 Root Conf which is one of the hash keek events where we talk a lot about servers and infrastructure And we suddenly realized that they don't make sense when the network's down so we had to come around to the fundamental problem of internet shutdowns and It so happened that the most of the techies just assumed that it's not going to come to them or affect them But it suddenly started to it's impacting businesses. It's impacting Social media society in ways that we can't really imagine Well, if I have to take scenarios like farmers a lot of farmers are complaining that they really don't know what's happening with weather Because they have stopped seeing the clouds and relied so much on accurate that They really don't know what's happening with the weather to when to start plantations and it's not them directly using it It's usually their children who just look up it for them and tell them that oh, there is rain expected and there is no fall and all of it So what we are trying to do here is While it's it's been helped set up by hash keek hash keek is essentially a company which helps tech communities in India to gather together to come towards a safe space where you can Learn from each other and they have a bunch of conferences to conference one where they look at network infrastructure But they also do fifth elephant, which is one on big data Like we had really interesting talks on how data is affecting our society as well It's not necessarily more for engineers where they learn about the cloud or they learn about Hadoop and other big data tools So This event is also being hosted along with Karna So let me just give you a history of what Karna is and let Kiran do more of the talking but the idea was to bring in a lot of people in a safe space that we always do to discuss some of these issues and We increasingly understood that tech is political and if anybody is saying is Disagreeing with it and he's saying tech is neutral. We hope some of these talks help you change your views or at least evolve your views Whatever they are But what we essentially are a safe space where you can come just talk Give presentation and it's a usually a Submission process where anybody can submit talks. So we also have flash talks planned We had four talks which were confirmed. Unfortunately, I think one of the speakers is a no show So you have three talks for today the first talk is On essentially machine to machine communications network, which is called lower one Which is used by internet of things sensors to communicate between servers and machines. It's based on radio again So it's that's the first talk Second we have Farhan who's also going to explain us setting up a radio based internet network and Farhan is a really old-time Radio expert who has worked a lot on the space and the last we have community radios by Ramakrishnan G So this is the lineup for the talks and we are also taking flash talks. So if you are interested To talk about internet shutdowns or talk about other alternative technologies that you were working on that could be helped in case of internet shutdowns I Will be asking post the sessions to just raise your hands if you are up for it and You can just give five minutes flash talks on your experiences with internet shutdowns If you've been through them or if you are affected by it directly or indirectly So as I was mentioning though, this talk is also happening because of Karana. Karana is a tech Collective which Karana is a rather in the court which which means reason Karanam Karana in multiple languages So we were formed or we gathered around because of what was happening with tech in India especially how it has Increasingly started taking our society Whether it's a mandatory ID whether it's internet shutdowns whether it's facial recognition That's coming up a lot of a net neutrality for example was one of the important tech-led moments Where people suddenly understood the importance of tech and why we should be concerned about it So a bunch of us who have been researching a lot lot into this because of other primarily where we De-emphasized the paraphrase did a lot of research to explain people what's happening with other and It's not very limited to it So some of us have been working on what's happening with the cloud regulations that try coming up with and how it Effectively impacts everyone So we're just a tech collective and we are working with hash keek to build some of these community spaces where People who understand society and people who understand technology can meet and trying to see what's happening with it in fact None of the technologies know what's happening with the society neither did the sociologists who know what's happening with technology So it's more of the space where we are trying to bring them together and at this stage I'll invite Kiran to speak more about the event and post that will start the talks So I think we have a bit of time because of first speakers missing and First one. Oh, excellent. Okay So then we'll keep it brief. Okay, so I Want to read out from a news article that came a couple of days ago and this is regarding hearing in the Supreme Court Essentially in September 2018 Justice Bob day had sought for a technological solution to lay out a complete picture of how MCI inspects medical colleges and The first four sentences of this news article I think are very indicative of the environment that we are operating in so essentially It says dawning a new role in forces co-founder Nandan alakini seems to have come to the rescue of the Medical Council of India The entrepreneur has developed a software for the MCI to streamline Inspections of medical colleges across the country the software aims at minimizing the human interference and devising a uniform yardstick for inspections on Tuesday MCI lawyer Garo Sharma told the Supreme Court that the software is working fine and Has been able to do away with several deficiencies of the past Mr. Nilekini has given us this software We have been using this for the last six months and it is working very well Issues of human interference possible bias, etc. Could be taken care of to a large extent So this is the lawyer who said this to a bench headed by the Chief Justice Mr. Bob day again Now just look at what happened here There seems to be an issue with However, a medical college is conducting inspections and the Supreme Court orders them to appoint Mr. Nilekini in his personal capacity and say he is expert he will do something for you and Mr. Nilekini delivers on this call. He's been called to produce some software and he does it he produces of it He gives it to the Medical Council Apparently it works and the Medical Council comes back and reports to Supreme Court and saying yes, it worked You know that this man who just got told to deliver some software has done it Okay, and at this point you have to ask and see what's going on here I mean, do you just ask somebody for some software and get it? Or do you have to pay them also? And as a Supreme Court order you to go approach a very specific individual and say please give software and Is there no problem of conflict of interest in any form over here? The software now comes in to take on the role of an inspector and apparently it works Okay, how does this happen? I mean, how does a piece of software make humans behave? What biases went into the development of that software who what was the role of the creators of the software who actually made the software? Mr. Nilekini certainly did not sit down at the computer and start typing out software He gave the task to someone who produces software who then went on to deliver it to the client so there's essentially a lot hiding behind this idea of simply saying get some software and fix it and All of these things are some who completely missing in a mainstream narrative And so this is something that we have seen as a society develop over a period of time that You could say 10 years ago You bring a word is narrative that welfare in this country is full of corruption And so let's bring some software and make it better and then Mr. Nilekini gets plucked out of enforces brought into the government and said Please develop other and ten years later. Are there a solve all problems, you know, and if you look at this and say No, this is not magic. Why does it get treated like magic? and so and Mind you it's also very successful narrative. I mean it's the fact is that other is pretty much mandatory in life today and its mandatory on Government machinery is understanding of it being the perfect solution that actually works Except we know it does not know and that's something that we have learned the hard way after Years of seeing it fail repeatedly So a few years ago, she was and I and a bunch of others we're looking at this and thinking and saying look as software developers We understand that our software never actually works Yeah, it's as frail as we are as humans and essentially Making software work involves effort involves compromises involves mistakes So it cannot be possible that somebody else's software is perfect that kind of perfection and this ability to deliver perfection does not exist in humanity so Why does the narrative say the software is value neutral that it just comes in and solves the problem and And So we set about on a project to document the failings of software and that really was a kind of project I mean we literally had to make a joke about other at that point if other is a foundation Let's go after the root cause of Foundational assumptions of software working magic. So we started off from there and Over the last couple of years. We have also started looking at how much deeper this magical faith in technology goes and and In how many different places does it need to be challenged? So you take internet shutdowns? Yeah Most of us have never actually experienced a shutdown. We only read about it in the news I mean India has the world's largest number of shutdowns, but the likelihood of any of us personally experiencing it is incredibly low It's mostly because of where the shutdowns happen. They're always targeted unlike unless unlike Kashmir where the entire state is out Most shut downs in India are extremely targeted and extremely specific and it's extremely unlikely that you personally experience them So which then becomes tendency to say shut downs happen to other people and not your problem at all So my experience talking to software engineers is again being about a sense of discomfort about talking about shut downs because one As network engineers, we are the creators of the technology that enables a shutdown to happen Or that enables a shut down to not happen because we also build networks to be resilient to disruption that is caused by Completely accidental factors like people cutting cables when they dig the road So on the one hand as network engineers we build for resilience to ensure shutdowns never happen Because usually they happen by accident on the other hand we are complicit in the missionary that makes a shutdown happen when the government order demands it and yet People in technology are uncomfortable talking about it because somehow this is an extremely political thing to discuss and part of it seems to be that people in tech have bought this image of technology being magical and That they think it's their responsibility to deliver this magical solution that is disconnected from Politics that is disconnected from the various tussles in society that determine what technology gets built and who builds it and who controls it so What are we trying to do is open up the dialogue a little bit and say we have to get Technologies to understand that politics is not just BJP versus Congress that politics is far far bigger field and all Technology is political even if you don't realize it and a mainstream narrative that simply says this is not how technology works Needs to be challenged in itself because that's actually not how technology works