Banca de DEFESA: DEBORA FURTADO BARRERA

THE SONG OF THE MERMAIDS: THE ENTRY OF BIG TECHS IN THE BRAZILIAN PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR THE TRAINING PROJECT

Google; Microsoft; Public higher education; University training; Surveillance capitalism.

Companies like Google and Microsoft are present in our daily lives, bringing countless facilities for communication between people and access to information. This aspect comes from a new configuration of the economic system, which is being understood as surveillance capitalism, in which such companies have their business models based on data collection and monitoring. Since the beginning of the 2000s, these large technological corporations have expanded their sphere of activity to other sectors, such as education. In Brazil, we noticed the presence of these Big Techs in education when analyzing that almost 80% of public higher education institutions have agreements with some of these companies to offer applications aimed at teaching actions. Given this scenario, we ask ourselves: what are the implications of the entry of large technological corporations into the training project of Brazilian public universities? This investigation will be anchored mainly in the studies developed by Jose Van Dijck, who proposes an analysis of society based on the concepts of platformization and dataism. This is research of a hermeneutic nature with a reconstructive approach since, through dialogue with others, it is possible to resolve mistaken interpretations about the world. In order to contextualize the scenario experienced by institutions that have subscribed to the services of large technology companies, an analysis will be carried out of the following university documents: Institutional Development Plan, IT management plan of the institution and terms of agreement made between the institution and such as Google or Microsoft companies to offer applications. An open questionnaire will also be administered to managers in the information technology or distance education areas of the institutions. In search of clarification on the problem to be understood from this study, five Brazilian federal universities that joined Google or Microsoft services were selected, namely: University of Brasília (UnB), Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM), Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp) and Federal University of Paraná (UFPR).