RESET Meeting 12: Students reshaping tech
Wed, December 4, 2:30 PM in Folsom Libary Rm. 353B
Topics:
Last meeting:
- Cult-like co-living spaces in Silicon Valley where you live with your co-workers and work all the time.
- Ideology of work and progress in the U.S.
- Passionate and hard workers at tech companies (all companies for that matter) having no say when their company is sold and dissolved
- More democratic ways of organizing a business: employee ownership, employee management, employee elections of management, etc.
- Employee's lives not reflecting the success of their employer
- Do we want a world that errs in favor of the owners and the business or errs in favor of the workers?
- Is market freedom real freedom?
- The elections woo! Cool fringe candidates and lame mainstream candidates
- Growing disconnect between the generations and their desire for meaningful change despite older (boomer) generations being comfortable with the status quo
- Racism...there's a lot of it
This meeting:
- What is the role of students (STEM or otherwise) in the direction of the tech industry? Is the growing awareness of the ethical issues in science and technology creating a generation of future STEM professionals that will reform and use tech for the better? Or will they recreate the conditions that exist today?
- Is the “build a billion-dollar company in your garage” dream gone? Are the realities of Silicon Valley becoming more apparent to young people?
- How should students today voice their opinion on misuses and abuses of science and technology? Protests? Clubs? Open letters? Unionizing? Has this happened and is any of it effective?
- What is a better direction for students to take STEM to? Are more democratic workplaces going to replace the hierarchical ones that dominate in Silicon Valley?
- How can colleges and professors better educate students on these realities? Why are they so often left out?
Articles and links:
- Student protests over Palantir's contract with ICE
- The petition that started the Palantir protest
- Science for the People, an organization that started at and spread through college campuses in the 60s and 70s, has reformed
- Tech Worker's Coalition, a decentralized union (kind of) of, mostly young, tech workers