An international conference

***Postponed until the Autumn 2023***

The University of Wolverhampton, UK

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 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 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. Historically disadvantaged groups, from farmers in developing countries to lower-income students in neglected, postindustrial parts of the world, 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 which are believed to be objective 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, games, socio-political movements) and relevant critical material ((eco)feminism, anarchy, afrofuturism, and queer theory) that define our moment to maps and reflect on the expanding gulf between digital ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. 

Its goal is to help 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

• Video games and empire

• Class, place and the digital divide

• The Covid pandemic

• Ethics

• Disability

Conference organisers: Prof Sebastian Groes (Wolverhampton, UK); Dr Jerrine Tan (City University Hong Kong)  

For more information, please contact Prof Sebastian Groes (s.groes@wlv.ac.uk); Dr Jerrine Tan (j.tan@cityu.edu.hk).