Law @ UBC Distinguished Speaker Lecture with Wendy H. Wong – What Kind of Governor is Big Tech?

Big Tech companies are not just economic actors. They are governors of social, political, and cultural dynamics as well. In Political Science, we think that governance by states follows the logic of power and authority, whereas non-state governance follows the logic of authority. Big Tech companies, however, break the typical mold that has been developed for analyzing non-state governors because of their embeddedness in modern society. This embeddedness has qualities that align with power (“getting A to it otherwise would not do”), and not authority (“rightfulness”). Big Tech companies’ basis of power allows for a global reach that both makes theories of global governance relevant and shows the limits of the framework. Using a variety of different ways to consider power of the governor versus governed, I argue we have to move beyond “monopoly” to characterize Big Tech’s outsize influence on modern society.

Wendy H. Wong is currently a Professor of Political Science and the Principal’s Research Chair at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan (located on Sylix Okanagan Nation Territory). She is the author of the award-winning book We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age, published by MIT Press . She has written two other award-winning books, Internal Affairs and The Authority Trap (with Sarah S. Stroup), both published by Cornell University Press. She has penned dozens of peer-reviewed articles and chapters, and has appeared in outlets such as the CBC, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, and The Conversation.  She has been awarded grants from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada and Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, among other granting agencies.

The Zoom link will be sent closer to the event.

A limited number of light lunches will be available for those attending in-person.