Rethinking the language of Big Tech

When entering a query into Google search, do you think twice about the answers it gives you? If the platform was instead called "The World's Largest Advertising Machine," would you feel differently?

These are the kinds of questions Dr. Crystal Chokshi, PhD, wants people to sit with.

An assistant professor of public relations at Mount Royal, Chokshi has spent years examining the language surrounding digital technologies and the ways companies frame their products as natural, helpful and consequence-free. Now, she's released a new edited collection, The Need to Rename Tech, which argues that those names and metaphors deserve a more critical look.

The book came together over three years alongside co-editor Robin Mansell, professor emerita at the London School of Economics, whom Chokshi endearingly refers to as "the Beyoncé of media studies."

In each chapter, contributors reimagine the name of a well-known technology to better reflect the social and political impacts swept aside by media spectacles and marketing strategies.

Words shape how we think

The idea for the project grew from Chokshi's doctoral research and her interest in the metaphors embedded in day-to-day tech language.

"Big Tech is so brilliant at creating and coining language for us," she says. Terms are often rooted in the natural world, such as "the cloud," "streaming" and "phishing."

The framing, she argues, can soften public perception while the true impacts are often far more complicated. She uses Amazon as another example.

"It's a beautiful, sustaining part of our world that the company then appropriates," she says. "They are actually the exact opposite of what the word should mean."

In The Need to Rename Tech, scholars from around the world propose alternative names not as replacements meant to stick, but as tongue-in-cheek "warning labels that encourage a heightened awareness."

One contributor reframes "angel investor" as "disturbance capitalism" to challenge what Chokshi describes as the near-religious pedestal the tech industry is often placed on. Another chapter proposes the deliberately uncomfortable phrase "digital settler colonialism" as an alternative way of thinking about generative artificial intelligence (AI).

"It doesn't really roll off the tongue," Chokshi says with a laugh. "But it really makes you think, 'What am I perpetuating? What am I practising when I use AI?' "

Language reflects values

Updating language to reflect changing values is not a new concept. Chokshi points to ongoing conversations about renaming schools and public spaces tied to colonial pasts, or moving away from terms now recognized as harmful. In most cases, those shifts didn't happen because of legislation, but because communities reconsidered what those words represented.

She sees language used in the tech world as part of that same cultural process. The goal is not to reject services and platforms outright, but to create more thoughtful conversations about the consequences and tradeoffs.

"We currently live in a society where there's this unquestioning enthusiasm. 'Tech solves everything. Tech is always innovative.' We want to question those narratives and values," she says.

That tension is especially visible in the growing discussions around AI, an area Chokshi studies closely.

While she sees potential use cases in areas like urgent health-care diagnostics or fraud detection, she worries AI conversations focus too heavily on convenience and efficiency without considering broader impacts.

"What harms are we bringing about versus what good are we doing?" she says, pointing to the environmental costs, exploited labour and use of copyrighted material in training generative AI systems.

Stay skeptical

Chokshi encourages her students to adopt this line of critical thinking with the tools they use every day, including search engines and social media platforms.

In one exercise, she asks the class to download the data Google has collected about them. Students are often stunned by the scale of online surveillance and personalization.

"Google isn't a library, it's an advertising engine. And your Google is not the same as my Google," she explains. "It changes how you think about what information you can even access."

For those who want to become more critical consumers of technology, Chokshi recommends paying attention to reporting in the news, including the growing number of lawsuits over issues ranging from privacy to harms experienced by young users. Firsthand accounts from whistleblowers can also be eye-opening, such as Careless People, a recent memoir by former Meta executive Sarah Wynn-Williams.

"When people are saying that they're being harmed, pay attention," Chokshi says.

Ultimately, she hopes the new collection encourages people to pause and think more critically before adopting technologies without question.

"Words structure the way we think about the world," she says. "By renaming technologies, we can better understand what they do to us in contrast to what Big Tech maintains they do for us."

Professor Milena Radzikowska, PhD and chair of Mount Royal's School of Communication Studies says, "Dr. Chokshi and Dr. Mansell's work is about standing up to Big Tech. The products coming out of Silicon Valley can have seriously detrimental impacts on people, and it's time we start thinking about these products in that way. This book helps us do that.