“When I was in graduate school at MIT I was trying to think about how to develop software and systems for farmers and villagers in India. In the process of doing that, I realized that my reference point was internal to the laboratory, rather than in the communities that I was wanting to serve. I realized that I could no longer assume what a good technology looks like from inside the laboratory; instead, I had to be in the world with people. Not just designing for them but with them.” PeopleThinkingWorldTryingSchoolCommunityTechnologyDesignAssumingI RealizedFarmersSoftwareGraduatesLaboratoryGraduate School Author:Ramesh Srinivasan
“If you share information widely, but you present that information in ways that fits your own view, you're actually still misrepresenting. So instead what you should do is figure out ways to build systems that allow people to experience and classify their information in ways that are meaningful for them.” PeopleShareFitMeaningful Author:Ramesh Srinivasan
“The point I'm trying to make is if these networks of communication technologies are owned, monetized, surveilled, and classified by those with power - very few people, mainly white men in Silicon Valley - then it is a global village build upon the ideas, visions, words, and protocols of the few. So it's not global - it's like Epcot center. It's like Disneyland: a small worldview of the larger world.” PeopleMenWorldTryingVisionTechnologyCommunicationWorldviewDisneylandSmall World Author:Ramesh Srinivasan
“If you create networks that allow people in their own local systems to have power and agency and sovereignty in their own systems. The idea that people could just know what's happening with their data. You could work with the platform, in communication with it, more than "I'm just like experiencing as a blind person in a black box".” PeopleBlackCommunicationBlindSovereignty Author:Ramesh Srinivasan
“We are getting close to the point where as every platform of tech that has any level of scale gets bought by either Google or Facebook or sometimes Microsoft. We are getting to the point where we see some oligopoly in terms of behavior online, and that it's really problematic because the oligopolies are completely non transparent, they are terrible in terms of labor and economic equality and they support systems of surveillance. It can create a world where we are all placed in bubbles, where the systems themselves can be manipulated by people who don't have our best interests in mind.” PeopleWorldMindSometimesTermInterestSupportEconomicTerribleBehaviorLaborOnlineBubblesGoogle Author:Ramesh Srinivasan
