One thing tech fundamentally has in common with many religions, at least in America is that it is a white man’s version of Utopia.
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It starts with the mythologizing of white-male struggle that’s at the core of tech culture. The idea that these men were outcasts who built things up from nothing — the shunned ones. And they’re going to fix the problems standing in their way. This is their success story, their ascension. So what stands in their way, are people of color, the women that aren’t sleeping with them, the popularity and the wealth they aren’t automatically getting, old-class structures that are keeping them away from the new class structure [based on] who has these skills that they, as white men, have?
And the mythology built around it feels very cult-like, very religious-like. There’s this whole origin story that’s not true.
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If you can’t get your shit together first and foremost for the people in the office, you’re never going to get it together for the products you serve. You can’t have an all white male environment, or a majority white male environment, and think the product you have isn’t going to replicate bias and harm.
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"The way in which tech is utilized in Nigeria is completely different than the way it’s utilized here. In Nigeria it’s about utility first and foremost. And about bringing people together face to face, to make African businesses run more smoothly, to help undo legacies of colonialism that have taken away physical infrastructure. To build that infrastructure online so that it can exist somewhere."
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what does the internet look like when you have a different social structure? When you think that maybe it isn’t the idea that we’re all here pulling ourselves by our bootstraps, maybe we’re pulling our communities up, what does it look like then when you’re creating platforms? Whole platforms created for that?