Event: Civic Digits’ CEO Clare Duffy runs the first of two workshops inspired by Baroness Beeban Kidron and Sarah Wynn Williamn’s panel Safety in an Online World
Asking: What can we actually do about the impact of Big Tech on our lives?
Workshop 1: 16th August 2026 5 – 7pm
Workshop 2: TBC October 2026 (online)
Civic Digits is going to be 10 years old next year. I can’t believe the decade has swept by so quickly. Much quicker than any of the previous decades I must say! But my son is going to high school for the first time today, so it must be true (and I embrace the inky depths of middle age enthusiastically!)
Off he goes to a school where they are not allowed to have mobile phones thanks to the Edinburgh City Council approved “bell-to-bell” ban across all state schools, starting this August.
Well that takes a load off! Doesn’t it?!
I mean, I’m glad I don’t have to have the argument with him about taking a phone to school. But there are plenty of other arguments that quickly rush into that place and that’s ok. I suppose. I’m learning more about the pleasures, torments and inconsistencies of parental boundaries as he sprints towards the inky depths of adolescence.
But what a different world today than in 2017 when Civic Digits first made The Big Data Show. Back then there was much less awareness about how Surveillance Capitalism or ‘the monetisation of our humanity’ was threaten our privacy, democracy and mental health (to name just a few issues).
The Edinburgh book festival 2026 has absolutely loads of brilliant panels that I’m booked in to see about tech and its impact on our lives. I’m seeing Cory Doctorow and Jimmy Wales and Simukai Chigudu, Gabriel Gatehouse and Sarah Wynn Williamns and very excitingly I’m also going to see Baroness Beeban Kidron and Sarah Wynn Williamns on Sunday afternoon because Ta Daa … I’ve been asked by the book festival to run a workshop shortly afterwards not just to explore but also make actual plans about what we can do to both protect ourselves and also fight back and challenge the power of big tech to monetize us and control us. I can’t wait.
I’ve loved both Beeban Kidron’s inspirational book Users: How Big Tech Took Control and How to Fight Back and Sarah Wynn Williamns’ Careless People reads like a thriller. It is unputdownable!
Book yourself a place at the start of the revolution folks because in another 10 years I do believe that if we, as families and communities join together we can wrest power back from Big Tech and reestablish our rights and our children’s rights that we didn’t even know were being given away back in the 2010s!