Recap: the Tech and Society Summit

On October 1, 2024, Bernd Kasparek, Seda Gürses, and Thijmen van Gend of the Programmable Infrastructures Project (PIP) attended the Tech and Society Summit in Brussels, hosted by European Digital Rights (EDRi) and further 40 civil society organisations.

The summit aimed at fostering dialogue and debate between civil society and recently elected EU decision-makers, focusing on the intersection of technology, society, and the environment.

Seda Gürses participated in the panel “Breaking Open Big Tech: A positive vision for a fairer digital economy”. She kickstarted the discussion by elaborating how tech companies strive to make their computational infrastructures an environment for all economic production, and how our current strategic arsenal (e.g. the digital rights movements, competition law, and privacy focus) might be unable to grapple with this development.

We took the opportunity to understand better the issues civil society is grappling with in Europe, from what perspectives, and how these issues (do not) connect to the issues we identify in our research. We will be cooperating with some of the attendants more closely in a systematic attempt to exchange knowledge and shape advocacy efforts in the increasingly important arena of digital rights and infrastructures.