When we talk about the digital future of society, the conversation often drifts off into bleak, dystopian scenarios: total surveillance, tech giants leeching on our personal data and ubiquitous control enabled by Artificial Intelligence. But we refuse to believe that this is what the future has in store for us. As Erik Reece, Author of Utopia Drive, puts it: “…things will only get worse if we don’t engage in some serious utopian thinking.” And that is exactly what we would like to instill and practice with the participants - serious utopian thinking about techno-social change and who is in charge of it. We believe that the participants at MozFest will be uniquely challenged by this task, as it means zooming out of the code and re-focussing on the potential impact of tech on society. Let’s join forces for a digital utopia.
Our past workshops in Switzerland (at ETH and Digitale Gesellschaft) resulted in publications and discussions that lasted after the events themselves. We are hoping to gather more insights, continuously develop the format and potentially create a community of utopian thinkers and doers.
How will you deal with varying numbers of participants in your session?:We are used to organising our workshop without knowing the number of participants. We can easily adapt the interactive elements by working on more or less dystopias.
Francesca is a project manager in the Digital Society Program at the Mercator Foundation and co-leader of the Digital working group of the political movement Operation Libero.
Nikki is engaged in different roles for more empowerment, equality and sustainability. For example, she is the director of Opendata.ch and co-founder of the Digital Learning Lab.