November 13, 2019 - 4:30pm PST
Austin, TX

Join EFF's Manager of Policy and Activism, Katharine Trendacosta at the 22nd ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing for the closing keynote, "Beyond Code: Why You Can't Just 'Nerd Harder.'"

The amazing achievements of technology can make some believe that there is a tech solution to every problem. Governments, corporations, and other powerful interests will ask for tech to do things that are a) impossible to do or b) impossible to do morally. “Nerd harder,” they demand. Whether these commands are for backdoors in encryption, speech controls on social media, or filters for copyright, some believe that where laws and society have no answers, tech has an easy, ready-to-deploy solution. As a result, being in the tech space these days doesn’t just mean writing code, it means being able to recognize the values your code is reinforcing, knowing the promises and limits of technology, and having the ability to speak tech to power.