The Tech That Comes Next

How Changemakers, Philanthropists, and Technologists Can Build an Equitable World

Amy Sample Ward, Afua Bruce

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781119859819
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781119859826
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Ethics
• Index: Business

Changing the way we use, develop, and fund technology for social change is possible, and it starts with you. The Tech That Comes Next: How Changemakers, Philanthropists, and Technologists Can Build an Equitable World outlines a vision of a more equitable and just world along with practical steps to creating it, appropriately leveraging technology along the way.

In the book, you'll find:

• Strategies for changing culture and investments inside social impact organizations
• Ways to change technology development so it incorporates more of society
• Examples of data, security, and privacy laws and policies that need to change to protect vulnerable populations and advance positive change

Ideal for nonprofit leaders, social activists, policymakers, technologists, entrepreneurs, founders, managers, and other business leaders, The Tech That Comes Next belongs in the libraries of anyone who envisions a world in which technology helps advance, rather than hinders, positive social change.

Chapter One
Where We Are and How We Got Here

Technology. Just the word itself evokes a range of emotions and images.

For some, technology represents hopes and promises for innovations to simplify our lives and connect us to the people and issues we want to be connected to, almost as though technology is a collection of magical inventions that will serve the whims of humans. To others, technology represents expertise and impartial arbitration. In this case, people perceive that to create a solid technological solution one must be exceptionally smart. Technology, with this mindset, is also neutral, and therefore inherently good because it can focus on calculated efficiencies rather than human messiness. Others have heard that technologists “move fast and break things,” or that progress is made “at the speed of technology”—and accordingly associate the word “technology” with speed and innovation constantly improving the world and forcing humans to keep up.

In contrast, the mention of “technology” fills some people with caution and trepidation. The word can conjure fears and concerns—fueled by movies and imaginations—of robots taking over the world and “evil” people turning technology against “good” people. Others are skeptical of how often technology is promised to solve all problems but ends up falling short—especially in the many ways it can exclude or even inflict physical, emotional, or mental harm. Unfortunately, there are many examples of technology making it more difficult for people to complete tasks, contributing to feelings of anxiety or depression, and causing physical strain in bodies. The potential for these and other harms are what cause some to be concerned or fearful about technology. And, for some, the mention of technology stokes fears of isolation: for those less comfortable with modern technology, the fear of being left out of conversations or of not being able to engage in the world pairs with the very practical isolation that lack of access can create.

Many people hold a number of these sometimes contradictory emotions and perspectives at the same time. In fact, individuals often define “technology” differently. Although some may think of technology as being exclusively digital programs or internet tools or personal computing devices, in this book we define “technology” in the broadest sense: digital systems as well as everything from smart fridges to phones to light systems in a building to robots and more.

WE LIVE IN A WORLD OF TECHNOLOGY

Regardless of how complicated feelings about tech may be, we all must embrace it: we live in the age of technology. Whether you consider how food travels from farms to tables, how clothes are manufactured, or even how we communicate, tech has changed and continues to change how these processes happen. Certainly, we complete a number of services through technology systems—shopping for clothes, ordering weeknight meals, scheduling babysitters, and applying for tax refunds. We expect the technology tools and applications we use to provide smooth and seamless experiences for us every time we use them. In many cases, with the exception of the occasional glitch or unavailable webpage, technology works how we expect it to; it helps us get things done.

Unfortunately, not everyone has the same experiences with technology. The late 1980s brought us the first commercially available automatic faucets, which promised relief for arthritic hands and a more sanitary process for all. Some people reported sporadic functioning, however; the faucets worked for some but not others. When the manufacturers researched the problem, an unexpected commonality appeared: the faucets didn't work for people with dark skin. In an engineering environment dominated by white developers, testers, and salesmen—and we deliberately choose the suffix “men”—people with dark skin had not been included among the test users. In a more recent example, in 2016 Microsoft launched @TayAndYou, a Twitter bot designed to learn from Twitter users and develop the ability to carry on Twitter conversations with users. Within one day, Microsoft canceled the program, because, as the New York Times stated, the bot “quickly became a racist jerk.”¹

In the name of efficiency and integrity, various technology systems are developed and implemented to monitor the distribution of social benefit programs. Organizer and academic Virginia Eubanks, who studies digital surveillance systems and the welfare system, has remarked that, for recipients of welfare programs, “technology is ubiquitous in their lives. But their interactions with it are pretty awful. It's exploitative and makes them feel more vulnerable.”² Technology is used to automatically remove people who are legally entitled to services from systems that furnish government and NGO providers with data regarding the population that needs those services. In her book Automating Inequality, Eubanks describes a state‐run health care benefits system that began automatically unenrolling members, and the associated volume of work individuals had to do to understand why they were, often wrongly, unenrolled and how to reenroll. It is also used to prevent someone from receiving services in one part of their lives because of a disputed interaction in a different part of their lives. In this case, notes on unsubstantiated reports of child abuse may remain in a parent's “file,” and then used to cast suspicion on the adult if they seek additional support services. This is all tracked in the same government system.

“The technology has unintended consequences” is something many people in technology companies say when referring to products that don't work for a segment of the population, or to systems that leave people feeling exploited. However, these “unintended consequences” are often the same: they result in excluding or harming populations that have been historically ignored, historically marginalized, and historically underinvested in. The biases and systems that routinely exclude and oppress have spread from the physical world into the technological world.

How can we have these uneven, unequal experiences with technology when one of the supposed attributes of technology is impartiality? Isn't tech based on math and science and data—pure, immutable things that cannot change and therefore can be trusted? There are so many examples of how technology, regardless of how quickly it moved or innovated, repeatedly did not deliver on the hopes and promises for all people. Why?

We're not the first to ponder these questions. Many people, including ourselves, have concluded that technology is put into use by humans and, accordingly, is good or bad depending on the use case and context. Technology is also built by humans and, as a result, technology reflects the biases of its human creators. Melvin Kranzberg, a historian and former Georgia Tech professor of history of technology, in 1986, wrote about Six Laws of Technology, which acknowledge the partiality of technology within the context of society:³

1. Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.
2. Invention is the mother of necessity.
3. Technology comes in packages, big and small.
4. Although technology might be a prime element in many public issues, nontechnical factors take precedence in technology‐policy decisions.
5. All history is relevant, but the history of technology is the most relevant.
6. Technology is a very human activity—and so is the history of technology.

These laws are still applicable today. Technology, it turns out, is fairly useless on its own. High‐speed trains would be irrelevant in a world without people or products to move. A beautifully designed shopping website is a waste if no one knows about or uses it. Technology exists within systems, within societies. The application of math and science, as well as the structure and collection of data, are all human inventions; they are all therefore constructed to conform to the many rules, assumptions, and hierarchies that systems and societies have created. These supposedly impartial things, then, are actually the codification of the feelings, opinions, and thoughts of the people who created them. And, historically, the people who create the most ubiquitous technology are a small subset of the population who happen to hold a lot of power—whether or not they reflect the interests and feelings, opinions, and thoughts of the majority, let alone of the vulnerable.

IDA B WELLS Just Data Lab founder and author of the book Race After Technology, Princeton University Professor Ruha Benjamin takes it a step further. Because technology and systems are often built on these biased assumptions, “Sometimes, the more intelligent machine learning becomes, the more discriminatory it can be.”⁴

What constitutes “technology” has evolved over time. Roughly shaped knives and stones used as hammers are widely considered the first technological inventions.⁵ Fast‐forward several millennia to the creation of a primitive internet. What started as a way for government researchers to share information across locations and across computers grew into the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network in the 1960s. From there, additional large and well‐funded institutions, such as universities, created their own networks for researchers to share information. Next, mainframes—large computers used by companies for centralized data processing—became popular. With the creation of a standard communication protocol for computers on any network to use, the internet was born in 1983.

Since then, the pace of technology development has only accelerated. The spread of personal computers and distributed computing meant that more individuals outside of institutional environments had access to technology and to information. People quickly created businesses, shared ideas, and communicated with others through the “dot‐com” boom of the 1990s. We have more recently seen the rise of cloud computing, on‐demand availability of computing power, and big data—the large amount of complex data that organizations collect. Techniques to process this data, learn from it, and make predictions based on it are known as data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. As a result, we now have a world where many people have access to a tremendous amount of computing power in the palm of their hands; companies can understand exactly what people want and create new content that meets those desires; and people can envision technology touching, and improving, every aspect of their lives.

In less than a century, we have gone from creating the internet to sending people to the moon with mainframe technology to building smartphones with more computing power than what was used to send people to the moon. And as technology has evolved, so evolve those who develop the technology—the “technologists.” Unfortunately, whereas technological developments increase the percentage of the population who can engage with it, the diversity of technologists has decreased. The large tech companies are overwhelmingly filled with people who identify as white and male, despite the reality that this group doesn't comprise the majority percentage of humans on earth. But the technology field hasn't always been this way. The movie Hidden Figures, based on the book by Margot Lee Shetterly, told the story of the African American women of West Area Computers—a division of NACA, the precursor of NASA—who helped propel the space race by being “human computers” manually analyzing data and creating data visualizations. US Navy Rear Admiral Grace Hopper invented the first computer compiler, a program that transforms written human instructions into the f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter One: Where We Are and How We Got Here
• Chapter Two: Where Are We Going?
• Chapter Three: Changing Technology Culture and Investments Inside Social Impact Organizations
• Chapter Four: Changing Technology Development Inside and for Social Impact
• Chapter Five: Changing Technology and Social Impact Funding
• Chapter Six: Changing Laws and Policies
• Chapter Seven: Changing Conditions for Communities
• Chapter Eight: Start Building Power for What's Next
• Chapter Nine: Where Will You Go Next?
• Chapter Ten: Resources for What Comes Next
• Index
• End User License Agreement