Beyond Navigating: Empowering Ourselves and Our Communities through Critical Technology and Information Research
ORCID
Sarah Appedu: 0000-0002-5405-7016
Document Type
Presentation
Date
4-19-2024
Keywords
artificial intelligence, librarians, technological innovation, critical technology studies, empowerment, information literacy
Disciplines
Information Literacy | Library and Information Science
Description/Abstract
Artificial intelligence systems are increasingly being sold to the public as transformative, world-changing, life-improving advancements in human evolution. Information literacy librarians have and will continue to play an instrumental role in challenging and critiquing new technological “advancements” that make their way into the lives and practices of their organizations and communities. However, librarians may be underutilizing the important skills they hold in evaluating complex information sources and systems when helping their communities critically respond to new tools like those powered by artificial intelligence. While emphasizing skills related to source evaluation, identifying algorithmic bias, and critically examining the economic context of information creation are vital advancements in instruction librarianship, more must be done to move past the reactionary state librarians often find themselves in. In order to truly embrace a critical stance towards “disruptive” technological systems, we must move past fixating on particular technological expressions and look more deeply at the roots of these expressions in oppressive knowledge-making, policy-creating, and economic systems. Doing so can empower librarians to take an active role in reframing and resisting the capitalist, colonizing origins of the technology industry and the discourses in which they engage to disempower our communities an enroll them as part of their consumer base. This session will introduce instruction librarians to important conceptual advancements in the field of critical technology and information studies and review their practical import for various aspects of information literacy that allow us to move from “navigating” AI technologies to shaping them, their use, and their impact.
Recommended Citation
Appedu, Sarah, "Beyond Navigating: Empowering Ourselves and Our Communities through Critical Technology and Information Research" (2024). Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy. 23. https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/gaintlit/2024/2024/23
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
