In a world where platforms optimize for attention and extraction, our personal data becomes a commodity rather than a site of reflection. How can we unlearn the default surveillance paradigms of big tech and reclaim our data through the development of non-extractive tools that nurture agency, memory, and meaning?

We are constantly producing data through our devices. From algorithmic feeds to timelines, our digital footprints are designed for external visibility, not internal meaning. Traditional platforms are rarely designed to encourage us to re-visit our past in meaningful ways. Instead, we are taught to see data as something to optimize, monetize, or ignore altogether. This commercialization of ourselves can result in permanent disruptions to our behaviors, pushing the nature of our engagement with technology into market norms, rather than social ones.

This data, though, is created through acts of being human. Memory and identity is fluid, contextual, and unique. Mainstream platforms often present identity as a fixed profile and flatten the emotional experience of revisiting artifacts from our past, but we can unlearn surveillance culture by recognizing the act of remembering as an emotional one. With this lens, we can shift the design paradigms from extractive applications to tools that support multiplicity, neurodivergence, and introspection.

These ideas challenge the traditional role that individual users play in the role of constructing algorithms. Participants will learn about the philosophy behind introspective tooling and reflect on their own relationship with personal data:
- Designing emotionally intelligent interfaces that help us reflect on and make sense of our digital memories
- Constructing identity as something that evolves and is contextual, rather than a fixed, one-size-fits-all profile
- Caring for our data the way we care for a journal or a garden: not just collecting it, but engaging with it in different ways over time

This session will explore how we can reclaim our data for ourselves and engage with our digital pasts on our own terms. Using open source tools and local generative AI agents, we'll interrogate what it means to unlearn externalized modes of digital identity and uncover the opportunity space of data introspection.

Please note that this session room has limited capacity, and attendance will be accommodated on a first-come, first-served basis.