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

Other recent episodes

Inclusão Digital num Mundo Desigual (Episódio 17) – Fernanda Scur sobre “A Tecnologia Digital e os Desbancarizados: A Pandemia da COVID no Brasil” (Áudio em português) – ICT4D Collective » ICT4D

Fernanda (do Brasil) é estratega de parcerias multissetoriais, com foco no envolvimento intencional e em ações colaborativas eficazes que impulsionam mudanças sistémicas/estruturais para um impacto social e ambiental positivo. É doutorada em Pensamento Sistémico para Colaboração Ativa e experiência em design de interação, desenvolvimento de projetos, design conceptual e de processos, análise de redes complexas … Continue reading Inclusão Digital num Mundo Desigual (Episódio 17) – Fernanda Scur sobre “A Tecnologia Digital e os Desbancarizados: A Pandemia da COVID no Brasil” (Áudio em português)
  1. Inclusão Digital num Mundo Desigual (Episódio 17) – Fernanda Scur sobre “A Tecnologia Digital e os Desbancarizados: A Pandemia da COVID no Brasil” (Áudio em português)
  2. Digital Inclusion in an Unequal World (Episode 17) – Fernanda Scur on “Digital Tech and the Unbanked: The COVID Pandemic in Brazil” (English audio)
  3. Digital Inclusion in an Unequal World (Episode 16) – Benita Rowe on “The Tech Will Save Her’ – False Promises in Digital Gender-Based Violence (GBV) Solutions”
  4. Digital Inclusion in an Unequal World (Episode 15) – Nimmi Rangaswamy on “Social, Shared and Sustainable: Whatever Happened to the Community Internet?”
  5. Digital Inclusion in an Unequal World (Episode 14) – Nnenna Nwakanma on “Working WITH, not FOR”

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