Culture Shock: How Big Tech’s Digital Colonialism Imposes Values on the World with Katharina Reinecke, PhD

Big Tech, predominantly designed by those from Western cultures, embeds specific cultural norms into global systems, leading to culture shock for users across the world. This lack of diversity among developers results in designs that ignore local customs and needs, effectively creating a modern form of digital colonization where billions must conform to a narrow technological worldview.

To explore how Western digital culture is imposed upon the world,  Harvesting Happiness Podcast Host Lisa Cypers Kamen speaks with the director of the interdisciplinary UW Center for Globally Beneficial AI, Katharina Reinecke, PhD.  

Katharina presents key findings from her book, Digital Culture Shock, detailing how different cultural preferences shape global user behavior across social media platforms regarding information searching and sharing.

Original Air Date Wednesday, November 19, 2025

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Meet Our Guest:

Katharina Reinecke, PhD, is a professor at the University of Washington’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering and director of the interdisciplinary UW Center for Globally Beneficial AI.

She is co-founder of LabintheWild, a platform for online research studies with participants from around the world., a “Google Translate” for communication.

Book:  Digital Culture Shock: Who Creates Technology and Why This Matters

Katharina Reinecke PhD—Big Tech & Culture Shock:

  • How cultural differences impact the way technology is used.  {2:07}
  • The Intention, Action, Perception model (IAP) is the central theme of Why Are We Fighting? {7:00}
  • Technological design can be culturally specific. {12:46}
  • How social media impacts cultures. {21:13}
  • The effects of culture shock and digital colonization are subtle. {31:36}

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Shareables:

“We all want to have free will, yet research shows that when we have too many choices, it is not beneficial.” @LisaKamen on @HHTalkRadio Share on X “There is an interesting paper about how most people in the world are not weird. The authors used weird as an acronym for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic.” @katharinareinecke.bsky.social on @HHTalkRadio Share on X “There is little diversity in the people who develop technology and create systems, and the rest of the world has to live with it.” @katharinareinecke.bsky.social on @HHTalkRadio Share on X “Technology is designed for the average software developer.” @katharinareinecke.bsky.social on @HHTalkRadio Share on X

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