Increasingly shaped by and for GAFAM, software production has gone through fundamental changes that impact how computing and our society is organized. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have always been important for the functioning of public and private organizations. However, the turn to agile production with services based on current computational infrastructures (e.g., clouds, personal devices, (sensor) networks) is different in that it organizes computing in a way that increases dependencies on the tech giants and their economic underpinnings. These dependencies bring about significant changes that affect people, institutions and our common infrastructures (e.g., health, education, transportation, energy). These changes require a deeper understanding and a broader reflection as we implement digital services in all aspects of life using computational infrastructures dominated by GAFAM.

About

Seda Gürses is a member of TITiPI and Constant, as well as a member of the faculty in the Department of Multi-Actor Systems at TU Delft. Her work focuses on privacy enhancing and protective optimization technologies (PETs and POTs), privacy engineering, as well as questions around software infrastructures, social justice and political economy as they intersect with computer science. She is also a member of the team that developed DP3T, one of the proposals for COVID-19 Contact Tracing Apps.