Technological innovation is not synonymous with social progress, says sociologist Ruha Benjamin

“The market logic of technological innovation is not synonymous with social progress. Technology may well reflect and reproduce social inequalities.”

With this speech, Ruha Benjamin, professor at Princeton University, in the United States, opened the event “Women, Race and Technology”, by the IEA USP (Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of São Paulo), this Tuesday (12) .

The debate brought together Benjamin and the writer Conceição Evaristo to address gender, race and class discrimination in the area of ​​technology.

Benjamin was based on a phrase by the American writer Toni Cade Bambara – “not all speed is movement [not all speed is movement]”—to argue that technological progress does not mean direct improvement in people’s lives.

As an example of this, the professor cites the robots used to patrol the US-Mexico border and the use of digital documents to discriminate against citizens in the Dominican Republic.

For the sociologist, the power of technologies is based on the false idea that they would be less impartial and more humanitarian when compared, for example, to traditional border agents.

The innovation actually employs new tools to surveil innocent people and better defines where people should and should not belong, he said.

“We must not lose sight of the fact that it is not just technology that is oppressive, but also the environment in which it is developed,” said Benjamin.

Conceição Evaristo brought the discussion to the Brazilian context and said that the country’s black population belatedly appropriated education, which is reflected in the current access to technology.

“Before thinking as protagonists or victims of technology, it is necessary to think about another aspect of history. To think about technology today, in the Brazilian field, without turning to the historical process is to skip steps”, said the writer.

Evaristo takes up the history of access to education for black people in Brazil, from the 1824 Constitution to the 2006 Quota Law, to say that it is impossible for technology to be democratic if its starting point was not.

“Behind the technology, there is a human mind. It does not arise by spontaneous generation. It is highly committed to capitalism, it has to be productive and bring results. In a society where inventors, scientists, have an imaginary already built negatively in relation to black people and the poor, these inventions are contaminated with that. There is no innocence”, he said.

“So this technological society is already a society programmed to produce exclusion and to perpetuate certain statuses. A young black man faces technology and he does it because he knows he needs to get hold of it.”

The event “Women, Race and Technology” was organized by the Oscar Sala Chair, a partnership between the IEA and the CGI.br (Brazilian Internet Management Committee) and by the Olavo Setubal Chair of Art, Culture and Science, in partnership with Itaú Cultural.

Conceição Evaristo

Author of books such as “Ponciá Vicencio” and “Olhos D’água”, she will be the next holder of the Olavo Setúbal chair. She was chosen by the organizers of the event for having a literary work that “gives visibility to women’s perspectives and stories of struggle and resistance and the denunciation of social, gender and racial inequalities”.

Benjamin Street

She is a sociologist, researcher and professor at Princeton University in the United States. Her studies deal with the social aspect of technology and science. She is the author of the book “Race After Technology”.

Benjamin is the founder of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, which brings together artists, students, educators and activists and seeks to develop a critical approach to data production and circulation. His next book is scheduled for release in 2022.