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In an uncertain world where AI technology is disconnecting us more and more each day, we are dreaming of a world where technology connects us. The premise of this podcast of simple: let's talk to people and imagine the most hopeful and idealistic futures for technologies that connect and do good in the world.
AI-tocracy (00:13.198)
Welcome to AI-tocracy where we try to vision, we dream of what technology can look like in the most ideal, the most hopeful, the most awesome ways possible. And today it's about a hundred degrees in Boulder, Colorado, which is where I am as always. I'm your host Dylan Thomas Doyle. So with it being a hundred degrees, I am of course wearing my favorite Christmas sweater. So maybe in the comments, tell me about your favorite Christmas.
AI-tocracy (00:43.638)
sweater. We're gonna try some new prompts for you all to engage with, you know, technology, hopeful technology, Christmas sweaters. It doesn't necessarily carry through, but that's what we're thinking about today as we bring in a new series. So during the last year of my PhD, which I just finished, I was trying to procrastinate as much as possible. I thought to myself, well, what's joyful in the world?
AI-tocracy (01:13.164)
And kind of joyful technology is there out in a world? And so what I did is I started interviewing people about joyful technology. I just asked people that I knew who I thought were cool and would have good perspectives on technology and joy. And I said, hey, what does a world of joyful technology look like to you? So throughout this summer, we're going to have a weekly joyful technology series based off of those interviews that I did.
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over the course of 2024, 2025. I think they're really fun. I think they really embody the vibe we're trying to go for here at AIT. And today we're starting off strong. We're talking with Rebecca Jonas, who is a postdoc scholar at UC Santa Cruz and does some amazing work in research with rural communities. And so in this conversation, we start talking about what joyful technology looks like for rural communities in Appalachia.
AI-tocracy (02:11.616)
And we talk a lot about libraries. So if you like libraries and you like joy and you like joyful libraries and joyful library technologies in rural America, then this episode is for you. So welcome to the joyful tech part of AI talkercy. Thanks so much for joining us and thanks for Rebecca for being part of the show.
AI-tocracy (02:36.066)
All right, we're on the line with Rebecca Jonas. Rebecca, welcome to the show. Hi, thank you for having me. Absolutely. Thank you for joining us. And we're really looking forward to this conversation with you. We wanted to just start as we typically do by asking if there's something that is particularly inspiring to you today, just in your life or in the world. Yeah, good question. The first thing that comes to mind for me is that I've been reading a lot more fiction lately.
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been trying to carve out time for that. And one book that really hit for me was The Midnight Library by Matt Leake. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. But basically, it's a book about kind of exploring like not just an alternative future, but alternative presence. And kind of like going back to different choices that you might have made in the past and thinking about what your present looks like from that point.
AI-tocracy (03:35.117)
And that's just kind of been an inspiring thought for me and my research and my personal life right now, just thinking not only about what an alternative future looks like, but you know, what might alternative presence have looked like from different historical choice points? Well, that is so fitting. That is such a fitting tie-in to what we're trying to do on this show and this episode. And we're especially focusing today on digital literacy.
AI-tocracy (04:03.454)
thinking about what digital literacy means in different socioeconomic contexts, like more rural communities in the United States. And so I'm just going to throw to you as the expert in this space, if you can just paint a picture of what we're talking about when we're thinking about digital literacy. And we know that a lot of your research is in Appalachia, and so if you want to ground it there, then go for it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So just to like
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kind of define the way that I think about digital literacy from a high level. It, I mean, so it's obviously driving from like literacy, what we think of as like, you know, are you able to read to parse information? And so digital literacy takes that and applies it to kind of digital technologies. So,
AI-tocracy (04:53.27)
It incorporates a few different things like, can you operate the technology? Can you like navigate through a software program? Can you operate the hardware that's needed? But there's also kind of a lot of critical information layers to it as well. So, do you know how to interpret what you find online? Do you know how to find the information that you want? Do you know how to critically assess what's true, what's false? We're just getting harder all the time.
AI-tocracy (05:20.366)
So that's the other thing is that, you know, digital literacy really continues to evolve as digital technologies continue to evolve. So I think even the digital literacy that I have kind of researched in the past is going to continue to evolve in the future as we kind of reckon with generative AI and how that kind of throws a wrench into.
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the critical aspect of information parsing online. And the work that I've done, I've been in rural Appalachia. So again, to just like define like Appalachia is this region in the Eastern United States. It spans pretty far north to south. So like the northernmost point is in New York and it goes all the way down to like Tennessee, that kind of region. And it's this kind of like distinct region built around like the Appalachian.
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mountains and it has faced a lot of hardship over the years. It's dealt with lot of neglect and extraction from industries. It's very centered around mining and things like that and that's been pretty economically and environmentally devastating for it. So basically the Appalachian region is still trying to recover from some of those extractive histories and that is
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also manifesting in kind of like digital inequity that's being experienced by residents there. So in Appalachia, there tend to be kind of lower rates of people with like household internet subscriptions. And I think that's kind of where I'll start talking about people who are not able to achieve digital literacy as easily as we might think about it in like, you know,
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urban or high SES environments. It's like without, without home internet, you really don't have the freedom to like explore and play around in these ways that facilitate a lot of like natural learning about technology and this kind of very organic development of digital literacy. lot of the people who I've worked with in rural Appalachia, will go to like a public library for internet access.
AI-tocracy (07:35.854)
because that is the place where it's publicly available. like, that's amazing. I love public libraries. I love that they provide this service, but it's still not necessarily an environment that facilitates that kind of like ease and play that you need to develop digital literacy. you aren't necessarily as comfortable being in public, having a screen that's like visible to anyone else at the library.
AI-tocracy (08:02.86)
You might have like a time constraint, you know, they only have a set number of computers. So might be kind of forced to log off earlier than you're ready to. So I think people who don't have those home internet subscriptions available to them, either due to like a lack of access or a lack of affordability, that's an immediate, very difficult kind of barrier to overcome when trying to develop digital literacy. I was really struck by your use of the word play.
AI-tocracy (08:32.906)
and connecting that to digital literacy. And I was wondering if you could just say more about that. The best way to develop digital literacy is to just kind of have the ability to like freely explore. know, I guess thinking about like digital use that's very task guided.
AI-tocracy (08:56.46)
You might have like, kind of a set of steps or instructions that you're following or like a really rigid goal. And when something unexpected occurs, it's like a very frustrating experience. because like, you're, you're trying to, you're very task oriented. You're trying to accomplish something. You're trying to get something done. And the thing that's going wrong is getting in the way of that. Whereas like, I think if you're kind of getting online. Just to.
AI-tocracy (09:24.792)
I don't know, like five for like a better term. Then like when things go wrong, I feel like you kind of have an opportunity to like figure out why, you know, without the time constraints in place or without the kind of goal oriented nature of the activity that you're trying to do, those kinds of like.
AI-tocracy (09:48.832)
issues stop maybe being like pain points as much as start being like new opportunities. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe that's an idealistic way to think about like, using computers. Maybe the frustrating things are always frustrating. I don't know. But yeah, I don't know. think I think we've probably all had like a surprising moment with technology that kind of like opened a new door.
AI-tocracy (10:17.196)
when we were using it without a particular constraint tied to that use. For me, the biggest thing is for it to be participant defined. I guess I should say when I talk about participants, I'm talking about it from the perspective of being a researcher. So by participant, guess I just mean a technology user. So I would want it to be user defined.
AI-tocracy (10:46.382)
I like to use technology for what I like to use it for. And so like when I think about, know, inspirational tech of my past, I'm thinking about stuff that's very like time box things like, I don't know, like Home Star Runner, if you guys remember that, like the flash video, like mini clip.com, like, I don't know, there were these very like moment in time things, but if I try to like show those things to
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to people now and be like, look, see how fun and cool technology is? They'll be like, what is this? This is like weird and old. So I think basically the important thing to me is that it's not prescriptive what we tell people. This is what you should be using technology for. You need to use it for financial development or for education or for social connection or for any of these things because especially in rural communities,
AI-tocracy (11:39.49)
The technologies that have been developed and that have been popularized so far were really like not designed for them. There's been a lot of research looking at like the ways that social media is just like completely at odds with rural social structures and how it's just like largely irrelevant to people living in like very rural communities. So I think like we, the best thing that we can do is not tell people like,
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how or why they should be using technology, but kind of like showing them the kind of broadest available tool set and set of use cases and just be like, what do you want? Like what's frustrating in your life right now? And like, what do you think this could make easier for you?
AI-tocracy (12:30.028)
I love the idea of putting homestarunner.com in the show notes. Actually, I think they might have shut it down with the rest of Flash a while ago. go look it up. Listeners should go look it up and let me relive my middle school, early high school days, not to date myself. And I am curious about whether you can describe when we're talking about technology, what we actually mean by that, because like tractors are technology.
AI-tocracy (12:58.594)
Chat GPT is technology. And I know for a fact there are some companies that are like, if we just make a large language model that works for rural people, then we will solve everything all the time. And so could you just paint a picture of like, when we're talking about technology in some of these contexts, like in Appalachia, like what are we talking about? Yeah, that's a super, that's a really important, like, definitional point. Because yeah, I mean, like fire is technology. We could be talking about like anything. But yeah, I think...
AI-tocracy (13:28.162)
I think we're specifically like a lot of the time, like the use of technology in these contexts is talking about ICTs, so information and communication technologies. So things that like are based in digital technologies, things especially that are based on like internet based technologies, things that are used to facilitate communication between like not only people, but also like people to like websites and information sources and...
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companies on any of these things. So I think that's kind of what I'm thinking about when I think about technologies. One thing that I did during my big research project was, so I went out to rural Appalachia and I was working out of public libraries because those are the primary public access computing source.
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Or like everyone, they're like this egalitarian structure where like they're accessible to everyone. So, you know, people who are kind of aged out of traditional education structures can still go there to access technologies. And that's really what I was interested in. And I asked the librarians there and the patrons who I spoke to, like, what do you, like, what do you want to learn? What do you want to know about technologies? What do you want to be able to do that you can't right now?
AI-tocracy (14:55.79)
Um, and the answers were like so diverse that there wasn't a good way for me to just be like, great. I'll like create course content that teaches you how to do like X, Y, Z. It was everything from people being like, there's, uh, you know, I need to learn how to like back up my, my photos from my phone to my computer. Um, I need to have to learn how to use an Excel spreadsheet to like track my eBay sales. Um, I need to like.
AI-tocracy (15:25.326)
You know, people being like, what is the cloud? Do I need to know about that? You know, it was just hugely diverse. Also people being like, how do I turn on a computer? I feel just like stupid for not knowing how to do that. So a really wide range of things that people wanted to do and reasons why. So I ended up hosting these like one-on-one tech tutoring sessions out of the libraries where people would just sign up for a time slot, come through.
AI-tocracy (15:54.472)
and learn whatever it is that they were interested in. So, yeah, some of those sessions centered around just, helping people figure out how to like, turn on a computer, open a web browser, search Google, understand kind of like, what is a desktop? What are these like apps? What is a web browser? from like, kind of a conceptual standpoint, all the way up to people who had, you know, like very specific,
AI-tocracy (16:21.238)
you know, software needs around, like I was referencing, like I helped this one person create an Excel spreadsheet for tracking his eBay sales. And, there was like another person who like had this app for, like tracking, sheet music for like this band that she was in. but she couldn't remember how to use it again. So it's, it's like, I think.
AI-tocracy (16:50.008)
Trying to give all of these examples, I'm trying to kind of highlight the diversity of kind of different digital needs and wants that people had and how I think having digital literacy in one definition is like having digital self-efficacy, like the confidence that you can accomplish.
AI-tocracy (17:18.208)
A task that you want to be able to do kind of a confidence that you can learn independently that you can problem solve effectively enough that if you run into something, you can work around it. I think that's kind of the, the unifying theme across all of those things is that. Every person who participated in one of those sessions. Had this feeling of like, I need somebody else to help me figure this out because I can't do it on my own. And so I think like.
AI-tocracy (17:45.986)
to have digital literacy is to have that confidence that you actually can figure it out by yourself. Did folks want digital literacy? So I never say digital literacy. I usually say computer skills just because it's a little bit of like an easier term to like, you know, conceptualize. Like, yeah, it's just, I guess more colloquial. But yes, I mean,
AI-tocracy (18:12.894)
totally agree about meeting people where they are. that's, know, I think what we were talking about too, about not being prescriptive with how people should be using it. But at the same time, I do think that people that I talked to had varying perspectives on kind of how good technology was and how ingrained it should be into their lives. But everybody who I talked to at least had some kind of like
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core belief that like some level of internet or computing technology was beneficial to have and like some knowledge of it was good to have. And for me that always comes back to like just the essential uses of technology, like so many government services have been digitized where like you can't even access like social security or
AI-tocracy (19:08.33)
like welfare benefits unless you have some level of digital literacy or computer skills to be able to navigate those systems. I was at the social security office to get a new social security card like two weeks ago and they turned away 30 people while I was there because you they mandate now that you have an appointment that you have to make online like a week in advance and it really like it really screwed up what people expected walking into that office. Yeah no exactly so it's like that's
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And like, like, that's what's so unfair is that like government services are like mandating use of technology, but they're not providing effective enough like outreach services to like make sure that people actually have access and connection and affordable connections and the like skills necessary to use it. It's like there's, there's like a total mismatch and kind of, you know, what you're required to use technology for and like,
AI-tocracy (20:06.158)
how they're actually assisting people in developing what they need to be able to do it. yeah, think from that kind of standpoint, it's like, yeah, I think everybody does need to have some level of digital literacy, at least to meet kind of those things that have now been kind of mandated online. But yeah, I mean, there were a lot of people I talked to who were like,
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completely disillusioned with the ways that technology have like interrupted face-to-face communication and kind of those like social interactions that people have with each other. And I think that's totally valid too. I mean, I have pretty much always lived in a world with like the internet and with computers and things, but I hear people talk about a time when that wasn't around and when there was like more face-to-face community and when they're like.
AI-tocracy (21:00.342)
you knew your neighbors and, you know, could ask them to walk your dog instead of going to, you know, the Uber for dog walking or whatever. So it does seem like a cool, fun world to have lived in. And I can understand that people who remember that world are like, I wish we could go back to that. I wish we could keep some of the convenience factor, but like not necessarily just take the entire experience of like human social life and put it online. So like, yes, I think that everybody should have the ability to access.
AI-tocracy (21:29.9)
you know, like high speed internet and like good computing hardware. But I would love to see what like a different culture of technology use looks like that is driven by people like who aren't currently heavily reliant on it. And like specifically in a rural Appalachian context, like what does a culture of technology use stemming from Appalachian culture look like?
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AI-tocracy (21:58.694)
Like, if we put the power entirely into those people's hands and just said, like, make what you want, do what you want with it, and we'll support you in that. And achieving whatever vision that is, rather than trying to, yeah, make every like, Appalachian holler into like, a mini urban community. Then, yeah, I think it would be really cool. I think that we would have technologies that were like, less focused around like, neoliberal capitalist ideals. I think that we would have.
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way more like community focused technologies and technologies that reinforce like a sense of self-reliance. like, I just think that there will be technologies built upon an entirely different set of values and integrated into people's lives in an entirely different way. That, yeah, I mean, I couldn't say like, if it would be like better or worse than like what we currently have, but it would probably be a lot better for that context.
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at least, and I think that it would give the existing kind of technological landscape that we see in urban environments a lot to learn from. I think that there could be lot of tense for a well knowledge if there was that opportunity to have kind of, I guess, yeah, like an alternate present technological culture derived from people who have been kind of left out of the conversation. I want to go back to play for a second because that's still a really compelling
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idea for me that I haven't thought about. you mentioned libraries as an example, as a place that can happen, but libraries are also in financial trouble. And some of them are closing in different areas and things like that. And so we don't have to focus too much on like the negative side of that, but on like the positive side of that play, like how do we do that? What is your vision of a world in which people from all over the country and maybe the world can
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engage in play? Like what is what does that look like? Yeah, I think I love that you mentioned libraries and I also love that you kind of guided us towards a positive note on it because I think like one answer here is that librarians are modeling for us what this looks like. Librarians are like the coolest people in the world. They are so creative, so innovative, so community-centered like
AI-tocracy (24:22.538)
Every librarian I worked with had these just like amazing ideas for how to engage with their community based on what they knew about their specific community. And it's, their whole job is like, it's about coming up with experiences where the community can play and learn and grow together. In like a pretty resource constrained environment too.
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which adds like a whole additional layer of innovation to it. So I guess I just think we have a lot to learn from rural librarians. I think that they are modeling for us a beautiful, playful and explorative world. And yeah, I just kind of hope that we can all follow suit a little bit. I worked out of
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public libraries in six different towns that were all located within one county. And I was trying to kind of look for those differences because I was like, even within one county, I could see that like these communities are not the same. Like culturally and population wise, like it's just, there is a lot of diversity even in this like super localized area. So,
AI-tocracy (25:48.81)
So yeah, it's like a lot of it was guided by like hyper local factors. So there was this one library that was right next to an elementary school. And a lot of her programming was very like centered around and centered towards children and families with children. And it's also guided by the librarian themselves and kind of their background and their interests. So there was this other library, this librarian who had like
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a lot of interest in STEM and she designed these like STEM maker kits that she was like loaning out. There was another library that was in this community that was really impacted by like the opiate epidemic. And so like that library was really formed around creating a space for just like community for people to
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to gather to have a space to go. People who might not have another space to just kind of like another, I guess, like third space to just kind of exist within their community. So it all of these different settings were like highly specific to like extremely local conditions. Even just within like this one hyper local area.
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And in ways that may not be visible during your first visit to a place. And that's why I think when we deploy these kind of technology interventions, it's really important to build close relationships with the people with whom we're trying to intervene. in a perfect world, actually having those interventions derived from the community rather than deployed into them. So a lot of folks who are listening to this
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show are, I imagine, I'm making some assumptions here, are from Urban Environments and are, you know, podcasts, connoisseurs, tech podcasts, connoisseurs, which is a very particular group. And I'm wondering if you have like one sentence or like just a second of what you would want them to know about this topic or this work, what that would be. I think just echoing what we've been talking about the whole time that like
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Rural communities do not have to catch up to anyone. They should have the access and the opportunity, but also rural communities are extremely innovative, have really interesting values and cultures, and have a lot to teach the people who have been guiding the conversation so far, if we can all take some time collectively to engage and to listen.
AI-tocracy (28:43.466)
And one last question as we close that we ask everyone, could you describe what a world of joyful technology looks like to you? Yes. Yes. Okay. So my, my joyful technology world is one where every technology is centered around human value rather than like technological novelty. I think so many technologies are like novel tech in search of a problem. And I want to see.
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like more technologies designed around human values. So one example that came to mind was like also dating myself free rice. If you guys remember that basically totally subverting the advertising model of the internet. Like we got this annoying advertising model where it was like ads constantly pumped to us. And every refresh was like new money for companies. And then free rice came in and was like, what if we took all of that money and we like used it to try to solve world hunger?
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also like educating the youth. It's like, it's so cool. Please look it up if you haven't already. And basically, I want every technology to be like free race, like finding some emergent technology that we're using for these like, purposes and subverting it to be entirely centered around human values. And I want all like future technologies to be developed from a standpoint of human values. I want to see like slow tech, I want to see, you know,
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I want to see everything slow down and center back to the people because what is tech in search of tech? It's not solving anything for us. So that is my joyful future. Amazing. this is, know, if every episode just talked about how great librarians were for the entire thing, then I think we would be having a pretty successful thing here. So thank you for that and your work doing that.
AI-tocracy (30:33.986)
Rebecca, thank you so much for joining us today. Your info, how to contact Rebecca is all in the show notes. And I'm sure, Rebecca, you would be fine with people reaching out with further questions and thoughts and stuff like that. Yes, yes, please. Thank you for joining us again. Thank you.
AI-tocracy (30:55.17)
We'd like to again thank Rebecca Jonas for joining us today on this inaugural Joyful Tech Bonus Sub Sunday episode as part of a itocracy. Hopefully you had fun as listener. Hopefully people watching this on the YouTube. Did you know we have a YouTube? You should subscribe. You can see the Christmas sweater live and in person if you're on the YouTube.
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But otherwise, thanks for joining us today. Look forward to joyful tech in the future. Look forward to our normal episodes every Wednesday. We finally have a schedule. Obviously follow us on the TikToks, the Instagrams, the LinkedIn's, the what have you and all the socials. We're just at AI dash talker see. But besides that, have a great week. We'll see you next time.