Technology was supposed to fix everything -- how we work, live, and connect. But somewhere along the way, we lost the why. Systems built to support are felt to suppress. Machines meant to relieve labor demand our labor in return.
Architect Cedric Price once asked, “Technology Is The Answer But What Was The Question?” It was a call for a deeper engagement with the world, to move beyond passive, solution-driven adoption of new technology and instead design for flexibility, adaptability, and our own agency. Not just in our architecture, but in our machines, our networks, and our cities.
The internet promised to remake the world by making it digital. Now, AI and its new generation of architects are engineering the next phase -- one that reshapes how we access information, our sense of agency, and each other. It is time to revisit Price’s provocation and ask: what are we building and who are we building for?
In this talk, Kenyatta Cheese draws on decades of work across digital cultures, community tech, and platform strategy to examine what digitization was meant to do -- and how we might redirect it. From meme networks to municipal planning, he explores how complexity gets flattened in service of control -- and how culture keeps slipping through the cracks.
This talk is for anyone who’s ever felt that the most advanced tools still fall short, and who’s ready to write better prompts for our systems, our machines, and ourselves.
Speaker
Kenyatta Cheese is a strategist and cultural technologist who helps people understand how technology gets shaped by the people who use it. He’s the co-founder of Everybody at Once, an audience development agency that works with platforms, publishers, and public institutions to design for participation, and the co-creator of Know Your Meme, the definitive database of internet culture. His approach blends systems thinking with decades of hands-on work in activist media, network design, and digital storytelling.
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DigIT Hub Sweden Day is an event organised by the EDIH DigIT Hub Sweden, to bring together businesses, researchers, and public sector representatives. The event focuses on digital transformation, innovation, and future technologies like AI, automation, and smart industry solutions.
Please note that this registration is only for the opening keynote featuring Kenyatta Cheese. If you'd like to join us for the full DigIT Hub Sweden Day program, sign up here.
DigIT Hub Sweden helps companies and the public sector in Southern Sweden to digitalise. The initiative is co-funded by the European Union, Region Blekinge, Region Kronoberg, Region Skåne, and Vinnova.
