Dr Laura James's writings

Photo by  Fleur Treurniet  on  Unsplash People often ask me what technologies Doteveryone cares about. (Is it about broadband access? Privacy? AI? Data ethics?) The real answer is that our work is not so much about specific technologies as it is specific challenges. It’s about systems — how people and organisations and society and technology interact — not individual technologies in and of themselves. (You can see this in  our thinking around the different aspects of responsible technology , which cut across technical and business issues as both are often intertwined.) So we aim to tackle issues with technology today (and tomorrow!), some of which relate to specific technology fields, and some of which are quite general. There’s no shortage of interesting work to be done, and luckily we are not alone — many other great organisations and projects are thinking about many of these topics too. Here’s some of what we’re thinking about, now and into 2018. Domi...

Yesterday was a reflective workshop for the  Maker Assembly  community. I was inspired to organise  an event to celebrate maintenance and maintainers (more about this below), but we covered a lot of other ground too. Maker Assembly’s tweet and photo of the event A lot of maker culture is about making new things, and in many Western contexts, that’s making gadgets and gizmos that are fun for a while but generally then gather dust until eventually thrown away. Making and fixing useful things happens, but often in less visible places —  farmers repairing and modifying their equipment ,  making and fixing in rural areas , and around the world  local   manufacturing  and  hacking  and  reuse  where it’s the  only option to save  and  sustain   life . (We used to do more of that here, making do and mending, but of late that’s declined as consumer goods became more affordable, and often cheaper to replace ...