Data Privacy Seminar Series: Michele Gilman

This talk explores the ways in which data-centric technologies are producing and perpetuating class divisions within the United States. While the existing literature grapples with the social justice implications of the datafied society, it does not focus on the causal mechanisms by which data-centric technologies maintain class divisions within the United States. We have focused far more on who is being harmed by technology, rather than who is benefitting. This class blindness can be harmful. Not only does it risk pathologizing the poor by linking their economic state to personal failings, but it also screens powerful actors and entities from scrutiny, thereby permitting economic inequality to flourish as a seemingly natural outgrowth of the market. By contrast, a critical class perspective can unmask how technology, power and law operate in tandem to perpetuate disadvantage.