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How this course works
Taking inspiration from the long history around the world of folk education, particularly the Scandinavian and Appalachian traditions, this course is designed to offer a fun, affordable and rigorous experience–that serves the needs of working adults.
Like all folk education, liberation and movement building is at the core of the course. We save ourselves together–and we educate ourselves to build solidarity, share tactics, and create a shared vision for a better future for all of us.
There’s no grades, no assessments, no credentials.
This is about learning for the love of learning and the love of each other.
Course Objectives
- Hear from some of the best critical thinkers on technology and Silicon Valley about how we got here and what we can do to build a better world.
Course Facilitator
Mandy Henk has been involved in community education for more than a decade, as a librarian, writer, and advocate for healthy, just, and vibrant digital communities. She has also authored a book, Economy, Ecology, Equity: The Path to a Carbon Neutral Library (ALA Editions 2014).
Session times
This class meets online once a week between 1 May – 3 July 2025 for activities, discussion, and guest lectures. If you can’t make it, we will seek consent from the group and our guest to record and share the lecture.
We meet:
- EDT: Wednesdays at 8.00pm
- PDT: Wednesdays at 5.00pm
- NZST: Thursdays at 12 noon
Note: One of our guests will be visiting from the UK so that class session will be at: - NZST: Friday, 27 June 2025 at 8:00 a.m.
- EDT: Thursday, 26 June 2025 at 4:00 p.m.
- PST: Thursday, 26 June 2025 at 1:00 p.m
Course Tools
- Zoom, links will be sent out via email shortly before each class session begins
- Signal (optional)
We will be offering an optional “tech support session” early in the course so that you can ask questions, get help with Signal, and try out the tech tools we will be using.
Please come along if you need any help feeling comfortable with the tools we are using. If you aren’t comfortable with technology, please don’t worry! We will be happy to help you out and work to increase your comfort level.
Model for Each Week and Expectations
Each week will include a ~20-minute pre-recorded lecture with an expert guest and a 90-minute Zoom class session to talk with the guest and explore their thoughts and ideas about what we should be doing in this moment.
We will also provide a list of resources including readings, podcasts, and videos for each week–representing the best work from our expert guest.
You can choose to engage with these as we go along or save them for later. I am happy to assist you in using your local library to access materials that aren’t available online. Just send an email to mandy@darktimesacademy.co.nz and I can schedule a session with you to explore your local options.
Code of Conduct
Our goal is to create a vibrant and engaged learning community where we all prioritise learning and building relationships with each. This course and all Dark Times Academy classes and events aim to be accessible to all people regardless of age, disability, sexuality, background, religion, gender or ethnicity.
A respectful, open attitude towards others is expected from all. Harassment of any kind will not be tolerated and may result in your removal from the course.
Life is hard enough as it is, leading with kindness and patience is key to a great learning experience, one that ensures all members feel welcomed.
Anxiety, Busyness, and Stress
Doing an online course on top of your full-time job, care responsibilities, and other life stuff is really hard. It’s ok to fall behind! Please don’t let anxiety or stress lead you to avoid engaging or cause you to feel inadequate.
Do your best, it will be good enough. Ask for help if you need it. We are always happy to support you as best we can.
Accessibility
Please email Mandy with any accessibility needs. We are happy to work together to make this class work for you
Content Warnings
The nature of this topic means that we will occasionally discuss material that includes upsetting topics. We will do our best to warn you ahead of time when this is likely to happen. Please feel free to do what you need to do to protect your well-being.
Your health and mental well-being should always be your first priority and we will always respect that.
Guest Lecturers
Paris Marx is a Canadian tech critic. He hosts the Tech Won’t Save Us and System Crash podcasts, and writes the Disconnect newsletter. Paris is also the author of Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation. He speaks around the world about the politics of technology.
Sarah Roberts, Ph.D. is a full professor at UCLA (Gender Studies, Information Studies, Labor Studies), specialising in Internet and social media policy, infrastructure, politics and culture, and the intersection of media, technology and society. She is the faculty director and co-founder of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (C2i2), co-director of the Minderoo Initiative on Technology & Power, and a research associate of the Oxford Internet Institute. Informed by feminist Science and Technology Studies perspectives, Roberts is keenly interested in the way power, geopolitics and economics play out on and via the internet, reproducing, reifying and exacerbating global inequities and social injustice.
Chris Gilliard PhD, is the co-director of the Critical Internet Studies Institute. He is a writer, professor, and speaker whose scholarship examines digital privacy, surveillance, and the intersections of race, class, and technology. He was recently a JustTech Fellow of the Social Science Research Council, and Visiting Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center.
Dr. Gilliard is a member of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry Scholars Council and Surveillance Technology Oversight Project community advisory board. His book Luxury Surveillance is forthcoming from MIT Press in 2025.
Brian Merchant is a writer, reporter, and author. He writes the newsletter BLOOD IN THE MACHINE. He is a reporter in residence at the AI Now Institute, and a journalist in residence at the Omidyar Network. Previously, he was the technology columnist at the Los Angeles Times and a senior editor at Motherboard (RIP). He’s also the author of The One Device: the Secret History of the iPhone (2017, Little, Brown) and Blood in the Machine: the Origins of the Rebellion against Big Tech (2023, Little, Brown), and a founder of VICE’s speculative fiction outlet Terraform, which published a best-of anthology, Terraform: Watch/Worlds/Burn, with MCD Books, in 2022.
Jathan Sadowski studies the political economy and social theory of information technology. He is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Human-Centered Computing in the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. His most recent book is The Mechanic and the Luddite: A Ruthless Criticism of Technology and Capitalism, and is co-host of the podcast This Machine Kills.
Dr. Alex Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR). A sociologist by training, her work centers on the data used in new computational technologies, and the ways in which these data exacerbate racial, gender, and class inequality. She also works in the area of social movements, focusing on the dynamics of anti-racist campus protest in the US and Canada. She holds a BS in Computer Science and Mathematics and a BA in Sociology from Purdue University, and an MS and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Aliya Danzeisen is an American–New Zealand lawyer, teacher and the national coordinator of the Islamic Women’s Council of New Zealand (IWCNZ). Danzeisen was appointed an Honorary Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2024 for services to the Muslim community and women. Her fierce and tireless advocacy for her community and for a better approach to technology policy have made her one of the world’s most effective advocates in the technology space.
Dan McQuillan is a Lecturer in Creative and Social Computing. He has a degree in Physics from Oxford and a PhD in Experimental Particle Physics from Imperial College, London. After his PhD he was a support worker for people with learning disabilities and volunteered as a mental health advocate, informing people in psychiatric detention about their rights. In the early days of the world wide web, he started a pioneering website to provide translated information for asylum seekers and refugees. When open-source hardware sensors started appearing, he co-founded a citizen science project in Kosovo supporting politically excluded young people to measure pollution levels and get the issue of air quality onto their national agenda. After a stint working in the NHS, he joined Amnesty International and created their first digital directorate. Dan has been involved in many grassroots social movements such as the campaign against the Poll Tax in the UK, and in environmental activism. He was part of the international movement in Genoa in 2001 which was protesting against the G8 and calling for an alternative globalisation that included justice for both people and planet. During the first wave of Covid-19 he helped to start a local mutual aid group where he lives in North London. He is the author of Resisting AI: An Antifascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence.