“Social technology” is more than computers and networks: Audrey Tang participates in a deep dive on democracy, digitality and belonging
Clockwise from top left: Panthea Lee, Ceasar McDowell, Audrey Tang, Brian Stout, Nicole Chi
Life in the flows and networks of democratic innovation can seem like a permanent, thoughtful, humane, sometimes joyous salon. There are many voices across the webcams and video platforms, who take their time to attend to and unfold the details that will build new structures, not just repeat the old.
We have a great example above from Brian Stout’s Building Belonging organisation, and its video series on techniques and practices that help make strong relationships in complex societies. (Brian’s manifesto is here). The topic is “Scaling Deep Democracy”, and from the blurb regular readers may recognise that we share (quite coincidentally) a similar framework:
These are curated conversations about different aspects of transformation: of ourselves (I), our societies (We), and our systems (World), to co-create a world where everyone belongs. This is a conversation on the role of technology in cultivating belonging at every scale, and how it can support our aspirations to practice deep democracy.
The panel is particularly high-quality, featuring noted pioneers in the relationships between technology and democracy:
Audrey Tang, Republic of China (Taiwan) [see our archive on Audrey]
Ceasar McDowell from Massachusetts Institute for Technology
Panthea Lee from Reboot
Hosted by Brian, and moderated by Nicole Chi, PlatformAbuse.org
There are a few early entry points we noted watching (the rough timings are below), and then you should enjoy the flow of ideas:
14.54 Ceasar McDowell, MIT, answering a question on how would you define deep democracy and belonging? “Why do we give people such powerful tools when they don’t know how they work?”
21.10 Audrey Tang, answering a question on how vTaiwan has achieved belonging at scale? “We should think of technology as social technology”
26.10 Lee: “We can innovate beyond existing representative democracy - and we can come together in new, beautiful ways”
35.10 Tang: “It’s not about growing power from bottom-up, but (as Buckminster Fuller would say) from deep inside your self (and culture) to outside in the world”
37.40 Ceasar: “How do we build spaces where struggle can happen peacefully?”
39.40 Panthea: “We don’t have authentic relationships until we have a reckoning with prior, asymmetrical definitions of who we are”
Link to YouTube video is here