Humanities+Tech Events in Pittsburgh Spotlight the Benefits of Inclusive Tech

What does it look like to include students, educators, and families in tech design and decision making? How can the humanities help?

These were the guiding questions at a capstone event last week that concluded a series of connected conversations (#ConnectedConversations) in the greater Pittsburgh area exploring how to harness the humanities to spur deeper discussion of the development and use of new technologies in schools, homes, and workplaces. Ideas that emerged from the events are compiled in a new report, Humanities+Tech: Lessons Learned in Designing Discussions on the Future of Learning and Work.

The event took place on February 20th, 2020 in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh and featured the following local and national thought leaders:

Nettrice Gaskins @nettieb

Digital Artist, Art & Algorhythms

Vikki Katz @vikki_katz

Associate Professor, School of Communication and Information, Rutgers University

Andy Mink @Mink_ED

Vice President of Education, National Humanities Center

Illah Nourbakhsh

Director, Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab

James Brown

Project Director, YMCA Lighthouse Project, Homewood-Brushton YMCA

Edwin Huang

Filmmaker and mentor, Steeltown Entertainment

Roberta Schomburg @RLSchomburg

Interim Executive Director, Fred Rogers Center

Shimira Williams @shimirawms

Founder, C.C. BUSY

Torie Bosch (Moderator) @thekibosch

Future Tense Editor at Slate Magazine

Below are abridged opening remarks, some takeaways from the report, and a short video that illustrates the full scope of the project with event highlights and interviews.

Thank you all for coming.

We are here to cap off a year of learning by New America in developing a one-of-a-kind connected conversations series—a series of three events that brought together people to explore connections between the humanities and technology. But more importantly we are here to help shift conversations and open up more fruitful dialogue on the role of technology in our learning experiences, in our jobs—in our future. What you’ll hear tonight has the power to shift the conversation in positive directions so that we emerge with hope and new ideas and a more concrete sense of how to harness technology for social good, for quality careers, and for inclusive learning experiences.

Why is this necessary? Well it does seem that we are in a bit of a crisis when it comes to technology.

Today there are worries about how disinformation is filtering into our information and media streams, poisoning the well of objective or fact-based information necessary for a thirsty democracy. There are concerns that automation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence are leaving people out and leaving people behind. Educators and parents too often feel powerless, as if new technologies are coming to our classrooms and our households whether we like it or not and that we have no choice in the matter.

But we do have a choice. We have far more power than we may realize. In response to the worries of technology, a flurry of events and new organizations have sprouted to talk about digital well-being, or humane tech, or the importance of preserving our humanity in the face of artificial intelligence or machine learning. This event tonight and the entirety of our event series does have some similarities to those movements but we would argue that it can help to zoom in not only on humanity, but on the humanities.

We can build the tools we want and design the experiences we want. We can work with intention to bring once-marginalized and often still-marginalized voices into the center of the work on tech, of decision-making, of design. Human creativity, and sense of purpose, and a roll-up-your-sleeves can-do spirit is all around. And it is especially in this room here tonight. So how do we get started?

One way is to take a Humanities+Tech approach. This is what our team at New America wanted to explore, and Pittsburgh is a perfect place to test just what this could look like. Early last year we got together with various leading organizations in Pittsburgh who were game to try this out -- to help us to design a series of events that could help to draw out and lift up some new ideas for how to ensure that technology is harnessed to help humans learn and connect to each other. I want to take a moment to thank and acknowledge the work of these organizations that have been with us on this journey: the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project, the CREATE Lab at Carnegie Mellon University, the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, the Senator John Heinz History Center, Remake Learning, Steeltown Entertainment and the National Humanities Center.

Steeltown Entertainment played a key role in this project from the start: If you don’t already know about Steeltown, it is a non-profit in the Southwestern Pennsylvania area that helps youth become digital storytellers. We asked Steeltown’s film crew -- teenagers from local high schools, paired with teaching artists and mentors -- to come record video at each event. Their video footage provided us at New America with a way to go back and reflect on the good points that were made at each event and to learn from the voices on the ground in Pittsburgh. From those videos, Steeltown produced a 4-minute video -- led by Charles McDonald of CAPA High School who is here tonight! -- that will explain the project and some of the takeaways far better than I could.

You heard some key ideas emerge from this video, and there are many more. We have rolled them up into a collection of materials we are releasing online today, Taking a Humanities+Tech Approach: Lessons Learned in Designing Discussions on the Future of Learning and Work. This report includes quotations and insights from attendees throughout the year, resources for digital mapping and other humanities+tech projects, the 4-minute video you saw above, links to videos and recaps of the discussions at the events, and a checklist of questions for designing other humanities+tech events in communities and schools around the country.

In addition, we continue to learn and glean new ideas about how to frame these discussions from our partnership with the National Humanities Center. The Center has an online crowd-sourced library of what it calls Humanities Moments -- an effort to gather, store, and share personal accounts of how the humanities (literature, history, philosophy, religion, art, music, social science and social studies) illuminate our lives. As you listen to the panelists today, think about your own Humanities Moment. We want to help NHC build this library and your contributions are needed!

Panel discussions ranged from the importance of integrating storytelling and art into our exploration of affordances of technology to the point that designers need to try to understand the stories and histories of their users (families, students, and educators, for example) before designing for those audiences. Bosch asked the panelists what they recommend for further reading around issues of the humanities, technology, and how to ensure that technology is designed and used with the diversity of humankind in mind. Recommendations included Drone Theory by Gregoire Chamayou, Mindless by Simon Head, Automating Inequality by Virginia Eubanks, and a book from four decades ago: Future Shock by Alvin Toffler.

The Twitter stream at #connectedconversations captures many of the points raised during the discussion, and the screen shots below provide a taste.

Remarks from Gregg Behr, executive director of the Grable Foundation, capped off the evening and described new initiatives ahead for Remake Learning and the greater Pittsburgh area that will build on these conversations about the future of learning.

The Humanities+Tech series was funded by the Grable Foundation and the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation.