0:00:00.080,0:00:04.000 Thank you to the British Library  for inviting me to speak today I'm really 0:00:04.000,0:00:10.800 delighted to be here, and on such an engaging  panel as well, so thank you for that 0:00:10.800,0:00:15.280 I am speaking today about knowledge  justice in the digital archive, 0:00:15.840,0:00:23.840 the exclusions of open and the inclusions of  closed. So I'll just go ahead and get started 0:00:26.640,0:00:33.200 So in my talk today, I am  going to unpack the concept of open and 0:00:33.200,0:00:39.680 encourage us all to reflect together on the  ideologies, expectations and also the inequalities 0:00:39.680,0:00:46.720 embedded in openness when it comes to scholarship,  archives, data and also knowledge more broadly 0:00:47.520,0:00:54.800 open, of course, kind of indicates freedom and  inclusivity. We have a tendency to make a semantic 0:00:54.800,0:01:01.200 association between open and good especially  in the academic community of which I am a part 0:01:01.840,0:01:08.640 We probably valorize open in this way, especially.  It's better than paywall protected information 0:01:08.640,0:01:15.920 it makes scholarship more accessible - and that's all  good stuff. Those are all good things because the 0:01:15.920,0:01:21.760 academy has long been - and in many ways continues  to be - exclusive, elite and also powerfully 0:01:21.760,0:01:28.160 influential in the marketplace of ideas. Making  information more open is obviously a good thing 0:01:29.280,0:01:34.560 and it's of course important to acknowledge the  positive aspects of open access: the open and 0:01:34.560,0:01:41.280 free data software and access movements have made  huge strides in democratizing access to knowledge 0:01:41.280,0:01:44.720 previously locked away in the  gilded vaults of the ivory tower 0:01:47.840,0:01:54.160 but today I'm going to be talking about knowledge  justice and what I mean by that is the centering 0:01:54.160,0:01:59.920 of the knowledges - and yes I do mean knowledges  in the plural - of marginalized communities and 0:01:59.920,0:02:05.040 individuals in our archives, our scholarship,  our syllabi and also the internet at large 0:02:05.840,0:02:10.480 It's making the knowledge repositories that  we rely on for information about ourselves 0:02:10.480,0:02:15.840 our histories, and our world reflect the full  diversity of the people who actually inhabit it 0:02:16.480,0:02:21.760 We say justice because this project isn't  about equality necessarily, it's about 0:02:21.760,0:02:27.840 rectifying exclusions and violence done to many  kinds of knowledge over generations, and we say 0:02:27.840,0:02:34.960 justice because it's not always about being  included to meet an equality quota or to achieve 0:02:34.960,0:02:41.040 representativeness, it's sometimes about actively  excluding our knowledges out of respect for their 0:02:41.040,0:02:47.040 contexts and communities. Knowledge justice  is really about having the autonomy to choose 0:02:48.160,0:02:54.880 so terms like 'open' and 'free' are value laden, they derive their their democratic legitimacy 0:02:54.880,0:03:00.640 in opposition to terms like 'closed' or 'restricted' but I want to challenge 0:03:00.640,0:03:06.800 this oppositional relationship. In fact the reality  is far more nuanced. So in the first part of my 0:03:06.800,0:03:12.400 talk I'll be discussing the ways in which open  continues to be exclusionary in certain ways and 0:03:12.400,0:03:17.600 the distance that we still need to travel in order  to make the knowledge represented in our digital 0:03:17.600,0:03:23.680 repositories more inclusive and diverse and then  in the second part of this talk I'll discuss how 0:03:23.680,0:03:29.440 not all knowledge belongs to all of us and how,  especially for marginalized communities, closed 0:03:29.440,0:03:35.920 knowledge sharing opportunities are essential and  demanding that all knowledge be open and free can 0:03:35.920,0:03:43.440 ultimately lead to exploitation, exposure and even  abuse. Open or closed knowledge repositories can be 0:03:43.440,0:03:49.440 good or bad for the communities that contribute  to and use them and recognizing these nuances 0:03:49.440,0:03:55.440 will lead us to strategies for building just  knowledge resources. And then I'll end my talk 0:03:55.440,0:04:01.760 with some suggestions about how we might be  able to do that. So before I kind of dive into 0:04:01.760,0:04:06.640 these themes that I just introduced, I thought  it would be useful to establish briefly where 0:04:06.640,0:04:11.600 I'm coming from as a scholar myself and what  experiences I'm really drawing from in this talk 0:04:11.600,0:04:18.800 So primarily I'm going to be speaking based on my  academic research which is with community networks 0:04:18.800,0:04:23.840 So these are telecommunications networks that  are built owned and operated by local communities 0:04:23.840,0:04:28.720 and they often arise or take place when  traditional, commercial telecommunications 0:04:28.720,0:04:33.760 operators have failed to provide adequate  connectivity to a particular area or community 0:04:33.760,0:04:38.880 and because they're so embedded in local  geographic, cultural and linguistic contexts 0:04:39.600,0:04:47.200 community networks often also engage in local  content creation and curation. So they 0:04:47.200,0:04:52.400 build a network basically to share knowledge  and that may be with the goal of technologically 0:04:52.400,0:04:57.520 connecting, simply with one another as a  community, or to the global internet more broadly 0:04:57.520,0:05:02.560 And I'm also drawing on my work with 'Whose  Knowledge?' which is a global campaign to centre 0:05:02.560,0:05:08.640 the knowledges of marginalized communities on the  internet. 'Whose Knowledge?' has focused a lot of its 0:05:08.640,0:05:14.000 energy on open knowledge resources like Wikipedia,  and I'll talk more about that in just a moment 0:05:17.120,0:05:22.640 So let's start by talking about the internet kind  of broadly because the internet has made access 0:05:22.640,0:05:26.800 to knowledge much more open in the broadest  sense of the term and it really kind of is 0:05:26.800,0:05:34.400 the technology that underpins open access -  open software, open data. Only about 50 percent of the 0:05:34.400,0:05:39.760 world is online today, which I still find a pretty  shocking statistic. Only half the world is online 0:05:39.760,0:05:46.160 But about 75 percent of internet users are  actually from the Global South, however 0:05:46.160,0:05:52.880 as we'll see shortly, 75 percent of the content on the  internet is not produced by or in the Global South 0:05:52.880,0:05:58.720 And on top of that we also know that there are  other kinds of gaps like a persistent gender gap 0:05:58.720,0:06:05.840 So recent statistics show that men are about 21 percent more likely to be online than women, for instance 0:06:07.520,0:06:13.920 So the internet doesn't look like many of us, and  I'm borrowing this image from 'Whose Knowledge?' 0:06:13.920,0:06:18.480 which is a feminist organization, so on this  slide we see lots of different women who 0:06:18.480,0:06:23.200 speak different languages, with different  backgrounds and contexts of their own, and 0:06:24.000,0:06:28.960 so it's important to be aware that the internet  doesn't look like even the people who use it 0:06:32.640,0:06:37.680 So let's explore a little bit more what we  mean by that - the internet doesn't look like us 0:06:38.640,0:06:44.480 Admittedly this is a bit of a whirlwind tour of  various issues, so bear with my cursory coverage 0:06:44.480,0:06:51.280 of all of these subjects. But we'll start  with the open source and software movement 0:06:51.280,0:06:56.080 Much of the proprietary technology that we all rely  on and the commercial platforms we interact with 0:06:56.080,0:07:02.640 all the time - places like Amazon for instance - are  built in some way on open source code, but the open 0:07:02.640,0:07:09.440 source community is still disproportionately white  and male and from North America and Europe 0:07:09.440,0:07:17.040 In a 2017 survey of over 5000 open source contributors  worldwide, Github which is the world's largest 0:07:17.040,0:07:23.440 repository of open source projects found that  95 percent of their respondents were male 0:07:23.440,0:07:30.720 And research also indicates that  more contributions on Github 0:07:30.720,0:07:35.760 come from the Global North. And according  to data from 2013, which is a little while ago 0:07:35.760,0:07:42.640 now, those contributions from the Global North  constituted over 78 percent of geotagged contributions 0:07:42.640,0:07:50.720 When we talk about open access, so open publishing, many of you watching this 0:07:50.720,0:07:57.520 presentation will know that free and unrestricted  access to primary research literature is the core 0:07:57.520,0:08:01.920 goal of the open access movement, and it's very  important to many of us in the scholar community 0:08:02.480,0:08:08.080 And a lot of funding bodies now actually  require that publications be released open 0:08:08.080,0:08:13.600 access. But open isn't entirely free and  it's not entirely accessible as actually the 0:08:13.600,0:08:22.400 previous presentation pointed out through the  lens of disability access. Often well-resourced 0:08:22.400,0:08:26.800 high-ranking universities are more likely to  publish open access because they can afford to 0:08:26.800,0:08:34.720 pay the upfront costs and in many cases, read and  publish deals - these arrangements with publishers - 0:08:34.720,0:08:39.680 may lower barriers for readers and users only to  raise them for authors and the institutions that 0:08:39.680,0:08:45.360 they come from. And many of the open access  rules, arrangements and technical protocols 0:08:45.360,0:08:50.160 that underpin the open access movement are  disproportionately dictated and created 0:08:50.160,0:08:54.880 by individuals and organizations in  Europe and North America once again 0:08:58.000,0:09:03.200 And of course academia also itself has a long  way to go before achieving equality in terms 0:09:03.200,0:09:08.000 of knowledge production and dissemination.  And these deep-seated inequalities also play 0:09:08.000,0:09:13.600 out in what is actually available open access  and also what's published widely in academia 0:09:13.600,0:09:17.760 I know that Leslie Chan, who  will be speaking next, I think 0:09:17.760,0:09:23.440 has done some great work on all of these  issues, so looking forward to that talk as well 0:09:25.840,0:09:31.440 If we use Wikipedia as a prime example of  an open and free online knowledge repository 0:09:32.160,0:09:37.200 we also see where exclusions are occurring mostly  invisibly because we perceive Wikipedia to be a 0:09:37.200,0:09:42.080 democratic, participatory space that's  kind of potentially open to everybody 0:09:42.800,0:09:47.200 And of course Wikipedia calls itself a project  helping to create a world in which everyone can 0:09:47.200,0:09:54.320 freely share in the sum of all knowledge. But in  fact less than 20 percent of Wikipedia editors 0:09:54.320,0:10:01.040 are women or non-binary, and only around 20 percent  of the articles on Wikipedia are produced 0:10:01.040,0:10:07.120 on or by people from the Global South.  And then, according to data from 2017 0:10:07.760,0:10:15.760 to further compound this disproportionate  contribution pattern, only about one percent 0:10:15.760,0:10:22.000 of the Wikipedia editors make about 77 percent of the  edits on Wikipedia so that further indicates a 0:10:22.000,0:10:26.400 skewed participation pattern that exists  in the knowledge production on the site 0:10:30.080,0:10:37.360 And here is what this kind of skewed  distribution looks like on a geotagged map 0:10:37.360,0:10:42.800 created by some researchers at the Oxford Internet  Institute. And I believe this is from 2018, yes it is 0:10:42.800,0:10:50.240 So why is this? Why are  there these clear inequalities 0:10:50.240,0:10:55.360 in a digital space that's meant to be open, free  and participatory? Well, knowledge production and 0:10:55.360,0:11:01.360 dissemination online is highly dependent on free  time and unpaid labor. Contributors to internet 0:11:01.360,0:11:06.640 knowledge repositories also often have other  kinds of advantages like reliable and consistent 0:11:06.640,0:11:11.120 internet access, and as we saw earlier that  would still exclude at least half of the world 0:11:12.000,0:11:17.600 And in order to have staying power in this  digital marketplace of ideas, you need epistemic 0:11:17.600,0:11:22.480 legitimacy so that means that your knowledge  has to be respected and recognized. And because 0:11:22.480,0:11:27.520 of underlying societal biases against certain  kinds of knowledge and certain knowledge holders 0:11:27.520,0:11:33.280 think - for instance - of how often women's testimony  is disregarded due to perceived credibility issues 0:11:33.840,0:11:40.640 because of biases like that we don't have  epistemic legitimacy online, just like many of 0:11:40.640,0:11:46.160 us don't have epistemic legitimacy offline, and  many would-be contributors to online knowledge 0:11:46.160,0:11:52.880 repositories get shut out or shouted down. So  the key takeaway here is that open clearly isn't 0:11:52.880,0:11:58.560 inherently inclusive we have to do the work  to make open not just a value but a practice 0:11:58.560,0:12:01.360 otherwise it doesn't really  deserve to be valorized 0:12:04.640,0:12:09.840 So now let's turn to that second question,  rethinking closed as being exclusionary 0:12:10.560,0:12:16.160 and how closed spaces, repositories and practices  might actually be more inclusive than we assume 0:12:16.720,0:12:21.200 Sticking with Wikipedia for the moment, let's  just revisit the platform's aspiration to be an 0:12:21.200,0:12:27.760 online, free content encyclopedia in which everyone  can share the sum of all knowledge. 'All knowledge' 0:12:27.760,0:12:33.760 is a really ambitious aim that kind of assumes  that all knowledge should be shared and free 0:12:34.320,0:12:40.320 It's kind of a reasonable assumption on the  one hand but maybe this isn't actually true in 0:12:40.320,0:12:45.520 practice, especially for marginalized and oppressed  communities their knowledges can be 0:12:45.520,0:12:50.960 personal, sacred and many times threatened, and so  this is a quote from indigenous scholar 0:12:50.960,0:12:58.080 Linda Tuhiwai Smith, who writes in her book  Decolonizing Mehodologies, about how indigenous 0:12:58.080,0:13:04.000 knowledge has long been extracted and exploited  by the forces of colonization and imperialism 0:13:05.120,0:13:09.760 We can think of many examples of this in terms  of land and natural resources being exploited 0:13:09.760,0:13:15.440 by governments and commercial enterprise, and  also potentially in the name of science 0:13:15.440,0:13:21.920 So protecting indigenous knowledge then is an  act of both self-preservation and resistance 0:13:21.920,0:13:33.840 I'll just leave this up for a couple  of seconds so you can read it if you like 0:13:36.000,0:13:40.880 In this collection of resources that I helped to  compile at 'Whose Knowledge?', our partners, who 0:13:40.880,0:13:46.960 came from Native American, Bosnian, queer and Dalit  communities, offer a wish list from marginalized 0:13:46.960,0:13:51.760 communities for supporting and centering their  knowledges. They write marginalized communities 0:13:51.760,0:13:58.000 need safe spaces of our own. We also sometimes  have sacred spaces of our own. We need allies not 0:13:58.000,0:14:03.760 to feel offended and left out when they are not  invited to these spaces. Think about it this way 0:14:03.760,0:14:09.120 if you are from a powerful community, most spaces  feel safe to you, but they don't to many others 0:14:13.600,0:14:18.720 And working with community networks for me  has really spotlighted this issue especially 0:14:18.720,0:14:23.360 Because these are networks built by and for  communities, they put community priorities first 0:14:23.920,0:14:28.400 And at front and center in the design and  implementation of not only the network itself 0:14:28.400,0:14:34.720 but also how the network is used. So when you and  I typically encounter digital resources online 0:14:34.720,0:14:38.720 usually we were not part of the origin  story of those resources - we didn't build the 0:14:38.720,0:14:43.360 protocols for engaging with them, we didn't  build the network that carries them to us 0:14:43.360,0:14:48.000 We kind of accept at face value the existing  power structures and relationships between 0:14:48.000,0:14:53.360 content and infrastructure, but community networks  therefore kind of give us an interesting insight 0:14:53.360,0:14:58.160 into the core questions we should be asking  of our digital infrastructure and resources 0:14:58.160,0:15:02.320 because they often have to start from  scratch, with no connectivity at all 0:15:03.520,0:15:10.080 So community network facilitators - and I've spoken  to a number of them over the last year and a half 0:15:10.720,0:15:16.240 who often help to guide these projects, find  themselves kind of asking questions rather than 0:15:16.240,0:15:22.720 imposing infrastructures and existing hierarchies  of knowledge on these communities. And they often 0:15:22.720,0:15:27.680 start with a simple question of what do you  even want a network for, and the answer might 0:15:27.680,0:15:33.920 not be the internet. It might end up being a closed  internet, for instance, for the community and often 0:15:33.920,0:15:40.240 for communities, local traffic is the priority.  So the point here is that we kind of return 0:15:40.240,0:15:44.640 the questions of infrastructure and  goals to the communities themselves 0:15:44.640,0:15:50.880 rather than imposing expectations that are often  rooted in technological utopianism and other kinds 0:15:50.880,0:15:57.120 of ideologies - tech determinist ideologies - rather  than imposing those on the communities ourselves 0:16:00.880,0:16:06.000 So where does this leave us? It leaves  us with the uncomfortable tension between 0:16:06.000,0:16:13.280 greater visibility and participation in open, and  the protections and safety inherent in closed 0:16:13.280,0:16:19.120 So on the one hand, open really needs a greater  focus on making visible the invisible, so in terms 0:16:19.120,0:16:24.880 of diverse voices, knowledges and people, and on  the other hand, knowledge justice as I discussed 0:16:24.880,0:16:30.560 at the outset, might require that some knowledge  actually remains closed or restricted in some way 0:16:30.560,0:16:36.000 in order to create safe spaces for communities  to share their knowledge and resist exploitation 0:16:36.000,0:16:40.320 So really where we end up is we really  shouldn't make assumptions. We need to 0:16:40.320,0:16:45.520 ask questions, we need to include diverse voices,  we need to create participatory structures and 0:16:45.520,0:16:50.400 processes, and we really need to spend a lot of  time listening to what communities are telling us 0:16:52.320,0:16:58.080 And just to briefly illustrate this point at  the end here and also to give you a short break 0:16:58.080,0:17:04.080 from just listening to my voice, here's a clip  from an interview with Nico, who is an activist 0:17:04.080,0:17:08.320 and community network advocate who works all  over the world but primarily with Altermundi 0:17:08.320,0:17:15.440 which is a community network facilitating group  in Argentina. And here he's talking about shifting 0:17:15.440,0:17:18.800 our assumptions when we work with different  communities, and I hope that this will work 0:17:19.760,0:17:25.360 and it's not going to cause any technical  difficulties, but if not the text on this slide 0:17:25.360,0:17:33.280 also says what what he says in the clip 0:17:36.960,0:17:46.560 "It's not my take as a facilitator of this process  or an enabler or a middleman whoever - whatever I am 0:17:48.880,0:17:56.000 to find answers to the questions that trigger  the communities to get to the connectivity 0:17:56.720,0:18:02.640 But it's their responsibility or their call or  their need to find answers, or not, to the questions 0:18:02.640,0:18:08.160 And I think that's a very interesting way to drive the process, like putting questions 0:18:08.960,0:18:15.200 that are key to reflect  on why we need things and why we 0:18:15.200,0:18:23.600 want to do something or not and  use the answers to drive the process" 0:18:26.320,0:18:30.480 So you can actually listen to the rest  of this clip if you're interested on my 0:18:30.480,0:18:34.880 website - and I'll put the link up for that in  a moment - because Nico goes on to discuss 0:18:34.880,0:18:38.640 a specific example of a community that  wanted to build a knowledge archive in 0:18:38.640,0:18:41.840 particular, which may be of interest to  some of you watching this presentation 0:18:46.080,0:18:51.600 Okay, so the most important thing basically  that we can all do to address these nuances 0:18:51.600,0:18:55.680 and complexities that are inherent in the  open movement is to ask critical questions 0:18:55.680,0:19:02.720 of ourselves and our collaborators all the  time. So when we work on projects that involve 0:19:02.720,0:19:09.040 community knowledge, look around yourselves,  let's all look around us, and ask who is missing? 0:19:09.040,0:19:16.160 Ask ourselves, are practices actually  as open as the values behind them claim to be? 0:19:16.160,0:19:23.360 And do we wind up replicating the many  existing exclusions of today's internet ecosystem? 0:19:23.360,0:19:28.640 And then how do we resist that? We  should ask the others that we engage with 0:19:28.640,0:19:33.520 how do you actually want your knowledge to be  shared? So instead of making any assumptions 0:19:33.520,0:19:38.000 about that we should define what open means  together and recognize that it might be 0:19:38.000,0:19:43.840 different for different peoples and in different  contexts. 'Whose Knowledge?' also has some great 0:19:43.840,0:19:48.960 resources available online from their work with  marginalized communities that I mentioned earlier 0:19:48.960,0:19:54.880 And I've linked to a few interviews that I've  done and publications from other people on my 0:19:54.880,0:20:00.960 website and I've put that on this slide. So  you can catch all of that at kiraallmann.com/talks 0:20:00.960,0:20:07.120 And it'll be connected to this talk in  particular. And so that basically concludes 0:20:07.120,0:20:12.960 my presentation and all that remains for me to do  is to encourage us all to work together to build 0:20:12.960,0:20:19.280 an internet by and for us all. And thank  you very much again for having me today