Dear friends,
I’ve been thinking a lot about the technologies that enable us to live our lives. I prefer an expansive notion of technology, and I am not alone in this.
About a year ago, Christopher Roosen — a fascinating person who works on human-centered design and keeps inventing new names for the work he does — wrote a post to make the case for a broad definition of technology.
When we think about technology and talk about it as a society, we could mention an incredible range of stuff: planes, computers, neolithic stone hand tools, plastic spoons, microchips, satellites, thermometers, internal combustion engines, solar panels, social-networks and moon landers. This disordered list includes things you can hold in your hand and things you can only grasp through a digital interface that might span continents (e.g. social media).
[W]e could benefit from defining technology more widely to include the more obvious physical things, but also the more nebulous things like laws, processes, ideas and so much more.
Today, we celebrate the technologies that are advancing justice. The law and its skillful application are at the top of the list. The fourth criminal indictment against former president Donald Trump is another whopper.
Fani Willis, the Fulton County Prosecutor, delivered 41 felony counts against Trump and his alleged co-conspirators.
The 13 charges against Trump himself include racketeering, forgery and perjury.
Somewhere, I read of the irony of Trump and his alleged co-conspirators combatting imagined voter fraud by participating in election fraud. I wish I could credit my source.
The Freedom to Vote Act has been reintroduced in Congress, and it is a technology we need to prevent gerrymandering and address the myriad efforts to restrain access to voting. The Brennan Center has a detailed explainer.
This human-centered technology is designed to facilitate access to early voting, mail voting, and other systems that ensure that people with disabilities can vote.
Please use an old technology (your phone!) to take this action from March On.
Call on your member of Congress to pass the Freedom to Vote Act.
their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment by permitting fossil fuel development without considering its effect on the climate.
Law enforcement is another technology altogether. It now falls to the Montana state legislature to align policy with the constitutional requirements. Nonetheless, the ruling rejected the idea that there was a compelling reason for not evaluating the impact of greenhouse gas emissions.
The Montana case was initiated in 2020, as was a lawsuit brought by the Maui County against fossil fuel companies — including Exxon, Chevron, BP, and Shell — for endangering the land and people by
“their coordinated, multi-front effort to conceal and deny their own knowledge” of the dangers of burning fossil fuels.
The lawsuit, which will proceed in a state court, mentioned the risk of destructive wildfires eight times, according to Emily Sanders, who discusses the disparate impact of wildfires on the Indigenous population of Maui.
The technologies for climate accountability will continue to evolve. It’s not as good as averting disaster AND so we move on all fronts.
Better bike infrastructure and emissions-free transit options are regular topics of conversation in my household. New York City’s DOT officially proposed a rule yesterday to
permit the use of four-wheeled bicycles up to 48 inches wide. Currently, cargo bikes can only have a maximum of three wheels and be up to 36 inches wide.
The DOT said it was inspired to act because a bill in the state legislature to allow for wider cargo bikes has stalled, even as deliveries have exploded in residential areas.
“Greater use of cargo bikes will bring incredible environmental and safety benefits for New York City by reducing the number of large, high-polluting trucks on our streets,” DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez said in a statement. “Just two cargo bikes can replace one box truck, increasing safety and reducing CO2
emission by 14 tons per year—equivalent to 30,872 passenger car miles traveled.”
In addition to the environmental advantages, DOT’s electric pedal-assist cargo bike is charming. Visualize the transformation when Fresh Direct, Amazon, and all the other companies polluting the air and crowding the streets are swapped out for cute little pedal-assist cargo bikes. I’m already there.
The public comment period is upon us, and it’s just 30 days. Go here and put in a good word for pedal-assist cargo bikes in the city!
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is supposed to manage public lands for public benefit. BLM’s current rules allow the vast majority of public land to be leased for fossil fuel extraction, more than 10 percent of public lands were under lease for that purpose as of 2021.
According to Earth Justice, a proposed rule change would finally rein in fossil fuel exploitation on public land by raising the rent on leases, increasing royalties paid to the government, and requiring larger bonds cover the real costs of capping wells.
The current system lets oil and gas CEOs reap record profits while offloading the costs of pollution and ecosystem destruction from their operations onto communities.
The proposed rule change isn’t perfect, and it is an important step.
As with most public comments, making yours unique helps. I encourage you to mine the Earth Justice page for your themes. There are also key points from Great Old Broads, which created this action.
Make a public comment to the BLM on a proposed rule to improve the management of existing oil and gas leases on public land.
Universal Basic Income (UBI) is not an altogether new technology, though it is still being tested for usability, as Christopher Roosen would say. A pilot program for guaranteed income — the In Her Hands initiative, run by the Georgia Resilience and Opportunity Fund — is designed to provide two years of monthly basic income for two years to 650 Black women.
The initiative is beginning its second year. The early data shows that even though there are no strings attached,
slightly more than half the women have saved some money, compared to none at the project’s outset; three times as many women have been able to afford childcare.
This is just one of the many projects involving basic income.
Researchers also point out that the Child Tax Credit – offered earlier in the pandemic and not renewed by Congress earlier this year – showed poverty can be reduced by offering no-strings-attached funds, and that the growing body of evidence from guaranteed-income pilots, together with the tax credit experience, should help convince lawmakers to turn these ideas into policy.
As evidence mounts, champions of basic income recognize that it will take a while to win hearts and minds, and that data must be complemented by storytelling.
If you’re on Instagram, check out Ella Cordova’s brilliant version of Solidarity Forever. Her lyrics illustrate the need for UBI for artists and writers.
Tell Congress that you support Universal Basic Income! This quick action is sponsored by Fund For Humanity. Include a comment.
One last piece of good news for today, which may match what you were thinking when you saw my title.
The federal Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), funded by the bipartisan infrastructure bill, is now subsidizing reliable internet access for more than 20 million US households. This facilitates full participation in the social, economic, and political life of the nation.
Thanks to the folks who responded yesterday to tell me what you’re working on. We are not alone in this work, which is a great relief.
I’ll be back Monday. I’m going to check on my mama later this week.
with love,
L
coincidentally, on Sunday we were discussing how the term, "technology," would have seemed remote, fanciful, or unintelligible in the current context to our recent ancestors.