By Joe Arney
Photos by Kimberly Coffin (CritMedia, StratComm鈥�18)
Back when Bryan Semaan鈥檚 mom had a Facebook account, doomscrolling wasn鈥檛 part of her vernacular.
The Iraqi culture she was raised in compels celebration of accomplishments and milestones, 鈥渟o any time someone posted something, she felt she had to interact with it,鈥� Semaan said. 鈥淭hat personal engagement runs very deeply through our culture.鈥�
But it became exhausting for her to keep up as her network swelled into the hundreds, so she deactivated her account. For Semaan, it鈥檚 a fitting metaphor for his research鈥攚hich challenges the assumptions tech developers make about the users of their products and services. And it鈥檚 the kind of problem he wants to study through the Center for Race, Media and Technology, which the University of Colorado Boulder unveiled in the spring.
鈥淭he people developing these technologies are in Silicon Valley鈥攕o, mostly male, mostly white,鈥� said Semaan, director of the center and an associate professor of information science at CMCI. 鈥淎 lot of the values we bake into these technologies are being forced onto people in different cultures, often creating problems.鈥�
As a first-generation American, Semaan said he identifies with the liminal moments faced by others living between worlds鈥攊mmigrants, veterans, refugees, people of color or Indigenous people鈥攁nd the challenges of adopting to Western societal structures. Technology plays a big part, and the discipline鈥檚 blind spots are a key focus of Semaan鈥檚 research, which asks how these tools can create resilience for people in those liminal moments, such as a climate refugee fleeing disaster or a queer teenager anxious about coming out.
To kick off the center, in March, CMCI welcomed Ruha Benjamin, a professor at Princeton who鈥檚 developed her scholarship around what she calls the 鈥淣ew Jim Code鈥濃�攁 nod to both the Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation and the biases encoded into technology. Benjamin, he said, 鈥渇ocuses on how people consider technology to be a benign thing, when in fact it isn鈥檛鈥攖ech nology takes on the values of those who create it.鈥�
Fortunately, Semaan said, we鈥檙e at a moment when society is recognizing听the importance of equity and justice, while seeing technology as a problem, a solution and a thread tying together the great challenges facing humanity鈥攑olitical polarization, disinformation, climate change and so on.
He鈥檚 optimistic that the Center for Race, Media and Technology will collect the broad perspectives needed to make, as he put it, 鈥渢he intractable problems tractable.鈥�
鈥淲hat I imagine for the center is encouraging collaborations among the experts we bring together,鈥� he said. 鈥淎nd I鈥檓 really hoping my research direction changes as a result of getting to work with the amazing people I鈥檒l meet.鈥�
If it鈥檚 collaboration he wants to get out of the center, Semaan鈥檚 successes to date have been more about tenacity. Early in his career, he said, some of his colleagues tried to steer him from migrants and veterans, dismissing his interest in making technology equitable as 鈥渁 diversity ghetto.鈥�
That didn鈥檛 deter him鈥攁nd, with the benefit of hindsight, those rejections made him a better scholar.
These bigger challenges are going to require people thinking together at a much grander scale, which means changing how we work.鈥�
Bryan Semaan
鈥淚n my research, the people you work with are incredibly vulnerable, or are so busy surviving that they can鈥檛 talk to you,鈥� he said. 鈥淵ou have to be passionate about that work, and prepared for long-tail effort before you make progress.鈥�
The work of the center will be a long game, but if successful, Semaan said, it will put CU Boulder at the center of the conversation around purposefully designed technology.
鈥淚t dovetails with the university鈥檚 broader mission around diversity,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not just saying we鈥檙e going to increase diversity鈥攊t鈥檚 the issues we are approaching and the support we are building for different scholars across the university. Because these bigger challenges are going to require people thinking together at a much grander scale, which means changing how we work.鈥�