System Update: A New Podcast Series Exploring Emerging Trends in Technology is Out!
From elections and public services to online platforms and access to information, digital technologies are reshaping our democracies, economies, collective and private existences at an unprecedented pace. Yet one critical question remains: who gets to shape the rules that govern these technologies?
To help answer that question and trigger new forms of collaboration, Forus is launching System Update, a new 12-episode podcast series produced as part of CADE – Civil Society Alliances for Digital Empowerment, a project co-funded by the European Union.
‘System update’ is usually a quiet background process a patch, a fix, an invisible improvement running in the background of devices we rely on. Yet through this series we see how there is no single update, no final version, no universally accepted patch. Instead, there are competing visions of what the system should be – and competing actors deciding what gets fixed, what gets ignored, and what gets permanently embedded.
This podcast series, episode after episode shows how digital governance is shaped by infrastructure and ideology, by regulation and resistance, by global frameworks and local realities.
Bringing together leading voices from civil society, technology, policy and academia, System Update explores how artificial intelligence, internet governance and digital rights are evolving, and why civil society must be at the centre of these conversations.
Throughout the series which is a journey from global governance discussions to regional experiences and local case studies, podcast guests share practical experiences, policy insights and advocacy strategies on some of the most pressing issues shaping our digital futures, including:
- AI governance and democracy
- AI ethics and accountability
- Environmental and planetary justice
- Internet governance and multistakeholder cooperation
- Platform accountability and freedom of expression
- Youth participation in digital policymaking
- Accessibility and disability rights
- Digital inclusion
- Civil society advocacy in emerging technology governance
