Vision for W3C19 April 2024 | 1:55 pm
This is exactly what I'd hope to see from a standards organization like the W3C:
"W3C leads the community in defining a World Wide Web that puts users first, by developing technical standards and guidelines to empower an equitable, informed, and interconnected society.
The fundamental function of W3C today is to provide an open forum where diverse voices from around the world and from different organizations and industries work together to evolve the web by building consensus on voluntary global standards for Web technologies."
There's no shirking away from the importance of equity or diversity: it's right there in the first two paragraphs of the vision, and stated again further down in more detail:
"Diversity: We believe in diversity and inclusion of participants from different geographical locations, cultures, languages, disabilities, gender identities, industries, organizational sizes, and more. In order to ensure W3C serves the needs of the entire Web user base, we also strive to broaden diversity and inclusion for our own participants."
This is exactly as it should be, and it makes me really happy to see it. Of course, this is only a draft of sorts from the working group; it needs to now get consensus from the wider organization. I hope its pro-human focus remains front and center. #Technology
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The social web doesn't exist without social justice19 April 2024 | 12:45 pm
So much of what we build on the web is about connecting people.
It is impossible to connect people effectively without paying attention to social justice and equity.
Otherwise we’re just connecting the privileged with the privileged, creating ever smaller networks of influence, and learning nothing new.
No tech for apartheid is within its rights to protest19 April 2024 | 12:32 pm
Solidarity with the 28 Google workers who were fired for protesting Project Nimbus this week. Anonymous Google and Amazon workers described the project as follows a couple of years ago:
Project Nimbus is a $1.2bn contract to provide cloud services for the Israeli military and government. This technology allows for further surveillance of and unlawful data collection on Palestinians, and facilitates expansion of Israel’s illegal settlements on Palestinian land.
I have never worked for Google or Amazon, but I would like to think that I would have protested too.
There is nothing honorable about supporting your employer as it commits or facilitates human rights violations. Protesting is the ethical thing to do, particularly when you hold deeply-held beliefs like these:
We cannot look the other way, as the products we build are used to deny Palestinians their basic rights, force Palestinians out of their homes and attack Palestinians in the Gaza Strip – actions that have prompted war crime investigations by the international criminal court.
Human rights should always trump business.
Further to that, apparently some of these 28 workers hadn’t even protested — they’d just associated with the people who had:
Yeah, this was retaliation, like completely indiscriminate—people who had just walked by just to say hello and maybe talk to us for a little bit. They were fired. People who aren't affiliated with No Tech For Apartheid at all, who just showed up and were interested in what was going on. And then security asked to see their badge and they were among the 28 fired.
Not a good look, to say the least. The same goes for the scores of tech workers who — on a cursory glance of social media — seem to have been derisive of the protests. Shame on you.