Reading this insightful essay about access to technology by Han Lee Goldin from her excellent newsletter about AI fluency and information literacy, this passage got me thinking:
Every information system invents its own architecture of access, from printed catalogs to microfilm and search engines to language models. Each format has produced gaps between people who can navigate the system and people who can’t. The internet now reaches about three-quarters of humanity, and the next technology is likely to rebuild that gap underneath us but in a new form. Every new bridge resurfaces the same question those late-1990s reports raised: who gets left behind?
Goldin charts how the problem of access has evolved since the dawn of the public internet. AI will present new opportunities and new obstacles, and there are many actions communities and governments can be taking to ensure valuable information, and the opportunities inherent in that information, can be shared in a more equitable fashion. Library programming, literacy curriculums, infrastructure, and regulation are all ways the opportunities of AI might be tapped for broader access.
A big part of what we do at Talk Shop is address this problem from the source. We’re working with the scholars who possess specialized knowledge and write for select audiences. We represent archives that hold meaningful collections, but the meaning remains opaque to users who are not trained to use them and who have never been invited into understanding them. Our clients seek to change that. We’re constantly trying to bridge the gap between valuable intellectual information and broader publics who could benefit from that information if they could access it, and if it could be translated and made understandable.
Professionally and socially, I get to talk with a lot of experts: scholars, theorists, and archivists. These people are some of the best folks to share a meal with because their expertise allows them to make connections between ideas and to translate it. And I’m constantly trying to find ways to bottle that kind of interaction and replicate it for general consumption. To make specialized knowledge socialized.
My favorite recent example is Documensch, the newsletter and daily website we put out for the Berman Archive at Stanford. There we engage with daily discourse, academic scholarship, and community research, making connections and talking to the people behind the studies and the organizations that commission them. We aim to give this content an approachable voice. We succeed when everyday professionals can access and have context for an obscure academic article or a new poll. We succeed, too, when a researcher can have a platform to explain her methodology and motivations.
A commitment to access is a commitment to communications. And platforms like Documensch should be table stakes for organizations who purport to make their work equitable and legible beyond their immediate group of peers.