Dr. Ramesh Srinivasan
Professor, UCLA Department of Information Studies
Director of UC Digital Cultures Lab
Exploring the intersection of technology, innovation, politics, business, and society, and how we can pave the way toward a democratic and equal digital world.
The Utopias Podcast: Take an enlightening journey with Ramesh and his esteemed guests as they explore what it means to be human in our digitally transformed world. Subscribe & Join the Conversation
Read Beyond the Valley, Srinivasan’s Latest Book
Ramesh Srinivasan studies the relationship between technology, politics and societies across the world.
Ramesh Srinivasan is a scholar, author, and thought leader who explores the intersection of technology, innovation, politics, business, and society. His work focuses on understanding how humanity can overcome the pressing issues that technology has perpetuated, such as artificial intelligence, social media and data privacy, disinformation, tech regulation, political bias, and AI’s impact on the future of work.
He blends his skills as a leading academic, author, engineer, social scientist, storyteller, policy adviser, and thought leader to shine a light on how technology and innovation, from all quarters and countries, will make a balanced world possible, for all. His mission is to help repair the disconnect between designers and users, producers and consumers, and tech elites and the rest of us: toward a more democratic internet.
Ramesh has been a faculty member at UCLA since 2005 in the Information Studies and Design|Media Arts departments. He is the founder of the UC-wide Digital Cultures Lab which offers a unique, people-focused analysis of new technologies working across every continent and dozens of countries across the world. This lab examines the means by which new media technologies impact businesses, economics, cultures, politics, labor, and the environment through collaborations with global partners. He explores the future of algorithms, AI, automation, and cryptocurrencies with these themes in mind. He holds degrees from Stanford (B.Sc in Engineering), the MIT Media Laboratory (MSc), and Harvard (PhD).
Additionally, he is on the board of directors for Digital Democracy, which works with land protectors in the Amazon and all around the world. He also advises One Project, New Public, numerous members of the US congress (House and Senate) as well as global leaders.
In 2024, he launched his new podcast series, ‘Utopias,’ based on a series of conversations with well known individuals who are interested in a future that is more equal and just. Featured guests include political figures, journalists, artists, scientists, environmentalists, religious practitioners, and scholars, including American philosopher and political activist Dr. Cornel West, political commentator Ana Kasparian, American businessman and 2020 democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, Congressman Ro Khanna, among others.
Ramesh also previously served as a national surrogate for Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign and as an Innovation policy committee member for President Biden.
He is the author of three books: “Whose Global Village? Rethinking How Technology Impacts Our World” (2019 – NYU Press) and “After the Internet” with Adam Fish. His most recent book outlines how the future of the internet still hasn’t been written. In ‘Beyond the Valley’, Ramesh argues that tech can be fairer and more democratic, while still serving business interests. If we look beyond the confines of a small slice of Northwest USA, we’ll find people from all over the world creating a new narrative by using ingenious ways to leverage limited resources to join the digital space and how they are reinventing technology to suit their situations. In the research for this book, Ramesh explored technology’s impact across nearly 70 countries – economically, politically, socially.
BEYOND THE VALLEY was named a top ten 2019 book in Tech by Forbes.
Ramesh appears frequently on NPR, The Young Turks, MSNBC, BBC, CNN and other major media networks. His articles and interviews have been published by the Washington Post, Wired, The Economist, Quartz, Financial Times, Forbes, The New York Times, among others. Ramesh was recently featured in a major Netflix documentary about technology's future, as well as in an award-winning ESPN 30 for 30. In addition, he makes frequent appearances with NPR, The Young Turks, and Al Jazeera English.
In February 2021, Ramesh was cited in an opinion piece by Thomas Friedman in The New York Times. Mr. Friedman reiterated Ramesh’s suggestion that America urgently needs to enact a digital bill of rights that “sets the right balance between free speech and algorithms that make hate speech and blatantly false information from unreputable sources go viral.”
How to repair the disconnect between designers and users, producers and consumers, and tech elites and the rest of us: toward a more democratic internet.
In this provocative book, Ramesh Srinivasan describes the internet as both an enabler of frictionless efficiency and a dirty tangle of politics, economics, and other inefficient, inharmonious human activities. We may love the immediacy of Google search results, the convenience of buying from Amazon, and the elegance and power of our Apple devices, but it's a one-way, top-down process. We're not asked for our input, or our opinions―only for our data. The internet is brought to us by wealthy technologists in Silicon Valley and China. It's time, Srinivasan argues, that we think in terms beyond the Valley.
“Beyond the Valley shows how we got to a place where a few big tech companies pull the strings and the rest of us work on command, without a secure future. Like the Green New Deal, it also shows us a way out, toward a digital new deal where we can reclaim the power and shape a world that includes us all. Read this book for its compelling vision of digital economy that provides decent work, wages, and justice for everyone.”
“It sounds almost quaint to talk about privacy, fairness, and credible information these days. So it goes when Silicon Valley designs things for the rest of us based on what they think is important and cool—and profitable for them. What would it look like to turn the tables? Let’s give the users control over the way algorithms and design choices are optimized. If you’re tired of the surveillance, bias, and propaganda that are warping our world, read this book to see how things can be different.”
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