Becoming a critical consumer of technology isn’t just the responsibility of our teachers, our policy makers or software developers: we need to arm ourselves with the knowledge and the know-how to break out of our technofundamentalist trappings, and to wrestle our lives back from the machines.

This final set of recommendations from my report The Personal (Computer) is Political, published by The Nominet Trust, is for the rest of us.

  • Be aware that software developers do not necessarily have your individual wellbeing as their priority.
  • Demand more from developers. You are their customer, and if your interests and needs are not being met, don’t adapt yourself to the system; expect it to adapt to you.
  • Consider how well you are able to express yourself in software, and whether this is adequate. Assess if what you want and need changes in the future, that the software is flexible and responsive enough to allow you to change. Consider the implications of your interactions with the service should that service change its conditions for use.
  • In all of your interactions with technology, consider the assumptions and biases held by the developers.

Read the full report here, and check out the other recommendations published on this blog: for developers, for policy-makers and for educators.