Southern Indiana Business July-August 2020 | Page 6

TACKLING TECH
By Evan Campbell
Tech a driving force behind change
In the 1990s, UFO sightings and
encounters spread like wildfire
from first-person accounts. People
spotted flashing lights in the sky,
while others woke up to bulbous
alien heads hovering above them. The
popular TV series X-Files wanted us to
believe.
Yet, decades later, almost all of us have
a small portable camera in our pocket.
And guess what? Extraterrestrial beings
are nowhere to be seen. Instead, what is
captured and displayed across social media
for the past few years is people of color
being terrorized, beaten and even killed by
fellow residents and the police sworn to
protect them.
This is not an original insight or observation.
Instead, I’m highlighting how minorities
have vocalized this abuse forever, and
now they can upload it in front of our
eyes in a few seconds. We have witnessed
countless black men and women being
executed on Facebook Live, YouTube and
Twitter. This combo of technology has
helped amplify the voices of those too easily
dismissed and pushed aside. It’s let us
all see through someone else’s eyes.
Over 100 years ago, this type of video
distribution and consumption by the masses
would have only been found in a sci-fi
book. But moving images, as they were
called then, were a new form of technology
6 July / August 2020