The Digital Curation Institute (DCI) is an interdisciplinary unit, founded in 2010, at the Faculty of Information, of University of Toronto to investigate the principles, theories, technologies, and tools related to the creation, management, use, interpretation and preservation of digital resources. The institute regularly schedules events about these topics and yesterday I was invited to join a panel on online participation and democracies with my colleagues Sam McDonald (UC Irvine) and Victoria Palacin (University of Helsinki), who is currently a DCI fellow and hosted the session. Victoria proposed relevant questions like:
- What does the use of technology in politics means for our democracies?
- What are the power dynamics that influence this technopolitical field?
- How can we strive towards equitable, participatory, and sustainable futures using technology?
- What are the tensions and opportunities at the intersection of democratic values and technology markets?
that led to a truly insightful discussion with contributions from the attendees. The panel was held online due to the mobility restrictions in response to COVID-19, but I hope that we will soon be able to overcome the pandemic and meet again physically 🙂
Pablo Aragón 