CAREtech ✦
Human + Machine + CARE + DEI Research
Active Research System
Amplifying Diverse HUMAN Voices in Technology
Technology does not exist outside of human hands and human consequences.
CAREtech centers every person in the chain — those who design the machines, build them, train them, test them, use them, and are left to live with what they leave behind.
We are creating caring technologies that include diverse voices, challenge bias, uncover underamplified histories, and build a more CARE-centered, equitable future for technology — one carebot at a time.
✦ Introducing ✦
The Eunice + Mary, Margaret & Matilda + Betty + Rose + Ada + Charlotte + Emily Effect
A framework for naming and resisting the systemic forces that erase, silence, and undervalue the contributions of diverse people in science and technology.
We honor every human in the full arc of a technology's life, from the hands that design and build it to the communities that inherit its consequences and we call to build something better in their place.
We honor every human in the full arc of a technology's life, from the hands that design and build it to the communities that inherit its consequences and we call to build something better in their place.
The Eight Pillars · EMBRACE
1
The full HUMAN arc Humans are not machines. Humans build machines. We center every person in the chain: those who design the machines, build them, train them, use them, and are left to live with what they leave behind. Technology does not exist outside of human hands and human consequences — and a caring technological future accounts for every person in that chain, not just the ones at the top of it.
2
CARE-centered Humans CARE. Machines do not CARE. Humans must design technology from a perspective of human empathy, consideration, and community by including the voices of diverse people and centering human wellbeing across the full spectrum of human experience.
3
Challenging bias Technology is not neutral. We must name and dismantle the structural inequities baked into technological systems, datasets, and design choices.
4
Underamplified histories Not all stories are amplified and shared. We uncover and share the contributions of those whose work has been erased, credited to others, or never recorded at all.
5
Equitable futures Agency, Power, and Access. We must build a technology landscape where diverse voices don't just contribute, but shape the direction — one carebot at a time.
6
Caring for the world Technology impacts the enivornment and world. We must ask what technologies we owe the planet and which technologies harm it.
7
Human wisdom Humans have many types of complex knowledge. Machines can compute, but do not possess values, ethics, morals, feelings, common sense, context, understanding, opinions, awareness, passion, experience, empathy, CARE. When working with machines, humans should retain the authority, decision-making power, vision, and imagination. Machines do not posses the wisdom of humans. Human knowledge lives in hands, in judgment, in care. We must work to understand what must never be handed to machines and to ensure what is automated augments people so that they can do more of what only humans can: listening, grieving, connecting, deciding together.
8
Playful, absurd resistanceAbsurdity can reveal the irony, challenges, concerns, and power structures in systems. Absurdity emerges when there is a disconnect between the way that things are and the way that we might hope they are. Absurdity and playfulness can also be a form of whimsical resistance. We hope to challenge the dominant paradigms of technoptimism, technological determinism, technocapitalism, and inevitable march of technological progress. When we encounter these systems with these strucutres and it does not suit our goals, absurdity emerges. When we expect humans to be like technology, and they aren't, absurdity takes over.
We are not adding diversity to technology. We are restoring what was always there — and accounting for every human hand it passed through to get here.
— CAREtech · The EMBRACE Effect
Humans care. Humans are diverse. Humans make technology.
Humans are not machines.
Technology should be built with diverse CARE to EMBRACE care
with the understanding that
humans are different from technology and from each other.
Humans are not machines.
Technology should be built with diverse CARE to EMBRACE care
with the understanding that
humans are different from technology and from each other.
— CAREtech · Humans + CARE + Tech
Select a Carebot to Begin
HIT — participate & annotate
BOT — explore what the data reveals