[Air-L] CIS-CNRS book club with Payal Arora, 10 feb. 2025, 16h to 17h (CET), by videoconference

[Francesca Musiani]

Dear colleagues,

The Center for Internet and Society, CNRS, Paris, runs an online monthly
book club known as Hypertextes.

We will welcome Payal Arora, digital anthropologist at Utrecht
University, on Monday, 10 February 2025, from 16h to 17h (CET), for a
discussion about her book From Pessimism to Promise. Lessons from the
Global South on Designing Inclusive Tech. (MIT Press, 2024)
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262049306/from-pessimism-to-promise/

The session will be in English, and by way of videoconferencing.
Ramya Chandrasekhar <https://cis.cnrs.fr/ramya-chandrasekhar/>
(CIS-CNRS) and Olivier Alexandre
<https://cis.cnrs.fr/olivier-alexandre/> (CIS-CNRS) will be the discussants.

Should this session be of interest to you, please register at the link
below.

Full description: https://cis.cnrs.fr/hypertextes-payal-arora/
<https://cis.cnrs.fr/hypertextes-payal-arora/>

Registration: https://evento.renater.fr/survey/hypertextes-7oi2n9xz
<https://evento.renater.fr/survey/hypertextes-7oi2n9xz>

---

When it comes to tech, the mainstream headlines are bleak: Algorithms
control and oppress. AI will destroy democracy and our social fabric,
and possibly even drive us to extinction. While legitimate concerns
drive these fears, we need to equally account for the fact that tech
affords young people something incredibly valuable—a rare space for
self-actualization. In /From Pessimism to Promise/, award-winning author
Payal Arora explains that outside the West, where most of the world’s
youth reside, there is a significantly different outlook on tech: in
fact, there is a contagion of optimism toward all things digital. These
users, especially those in marginalized contexts, are full of hope for
new tech.

As AI disrupts sectors across industries, education, and beyond, who
better to shine the light forward, Arora argues, than the Global South,
the navigator of all manner of forced disruptions, leapfrogging
obstructive systems, norms, and practices to rapidly reinvent itself?
Drawing on field insights in diverse global contexts such as Brazil,
India, and Bangladesh, Arora describes what drives Gen Z to embrace new
technologies.

/From Pessimism to Promise/ discusses the shift to relationally driven
approaches to design; how to create “algorithms of aspiration”; how to
reimagine the digital space for sex, pleasure, and care; and what we can
learn from feminist digital activists and women’s collectives in the
Global South on shared digital provenance and value, as well as
Indigenous approaches to sustainability, that challenges sacred ideas on
degrowth, the circular economy, and the doughnut economy. Arora also
takes heart in the power of numbers, as the users from the majority
world infuse algorithms with everyday aspirations, pushing for a new
digital order.

Timely and urgent/, From Pessimism to Promise/ makes a deeply compelling
case that it is not naive to be optimistic about our digital future. On
the contrary, it is our moral imperative to design with hope.

*Payal Arora <https://www.uu.nl/staff/PArora>* is a digital
anthropologist, consultant, TEDx speaker, and author of the
award-winning book /The Next Billion Users/. Forbes named her the “next
billion champion” and the “right kind of person to reform tech.” She is
Professor of Inclusive AI Cultures at Utrecht University and cofounder
of FemLab, a feminist future of work initiative.




-- 
Francesca Musiani, Ph.D.

Directrice de recherche | Research Professor, CNRS <http://www.cnrs.fr>
Directrice | Director, Centre Internet et Société <https://cis.cnrs.fr/> (UPR
2000 CNRS)
Directrice adjointe | Deputy Director, GDR Internet, IA et Société
<https://cis.cnrs.fr/presentation-gdr/> (GDR 2091 CNRS)

I'm also associated with: i3-CSI <http://www.csi.ensmp.fr/>, MINES ParisTech
 | Internet Governance Lab <https://internetgovernancelab.org>, American
University
I co-lead projects: DIGISOV <https://digisov.org> | TIGre
<https://netgouv.hypotheses.org/projet-technologie-internet-et-gouvernance-tigre-dim-stcn>
I help co-editing: Internet Policy Review <https://policyreview.info> |
RESET <https://journals.openedition.org/reset/>
I'm an advisor for: ISOC France <https://www.isoc.fr> | ANSSI
<https://www.ssi.gouv.fr/agence/rayonnement-scientifique/conseil-scientifique-des-liens-resserres-avec-le-monde-academique/>
 | IAMCR <https://iamcr.org/governance/int-council>

I'm here on the Web (FR <https://cis.cnrs.fr/francesca-musiani/> | EN
<https://cis.cnrs.fr/en/francesca_musiani/>), including my publications.