Just Your Average Tech User

By Lesley Dudden | September 05, 2013

Lesley here- travel junkie, steak enthusiast, and hardline supporter of the oxford comma. What brings me to ICT, you ask? Good question.

For the last six years I have devoted myself to the study of international affairs and political science, not an uncommon background for our team here at ICT. I have traveled extensively and lived for prolonged periods of time in Turkey and recently returned to the U.S. from a short stint in Berlin. From these experiences, one thing has become increasingly clear to me: Technology matters. More than that, technology matters to everyone, not just tech devotees and computer scientists. Technology impacts every person, every day, around the world. This is what brings me, a normal everyday tech user, to ICT.

Technology is an ever expanding asset for civil society and democracy development. As I watched my beloved Turkey go through the Gezi Park protests at the end of May, I couldn’t help but wonder at how technology and media impacted what was going on. It wasn’t just the use of social media to coordinate and spread the word about the protests, but also the silencing of media that prevented the rest of the country from knowing what was happening in Gezi Park.

A very good (Turkish) friend of mine remarked that when he called his Mom from Istanbul to talk to her about the protests of the previous days, she replied that she, “Had not heard anything about them.” That she had, “Been watching What to Wear on tv all morning” like she would on any other day. She had no idea that a mass protest of people the likes of which had not been seen since the runup to the 1980 coup d'etat. Yes, Gezi Park was a battle of how technology can spread information as well as quell it.

It was at that moment that I knew I had to get in the ring, I had to grasp with both hands the world of technology and learn about it, to become not just your “average” technology user. Fortunately, just days later I learned about my current opportunity with the ICT team at NDI. I applied, and haven’t looked back. I am excited to be back in D.C. for the final year of my master’s at The Elliott School of International Affairs and to be here with the ICT team.

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