Unmasking Power: Alternative Futures for Empowering Our Digital Identities

Background: The everyday functioning of our society is becoming increasingly dependent on digital technologies such as social media platforms, virtual assistants, eCommerce applications, financial applications, consumer services like food delivery and ride-sharing platforms, and even entertaining games with virtual worlds and virtual characters. Based on the real-world, intersectional identities of the users of these technologies, new identities in the form of virtual profiles and data sets emerge. These virtual identities may allow us to receive personalized services and imagine ourselves in empowering new ways. However, they can also encounter harmful biases and discrimination inside and outside the virtual world. Different stakeholders of emerging technologies like the creators and funders of big tech companies greatly influence power dynamics and outcomes for less powerful stakeholders like marginalized groups of people. For example, the use of biased machine learning models in law enforcement has led to mistreatment and unfair sentencing of persons of colour. Without collective efforts, tech innovations can become more a tool of power for elites than for groups that suffer from different kinds of exploitation and marginalization. This project aims to critically examine power dynamics prevalent in the design of emerging technologies and find pathways that support the creation of future digital services that are more inclusive and empowering for marginalised people.

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The primary stakeholders for this research project are design and innovation teams, in view of their significant influence on the impacts of future technologies.

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This research in this project will help understand the impact of different power dynamics relevant to digital and real identities in emerging technologies.

I will create a serious game prototype for design and innovation teams to critically examine power dynamics prevalent in the design of emerging technologies and support the creation of future technologies to be more inclusive and empowering for marginalized people.