System Update - Introduction

Are emerging trends in technology fast, inevitable, and neutral? No, there are complex political, social, environmental and intersectional dynamics behind them. They are constantly being shaped by decisions about power, governance, infrastructure, and access and these decisions in turn are already reshaping democracy, levels of inequality, and the ways we participate in public action and live our private lives. System Update is a podcast series brough to you by Forus as part of the Civil Society Alliances for Digital empowerment a programme co-funded by the European Union. Bibbi Abruzzini and Clarisse Sih from Forus are hosting this podcast, that follows the digital transformation across three interconnected levels: the global governance of emerging technologies in particular AI, its regional translation into policy and infrastructure, and its national and local impact on communities. The series moves from questions of regulation and rights to the realities of digital systems slowly tracing how digital governance is built, contested, and reimagined across the globe and in different regions. “System update” is usually a quiet background process a patch, a fix, an invisible improvement running in the background of devices we rely on. Yet through this series we see how there is no single update, no final version, no universally accepted patch. Instead, there are competing visions of what the system should be — and competing actors deciding what gets fixed, what gets ignored, and what gets permanently embedded. This podcast series, episode after episode shows how digital governance is shaped by infrastructure and ideology, by regulation and resistance, by global frameworks and local realities. And at every level, civil society emerges. Join us and be a part of the System Update! "System Update", is produced by Forus as part of CADE - the Civil Society Alliances for Digital Empowerment - a project co-funded by the European Union. CADE’s objective is to support the capacity of civil society organisations for effective advocacy in multilateral and multistakeholder internet governance processes. This podcast was co-funded by the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of Forus and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union. Learn more about CADE: https://cadeproject.org/ Discover the Let's Talk Digital campaign: https://www.forus-international.org/en/campaign/let-s-talk-digital #CADE #D4D #Forus #digitalrights #ai #digitalgovernance #letstalkdigital