Tiny Tech Zines participants Bomani McClendon, Zainab Aliyu, and Meghna Dholakia. with TTZ Founder Rachel Simanjuntak, and co-organizer Tristan Espinoza (upper right) (all images courtesy TTZ)
Despite the claims of openness and access for all, the tech industry has a diversity problem. Whether it’s the staggering low numbers of minorities in leadership positions, issues of sexism and misogyny, or the ways that technologies like facial recognition fail people of color, there is still a wide gulf between the promise and the reality of new technologies.
Color Coded Collective
Inspired by the New York Tech Zine Fair, Tiny Tech Zines is a new zine fair that examines the weaknesses of the industry, while exploring ways that digital innovation can be harnessed by those communities that have been heretofore underserved. The daylong event will feature almost four dozen exhibitors — some from as far away as Argentina and India — as well as a series of workshops. A small sampling of participants include Color Coded Collective, a Los Angeles-based group that supports communities of color in the co-creation and co-ownership of new technologies; Free Radicals, an activist collective working at the intersection of science and social justice; the Tech Workers Coalition, an organization with chapters across the country dedicated to labor organizing in the tech field; and POETECHS, a New York-based studio exploring the effect that digital ubiquity has on our emotional lives. Several individual artists and designers will also have their analog zines on display, providing a link between the intimacy and communal spirit of zine culture, and the potential democratization of tech.
When: Sunday, August 11, 11am–7pm (free with RSVP)
Where: Navel (1611 Hope Street, Downtown, Los Angeles)
More info at Navel.
