April 27, 2023 The Good Robot Podcast: Louise Hickman discusses the politics of captioning Author(s): Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy Credit: Courtney Corlew for Unsplash Louise Hickman joins The Good Robot podcast to explore the political decision making process of captioning and why this matters In this episode of The Good Robot podcast, Eleanor Drage and Kerry McInerney chat to Louise Hickman, an activist and scholar based at the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at the University of Cambridge. Louise talks to to the podcast about stenography, the process of transcribing speech into shorthand. You may be familiar with this from having seen court reporters write a transcription of a tribunal or case, but many stenographers also do crucial access work to create live captions of someone speaking. Stenographers create their own online dictionaries and then access words really quickly using keyboard shortcuts. During the conversation, they explore the political decision making process of captioning and why this matters. Listen to Louise Hickman on the politics of captioning About The Good Robot podcast On The Good Robot podcast, Dr Eleanor Drage and Dr Kerry McInerney ask the experts: what is good technology? Is ‘good’ technology even possible? And how can feminism help us work towards it? Each week, they invite scholars, industry practitioners, activists, and more to provide their unique perspective on what feminism can bring to the tech industry and the way that we think about technology. With each conversation, The Good Robot asks how feminism can provide new perspectives on technology’s biggest problems.