL team to get back into action after a well-deserved break. ☄️
Read on to learn more about our team’s involvement with Think20 India 2023, their thoughts on a potential FTX-like collapse in India and their time at a conference focused on designing more just public institutions. 🪷 💰 ⚖️
Plus, we’re doing something exciting in June! Read to the very end to learn more about Righting Futures and our call for proposals from artists! 🧑🏽🎤
P.S. We’re on Substack now!
research 📑
Comms & Public Engagement Manager Sasha John and Founding Director Urvashi Aneja co-wrote an op-ed on the opportunities and limits of digital entrepreneurship as a viable livelihood option for Indian women for Volume 10 of Global Solutions Initiative & GIZ’s INTERSECTING e-book, which focused on the creative economy and the future of work. The op-ed is based on findings from the FOWIGS report, ‘Women and Online Work in India: The Opportunities and Limits of Digital Entrepreneurship’.
policy + practice ⚖️
Researchers Shashidhar KJ and Aman Nair, with xKDR’s Karthik Suresh, responded to MeITY’s most recent iteration of the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022. They felt that the legislation fell short on several fronts, but especially on privacy and security. The current Bill seeks to focus on the right of individuals to protect themselves rather than an institutional-level approach to privacy. Read the full joint response and its summary here.
events 🎤
Urvashi chaired a crucial plenary session at the Think20 India Inception conference (T20) in Delhi. T20 is an official Engagement Group of the G20; it serves as an “idea bank” for the G20 by bringing together think tanks and high-level experts to discuss policy issues relevant to the G20. The session, ‘Beyond the Banter: Inclusive Digital Infrastructure and Agenda 2030’ aimed to find common ground between the T20 task forces on sustainable development and on digital futures to ensure alignment on key policy issues.
media ✍🏽
Aman was recently quoted in a Medianama article on the likely impact of an FTX-like collapse in India. According to Aman,
“…there is very little that would prevent any Indian entity dealing in crypto to dip into customer funds and use it for other purposes.”
Yikes! 😬
knowledge exchange 🧠
Researcher Dona Mathew was invited to and presented at Design for Justice - a conference on justice-making, justice spaces and justice users organised by Justice Adda and Kokum Design Trust, with the support of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung. Dona presented an essay on a conceptual framework for the design of artificial intelligence for courts in India, based on a report she’s co-written with Urvashi. You can read Dona’s insights from the conference here.
Researcher Arjita Mittal was invited to and attended a participatory review workshop on ‘Operationalising Femwork’ co-organised by FemLab and Justice Adda. Participants discussed a draft toolkit that seeks to align the feminist principles of justice, equity and dignity with future of work principles using a feminist and user-centred design approach for new media tools.
coming up ⏭
We'll be hosting the inaugural edition of Righting Futures - a DFL festival bringing together researchers, civil society practitioners, and representatives of impacted communities to reimagine our technological futures - in June, and we need help pushing the boundaries of our imaginations and articulations of our digital futures just a little further. We’ve put out a call for proposals from artists to submit work touching on society’s or humans’ relationship with technology. ✨ 🔮 👽
To launch our upcoming report on the incorporation of AI tools in the Indian judicial system, we’re hosting a Tech and Society Dialogues panel with experts and professionals in the legal space the week of February 19th! Keep an eye out here and on our social media for more details.
Have an idea for creative collaboration, a future Tech and Society Dialogues event or a research partnership? Reach out to our Comms & Public Engagement Manager, Sasha John, at sasha@digitalfutureslab.in or @SashaEmJay on Twitter.
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