What Are Technologies of Care?

Designing software for belonging not fear

An image of a cream colored desktop with plant life growing out of the monitor. Keyboard is attached via cord and the desktop sits on a large flat top dark gray boulder. Modern Technology // Mamiya645 and 80mm 2.8 // Fuji Superia 100 by zweiuhrmorgens found on the Outdoor Computing Club Are.na Channel stewarded by Fletcher Bach.

We are not going to diversify, implicit bias train, or tech-fix our way out of the racist status quo. Rather, viral justice requires each of us to demand that the money normally invested in policing be reinvested in what we actually need to sustain us: mental health services, better education, better healthcare, homes.

—  Ruha Benjamin, Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want (2022), pg. 87

We want a different internet and we desperately want to believe it is possible.  We want a different internet and we will make it so. So be it¹. But in order to see to it, it can’t just be about the code. We must radically and collectively re-imagine the software developme…