Digital Inclusion in an Unequal World (Episode 15) – Nimmi Rangaswamy on “Social, Shared and Sustainable: Whatever Happened to the Community Internet?”

This is the fifteenth episode of our podcast based on the vignettes contributed by friends and colleagues to Tim Unwin’s new book Digital Technologies in an Unequal World: An Empancipatory Manfesto. In it, Nimmi Rangaswamy concludes that “What was once imagined as a shared, empowering infrastructure has become a personalised, pay-per-use playground — curated for binge and scroll rather than community or collective good. The Internet in India today is more a screen in the palm than a shared window. It entertains more than it empowers, and connects more to content than to community”.

The full vignette can be read here.

All audio files relating to the book are also available on our podcast with a new episode every week.

Nimmi is a Professor at the Kohli Centre on Intelligent Systems, IIIT, Hyderabad. She teaches on the society-technology interface, bringing an anthropological perspective to explore the impacts of AI. Her research in Human-Computer Interaction foregrounds local practices of technology diffusion and how communities engage with digital systems — through sharing, learning, training, and adaptation

Full details of the book are available through the following links:

Order your copy direct from Routledge here

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Tom is a UN Senior Executive and Chief of Learning Innovation at ITCILO. With global experience in learning innovation, digital transformation, and foresight, he leads impactful programmes on inclusive capacity development. A speaker, strategist, and facilitator, he collaborates worldwide to foster sustainable, tech-enabled solutions for digital inclusion. Full details of the book are available through … Continue reading Digital Inclusion in an Unequal World (Episode 24) – Tom Wambeke on “Beyond the Cable: ‘The embrace of co-designed, plural futures'”
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