[HacktionLab] Report back from Breaking the Chains of Big Tech workshop

[Mike Harris]

Hi folks,

I don't think I'm the only one on this list that attended this, and did 
in fact spot a couple of names I recognised on the call.

Last Thursday I attended a 90 minute online workshop from the Rise 
Against Big Tech (https://riseagainstbig.tech/) campaign entitled 
"Breaking the Chains of Big Tech".  It was an international meeting and 
some of the hosts seemed to be in North America.

The main thrust of the affair was to trial some ideas for hosting 
workshops on the subject within peoples' organisations to introduce the 
topic and get people to see why it's important, and what might be the 
pains of transitioning off Big Tech.

There was some overlap with another workshop I took part in at Bath Spa 
University called Transition Templates, which is intended to help 
organisations decarbonise their tech usage, especially AI (yes I can 
feel the rolling of eyes and virtual sniggering as I type; I don't 
disagree).  Perhaps TT is a follow on from deciding that one needs to 
rise up against Big Tech.

Obviously I come at this feeling quite cynical about it, having spent 
maybe 20 years trying to persuade people not to go with Big Tech in the 
first place, now that they are addicted to the Big Tech Crystal Meth and 
can't live without Google Drive, Facebook, Instagram, ChatCPT, I feel 
that they can just go and burn in the hell that they were too concerned 
with convenience to prevent themselves falling into!  Serves them bloody 
well right!

Okay, okay Mike: that's not the attitude!

(takes a deep breath)

We spent 35mins of our time in large breakout groups which were based 
around entering our answers to two questions into a Riseup pad, these being:

WHEN DID YOU FIRST START USING A COMPUTER? WHAT FEELINGS OR REFLECTIONS 
DO YOU REMEMBER ABOUT THAT EXPERIENCE?

WHY SHOULD WE STOP USING BIG TECH PLATFORMS? HOW MIGHT IT HAVE AN IMPACT 
ON YOUR ABILITY TO ACHIEVE YOUR MISSION OR ACCOMPLISH YOUR WORK?

Then had a further discussion around those two, and then followed with a 
discussion on:

WHAT SURPRISED YOU OR STOOD OUT TO YOU FROM ANSWERING THESE FIRST TWO 
QUESTIONS?

I felt it was a reasonable approach as an entry point, kind of like the 
first session of a meeting of Big Tech Anonymous, and a way for people 
to express emotionally about "how did you first get into / meet 
technology?" and "why has it all gone so terribly wrong for you?" and 
"what's so hard about giving it up?" or perhaps more positively, but 
possibly falsely "what would the alternatives need to provide in terms 
of functionality in order to get you to move over?".

Anyway, hope that was useful.  I can't share the answers we put in our 
groups as that's private, but here are some links:

https://riseagainstbig.tech/educational-materials/

https://riseagainstbig.tech/workshop-curriculum-move-away-from-big-tech/

Cheers,


Mike.

-- 
Mike Harris
+44 07811 781 893
https://mbharris.co.uk - https://hacktionlab.org - https://xtreamlab.net