Technology and Power: Who Shapes the Digital Future?

At our next meeting, we will discuss the role technology plays in power relations today.

Who determines the digital future: states, platforms, or users? At what point does technological advantage become power?

For the meeting, we have prepared a collection of materials — thoughtfully compiled and free of AI slop.

You can begin with the short quiz, What’s Your AI-dentity?, and find out which position on AI is closest to your own.

Then choose one of two opposing perspectives. On one side, techno-optimists such as Marc Andreessen see technological development, markets, and accelerated innovation as the main sources of progress. On the other, there is the view that AI and technological infrastructure need to be limited and kept under human and public control. If you already feel close to one of these positions, it may be especially interesting to read a text representing the opposing view.

We have tried to collect significant texts from both sides of the debate: Peter Thiel on technology and politics, Nick Srnicek on platform power, and Yanis Varoufakis on technofeudalism.

There are also texts that examine the workings of technology piece by piece. Kate Crawford writes about the data, resources, data centres, and labour behind AI. Using a recent Hugging Face case, Ed Zitron examines what we actually know about the risks of modern AI systems.

You do not need to read everything. It is enough to choose one item from the collection or bring your own on the topic.