At the start of Black History Month 2019, Google designed its daily-changing homepage logo to include an image of African-American activist Sojourner Truth, the great 19th-century abolitionist and women’s rights activist. But what would Truth say about Google’s continual lack of care and respect toward people of color? While bringing more attention to Sojourner Truth is venerable, Google can do better. As a professor and researcher of digital cultures, I have found that a lack of care and investment by tech companies towards users who are not white and male
Today, communities of color face a battle to uphold civil rights that have been abridged through online platforms. The opportunity, well-being, and liberty of Black and Brown Americans is intensified or denied as emerging technologies transform our society. Civil rights by definition are sets of guaranteed privileges that include equal treatment, equal opportunity, and the ability to be free from discrimination. The civil rights movement in the United States was a two-decades-long struggle with the goal of enforcing constitutional and legal rights for African Americans. The movement was mostly about
Techish is a weekly podcast where hosts Abadesi and Michael break down all the latest tech and pop culture news. It’s Tech-ish. Catch the latest episode on all good podcast apps Abadesi and Michael are back breaking down Disneys new streaming service – is it a Netflix killer? Following up from this tweet thread they also then discuss the controversy as to whether Jumia [recently gone public] is an African startup. That’s followed by a harsh look at Alibaba Jack Ma’s CEO’s statement about a 996 work schedule – 9am-9pm
Atlassian is hiring on pocitjobs.com! With initial aspirations of being “a struggling artist” – John found himself as a sought after technical writer two years before finishing his bachelor’s degree. Currently, Senior Technical Writer at Atlassian, John’s illustrious career in technical writing stemmed from a series of hard decisions, beginning from his and his girlfriend’s (now wife’s) unplanned pregnancy when they were 19: “At that moment, I decided that I had to give my kids the same thing that my parents gave me. And that was a stable home full
This article is a snippet from the postgraduate thesis of Alex Fefegha, the amazing technologist and founder of Comuzi. Here he breaks down concrete examples of racism and sexism perpetrated by A.I. So here it goes: Suggestions have made that decision-support systems powered by AI can be used to augment human judgment and reduce both conscious and unconscious biases. However, machine learning data, algorithms, and other design choices that shape AI systems may reflect and amplify existing cultural prejudices and inequalities. While historian of technology Melvin Kranzberg (1986) constructed the viewpoint
We caught up with the amazing Fikile M Kani about her amazing new original webseries Tech Bae… As soon as we heard the premise of a black women founder trying to create a better dating experience for black women we had to find out more. Have a look at her tweet thread before deliving into our interview. Aya’s story needs to be on peoples’ screens not only to bring light issues around bias, but to add more black women’s faces in spaces where they are underrepresented–the tech/startup worlds and on
This is part two of our new series Fashion Meets Tech [see part one here], in tandem with onchek Jordan, a software designer at Etsy and formerly Twitter, is one to talk about music, art, and design. As a creative, who currently shares his creativity through software, he can easily go in depth on fashion and poetry as well. In his world, creativity is fluid. It can can take any form. “I’m glad to be here,” he said as he walked in. “I’ve never really done this before, but let’s
This is a collaboration with onchek.com, a platform that helps you shop luxury fashion from Africa [You can purchase all the looks worn via their site]. They spoke to Software Engineer Iheanyi Ekechukwu, someone who should be familiar with POCIT audiences. He featured as one of our very first spotlights all the way back in 2015! Here he talks about his style, his fashion inclinations and of course some tech talk. Enjoy. It was about 9 AM, right before it started raining, that Iheanyi walked into the studio, wearing layers
We are so used to the narrative of the starving artist, or the former star crashing and burning, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at those hip-hop artists using tech to buck the trend. The ones who have been wise enough to capitalize on tech’s slow coup-ted of every industry. The ones who have been investing in startups, raising capital and founding their very own. This is far from the canonical list, and I’ve missed out on many others [honorable mention to Chamillionaire, and of course Dr.
Virtual Reality Virtual reality is estimated to be a multi-billion market, that includes gaming, automotive, architecture and real estate VR walkthroughs, schools and learning labs. While 25–30% of men experience motion sickness from headsets, 75–80% of women are affected due to “postural sway” — essentially the “physical differences between the sexes, such as height and center of balance.” The most attractive market for VR is the $100+ billion gaming market, where despite the stereotypes of teen boys as the main audience, a strong percentage of gamers are women. Women represent
