Discussions of technology often focus on innovation, but less on the histories, ideologies, and power structures that shape it. At the recent Connected Minds Book Launch, these dimensions came to the forefront through a series of readings that examined social media, colonial narratives, and AI from critical and interdisciplinary perspectives.
The shifting landscape of social media offered a clear entry point into broader questions about power and control. Drawing on Move Slowly and Build Bridges, Robert W. Gehl traced how dissatisfaction with platforms like Twitter, particularly in the wake of changes under Elon Musk, pushed users toward alternatives such as Mastodon and the wider fediverse. This shift reflected a growing unease with platform structures that prioritize scale and profit over stability, accountability, and community.
In these decentralized spaces, participation takes on a different meaning. Communities are not just users of a platform but active contributors to how it is governed, moderated, and sustained. This shift invites a deeper consideration of what it would mean to build digital infrastructures that are accountable to the people who inhabit them, rather than to scale, profit, or grow.
A different set of assumptions came into focus through Dean Ray’s Indigenous Futures, which draws on years of work with Indigenous communities. His account of a classroom exercise revealed how easily authority can be constructed and accepted, even when it rests on incomplete or misleading narratives. When students were asked to sign a document without fully understanding its implications, the exercise became a powerful reflection of how treaties were historically misrepresented and broken.
The story brought past and present into direct conversation. History appeared less as something distant and more as an active force shaping how people understand their rights, relationships, and place in the world. It also underscored the importance of questioning inherited narratives and recognizing the consequences they continue to carry.
In Deconstructing Transhumanism, Michael G. Sherbert turns to the ideological foundations shaping contemporary conversations around AI, showing how these ideas are far from neutral. Rather than treating AI as an inevitable technological progression, he traces how it is informed by deeply embedded beliefs, particularly Western religious narratives of transcendence, mastery, and the separation of mind from body.
The idea that consciousness can be extracted, preserved, or replicated is often framed as progress. Michael challenges this framing by asking what is lost when the body is treated as secondary, or when identity is reduced to something that can be stored and reproduced. His work pushes against enhancement-driven models of technology and instead invites a more relational understanding grounded in responsibility, community, and lived experience.
As these ideas came into conversation, they began to overlap in ways that resisted easy resolution. Questions surfaced that did not lend themselves to clear answers. How close can we come to recreating a human being, and at what point does that boundary shift? What happens when we attempt to separate mind from body, especially when those experiences are deeply intertwined? And how do we ensure that the systems we build do not simply reproduce the same gaps, biases, and omissions that already exist?
A strong thread throughout the discussion centered on storytelling and responsibility. If AI systems are trained on human knowledge, what kinds of histories and narratives are they learning from? How do we prevent the reproduction of harmful or incomplete accounts of the past? These concerns connected closely to earlier reflections on Indigenous knowledge, where long-term thinking, relationality, and accountability offer fundamentally different ways of approaching both technology and the future.
At the same time, the discussion pointed to a tension between competing visions of what lies ahead. Dominant narratives, often shaped by large technology companies, frame the future as inevitable and already in motion. In contrast, the ideas shared throughout the event emphasized that the future remains open and is shaped by the values, assumptions, and decisions embedded in the systems we build.
Indigenous perspectives offered a powerful counterpoint to these dominant narratives. Grounded in relationships to land, community, and future generations, they challenge how progress is often defined and open up alternative ways of thinking about what it means to live well together.
By the end, what lingered was a shift in how these questions were being approached, with greater attention to how we understand technology, how we relate to it, and how those choices shape the conditions of the future. At Connected Minds, this work is not just reflective but actively being advanced through the program’s commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration and co-creation. By bringing together researchers, artists, and partners across sectors, Connected Minds creates the conditions to challenge dominant assumptions, integrate diverse ways of knowing, and contribute to more just, inclusive, and sustainable technological futures.
