Move Fast and Break Things

Project Lead:

Nayana Prakash

PhD researcher

Oxford Internet Institute

Partner Organisation:

Freight Theatre

 “Move fast and break things” - Mark Zuckerberg.

Thanks to the internet, we’ve moved faster than anyone could have imagined. But when we break things, who cleans up after us?  Content moderators are marginalised workers who spend their days trawling the dark underbelly of the internet. They are the human workers in an increasingly inhumane machine, and ‘Move Fast and Break Things’ tells their stories.

We’re delighted to have been awarded support by the Minderoo-Oxford Challenge Fund for the development of Freight Theatre’s stage show, ‘Move Fast and Break Things’.  The show highlights the plight of content moderators, while also telling the story of Google’s discovery of targeted advertising in the early 2000s, as the ongoing collision between humanity and the technology it has developed is explored.

Thanks to the Minderoo-Oxford Challenge Fund, we’ve been able to develop the show with two weeks of rehearsal, and have made a short film version of the piece.

We’ll be premiering the film over the summer, alongside a webinar discussing the issues presented in the film with a group of leading academics, journalists and activists. We’ll also be taking what we’ve learned into schools, running workshops on predatory practices in Big Tech for young people, empowering them claim ownership of their online lives.

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Twitter: freighttheatre

This project is also supported by Arts Council England and ArtsDepot.