An international hybrid conference sponsored by the Daiwa Foundation UK

Location: Oxford Brookes University, UK 

Contributions by Peter Boxall (Oxford), Sebastian Groes (Wolverhampton), Alex Goody (Oxford Brookes), Professor Megumi Kato (Tsuru University, Japan), Professor Ria Taketomi (Kindai University, Japan), and Dr Jerrine Tan (City of Hong Kong University, Hong Kong - TBC)  

Kazuo Ishiguro’s dystopian novel Klara and the Sun (2021) tells the story of an A.I.-powered “artificial friend” who serves as a companion to a young girl, Josie, a privileged but ill child “lifted” in order to secure the best opportunities whilst resentful masses are left behind. Ishiguro’s novel extrapolates the economic and socio-cultural divisions that haunt our present moment to understand how digital and AI technology engenders and exacerbates old and new socio-economic and cultural inequities, including access to education and medical healthcare.

Digital technology contains biases that have worsened already unequal distributions of wealth and access to resources, which has a detrimental effect on social cohesion and individual (virtual) identities. The Japanese Society 5.0 vision of a sustainable and inclusive society driven by data and digital technology has not become a reality. Across the world historically disadvantaged groups, from farmers in developing countries to lower-income students in neglected, postindustrial zones who have had restricted access to technology and resources face a double hurdle–first, gaining access to said technology, and next, navigating the use of technologies which were not developed to cater to their specific needs. Algorithms already have various biases coded into them that continue to reward historically privileged groups. 

This conference invites intersectional and transcultural perspectives on how digital inequality presents new challenges to our world. We hope to explore key cultural products (including literature, film, video games), socio-political movements, and relevant critical material ((eco)feminism, anarchy, co-futurisms, and queer theory) that define our moment to map and reflect on the expanding gulf between digital ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. 

The goal of the conference is to reimagine our relationship to technology and create pathways that lead to a fairer future in the digital age. 

Topics to be explored include but are not limited to:

• Digital production, ecological footprint and e-waste dumps 
• Race, ethnicity and technology
• Digital technologies and the nonhuman/more-than-human
• Class, place and the digital poverty
• The Covid pandemic and its aftermath
• Education and access
• Ageing and digital technologies
• Ethics 
• Disability and neurodivergence

Conference organisers: Prof Alex Goody (Oxford Brookes University, UK) and Prof Sebastian Groes (Wolverhampton, UK) 

For more information, please contact Prof Sebastian Groes (s.groes@wlv.ac.uk) and Prof Alex Goody (agoody@brookes.ac.uk)