What's Happening to the U.K.?

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The british saw computing as a means to maintain colonial power that was slipping at the time. Part of this is quite sinister, they think computing will be a way of getting a back door into the governments and the banking systems of other nations. The united states isn't losing a material empire in the same way, but it's doing so many of the same things in terms of trying to use technology as a colonizing force in a lot of ways. And if you don't speak english with one of those accents, then you have to code switch to, for instance, maybe get bank account information. This is part and parcel of technological colonization.

Paris Marx is joined by Mar Hicks to discuss why we need to know the history of tech and how the British history of sexism and colonialism in computing has lessons for the present-day US tech industry.

Mar Hicks is the co-editor of “Your Computer Is on Fire,” along with Thomas S. Mullaney, Benjamin Peters, and Kavita Philip. They are also the author of “Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing” and an Associate Professor of the History of Technology at Illinois Tech. Follow Mar on Twitter as @histoftech.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Mar wrote about the story of COBOL computer systems in the early months of the pandemic and how Britain killed its tech industry.
Google fired top AI ethicists Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell after their research was critical of the company’s practices. Diversity recruiter April Christina Curley was also fired in September 2020.

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