The New school Launches digital equity laboratory (DEL) to drive positive social change in an era of rapid technological advancementFounded and Co-Directed by Maya Wiley, Civil Rights Activist, Former Counsel to the Mayor of New York City and Senior Vice President for Social Justice at The New School, and Greta Byrum, Community Technology Practitioner and Former Director of Resilient Communities at New America |
NEW YORK, March 19, 2018 — The New School launches the Digital Equity Laboratory (DEL), a project-based center that identifies and supports strategies to transform the use of technology to drive racial, gender and economic equity. It will focus on cross-sector strategies to expand broadband access to communities, particularly low-income communities of color who have been systematically excluded, marginalized, and targeted by many technology systems; ensure that smart-city innovations benefit those communities; and understand the equity implications of big data, algorithms, and new edge technologies. “With the fast pace of technological change—including how we communicate with one another and the data produced and collected about us, and how it is used—there is great potential to drive social benefits democratically or deliver social, economic and civic devastation," Wiley and Byrum said in a statement. "We no longer have a digital divide. We have a technological chasm." Working collaboratively with national and local advocacy organizations and students and faculty members across The New School, the DEL will:
The DEL launches with Technology and its Discontents: Building Power for a New Paradigm on Tuesday, March 20. The all-day forum brings together national and local digital equity advocates and innovators to identify critical areas for intervention, including the online 2020 Census, automated decision-making, open Internet rules, broadband ownership models, and alliance building. It will feature a keynote speech by Mignon Clyburn, Commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission. In an effort to address Internet privacy, a key digitial equity issue, the DEL will release a report, “Take It Or Leave It: How NYC Residents are Forced to Sacrifice Privacy for Internet Access.” The report ranks New York City’s major Internet Service Providers (ISPs) on the degree of control and consent consumers of digital services can exercise over their data and information privacy. All residential and mobile providers received a failing grade, with the highest score a 33% out of 100%. “Even when the privacy policies expressed an intention to convey transparency with regard to privacy practices, in many cases the policy language was so broad it would not be possible for most consumers to understand the specific consequences of their choices; e.g., to decide how and if they were comfortable with their browsing history, personally identifiable information, and other data being tracked, sold, or shared as permitted by stated policies,” according to the report. "In a city with eight official languages, privacy information was only provided in English and Spanish, with the exception of one provider which included French, leaving immigrant communities who have limited English proficiency at a deeper disadvantage." The report makes recommendations for both private providers and New York City to get serious about protecting online privacy of residents through contracting, public education campaigns, and significantly more oversight. |
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