I am looking forward to participating in Session 4: Structures in Human-Technology-World Relations at the 2026 Philosophy of Human-Technology Relations (PHTR) Conference, to be held at TU Delft in The Hague, on September 21-23, 2026. The title of my paper is Privatized Welfare by Design: Instrumentalizing Structural Inequality in Earned Wage Access Platforms.
PHTR 2026 highlights the collective dimension of seemingly individual human-technology relations by revealing the world that is always present within them—politically, culturally, environmentally, and otherwise. In particular, it looks into the role of design in the philosophy of human-technology relations as a practice through which the collective shaping of new worlds can be imagined, negotiated, and materialized.
The theme for this year’s conference explores the relations between humans and technology from diverse disciplinary angles, including philosophers, social scientists, artists, designers, and engineers. Inquiries can take experimental, multimedia, and other formats in addition to more conventional ones, provided they remain tied to human-technology relations as an object of philosophical study.
My paper examines how design and implementation of the Dayforce Wallet digital platform are implicated in sociotechnical injustices. Dayforce Wallet is a prominent example of Earned Wage Access (EWA) technology marketed as a financial lifeline for workers living paycheque to paycheque. The paper argues that, within a neoliberal framework, design is deployed to frame such platforms as solutions for addressing income inequality, while ultimately exacerbating sociotechnical harms over the longer term.
Keynote Speakers: Caroline Hummels and Peter-Paul Verbeek | View Agenda
Parallel Session 4: Tuesday, September 22, 2026 | 2:10–3:10PM
Homepage Photo Credit >
The rise and fall of the paper paycheck. The Burroughs Corporation B101 Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) check reader and sorter in 1960. Charles Babbage Institute Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries.
Susan Campbell 