Thematic Group: For people not for profit: imagining future information infrastructures

Our technology offers an astonishing range of information access and communication possibilities, potentially leading to a heterogeneous, democratized information environment, but instead it had been largely narrowed and tilted by motives of profit and power, while misinformation, disinformation, online abuse and hate speech face few controls. What could a well-designed, progressive, communal ecosystem look like?

The information ecosystem affects almost every aspect of our lives, and we're seeing it attacked and eroded on multiple axes. Technology is changing rapidly, favoring the wealthy who can pay to adapt to new approaches, and governments are for the most part unwilling or unable to regulate. We need new ideas and concrete steps for a better paradigm.

The workshop will invite participants to imagine how a more intentionally designed, less hierarchical, more nuanced information ecosystem could look like in the future.

Participants will leave with a freer approach to imaging the future, a multi-perspective understanding of information challenges, and some concrete steps to work towards a better information ecosystem.

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The working group is moderated by Malka Older.

Malka Older is a writer, aid worker, and sociologist. She is the executive director of Global Voices, a community of writers, editors, and translators providing community journalism from all over the world. She is the author of critically acclaimed science-fiction political thriller Infomocracy as well as The Mimicking of Known Successes, a murder mystery set on Jupiter, and co-edited We Will Rise Again, an anthology of speculative fiction and essays about activism. She has published academic work on disaster studies and predictive fictions.