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Ramesh Srinivasan Biography

Ramesh Srinivasan (born 1976) studies the relationship between technology, politics and society. He is an associate professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has been a faculty member at UCLA since 2005 in the Information Studies and Design Media Arts departments. He is the founder of the UC-wide Digital Cultures Lab, exploring the meaning of technology worldwide as it spreads to the far reaches of our world. He is also the author of the books: “Whose Global Village? Rethinking How Technology Impacts Our World” with NYU Press, and “After the Internet” (with Adam Fish) on Polity Press to be released in December 2017. Srinivasan earned his Ph.D. in design studies at Harvard; his master's degree in media arts and science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and his bachelor's degree in industrial engineering at Stanford. He has served fellowships in MIT’s Media Laboratory in Cambridge and the MIT Media Lab Asia. He has also been a teaching fellow at the Graduate School of Design and Department of Visual and Environmental Design at Harvard. Srinivasan is a regular speaker for TEDx Talks, and makes regular media appearances on NPR, Al Jazeera, “The Young Turks,” MSNBC, and Public Radio International. His writings have been widely published by Al Jazeera English, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, Quartz, and CNN.

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Ramesh Srinivasan Quotes

The point I'm trying to make is if these networks of communication technologies are owned, monetized, surveilled, and classified by those with power - very few people, mainly white men in Silicon Valley - then it is a global village build upon the ideas, visions, words, and protocols of the few. So it's not global - it's like Epcot center. It's like Disneyland: a small worldview of the larger world.

Center, Communication, Men, Surveilled, Technology, Valley

I am a former engineer and I was really excited about the possibility of building better technology to serve humanity. A lot of us as engineers have this belief that if you build a tool you somehow can empower humans economically or socially. The idea of building a better technology often means more efficiency.

Building, Empowering, Mean, Socially, Technology

When I was in graduate school at MIT I was trying to think about how to develop software and systems for farmers and villagers in India. In the process of doing that, I realized that my reference point was internal to the laboratory, rather than in the communities that I was wanting to serve. I realized that I could no longer assume what a good technology looks like from inside the laboratory; instead, I had to be in the world with people. Not just designing for them but with them.

Designing, Mit, People, School, Technology, Thinking

The Silicon Valley companies are not understating that they are so politically and socially and culturally central in the world. They would probably never have thought that they would become like this. But now that they are, what are they gonna do about it? I have a lots of friends who work in these companies: it's about taking responsibility.

Like, Politically, Responsibility, Taking, Taking Responsibility, World

Google and Facebook extend internet access across the world, but the access is generally speaking to an internet that is focused on the advertisers to those sites.

Facebook, Focused, Google, Internet, Sites, World

Marshall McLuhan prediction was some kind of electronic communication technology would emerge to instantaneously connect the world so much so that the whole globe would be like a village.

Communication, Emerge, Technology, Village, World

Fake news is a product of the internet that is not transparent. Fake news can spread online because as users we have no idea where any of the content we see comes from.

Fake, Idea, Internet, Online

In its early days the Internet seem to be a counter cultural space and an anti corporate space, now is the place for corporate economic production. What the internet is now isn't what it used to be and it doesn't have to be what it turns into.

Anti, Cultural, Days, Economic, Internet, Place

I'm really interested not just in privacy for the individual but respect for the local communities. And I think we have a problem with both and whenever industries kind of become almost monopolistic they have to be challenged to be more responsible. We can challenge them in the press, in the courts and in regulation.

Challenge, Challenges, Community, Interested, Local, Thinking

We are at a moment that some of the Silicon Valley companies are feeling the pressure. These days the founder of Twitter apologized that his company promoted some of the things that elected Donald Trump. You don't see that much of these apologizing from Google. From Mark Zuckerberg you are hearing a little bit more of it, but he is a little more "Oh, well, this is what happens because the internet scaled up and everybody has fake news; oh, we are gonna build a better technology".

Fake, Feelings, Technology, Things, Valley

If you create networks that allow people in their own local systems to have power and agency and sovereignty in their own systems. The idea that people could just know what's happening with their data. You could work with the platform, in communication with it, more than "I'm just like experiencing as a blind person in a black box".

Black, Communication, People, Work

We are getting close to the point where as every platform of tech that has any level of scale gets bought by either Google or Facebook or sometimes Microsoft. We are getting to the point where we see some oligopoly in terms of behavior online, and that it's really problematic because the oligopolies are completely non transparent, they are terrible in terms of labor and economic equality and they support systems of surveillance. It can create a world where we are all placed in bubbles, where the systems themselves can be manipulated by people who don't have our best interests in mind.

Bubbles, Google, People, Support, Transparent, World

I think the governments need to encourage internet companies and convince them that they can be extremely profitable without necessarily spiraling out of control. Without becoming monopolist.

Control, Convince, Internet, Spiraling, Think, Thinking

Technology is nothing but an expression of human values. It's not neutral, it's not about efficiency, it's about people's values and their knowledge.

Efficiency, Human Values, Knowledge, Technology

This is what engineers in Silicon Valley typically do. "Ok, well, of course there are some problems of our technology because it is so excellent and is so global so we are just gonna build a better one. "

Excellent, Gonna, Problem, Problems, Technology

If you share information widely, but you present that information in ways that fits your own view, you're actually still misrepresenting. So instead what you should do is figure out ways to build systems that allow people to experience and classify their information in ways that are meaningful for them.

Classify, Fit, Meaningful, People, Present

You could kind of be free and expressive but you already knew when you joined the internet, you knew that you should not be a troll. You began to experience the internet through platforms that were themselves controlled by specific companies, technical instruments of those companies, like search and retrieval and ordering and classification.

Already, Experience, Internet, Kind, Like, Troll