I have a lot of thoughts about what the tech industry has become, and while some are generous and positive, some are less so: The Atlantic recently had a good article here. How do I enter the tech industry when I am so deeply suspicious that social media and the Internet at large have harmed democracies, eroded our common societal trust, and fundamentally transformed our psyches and social traits? For years now, people have been becoming more aware of these effects. How tightly tech, capitalism, and our political landscape are intertwined. How disinformation has metastasized on Facebook and Youtube. How generations (my own included) have unconsciously been shaped by technology to create cancel-culture. How Amazon transformed commerce, how Netflix made us into binge-watchers, how crypto has, and will continue to have, huge implications on our economies. On and on, there is not a facet of the world that has not been shaped by the digital age.
But this is not meant to be a downer of a post, so let’s pivot.
Thinking about these topics has led me to some amazing projects happening across academia, industry, and on the fringes. Whether they’re trying to guide policy, designing new algorithms with less bias, or teaching the public about tech ethics, here’s a ramshackle assortment of projects worth going down an Internet rabbit hole over:
- The Center for Humane Technology. With endeavors aimed at pressuring social media giants to make simple yet impactful changes to their platforms, offering courses on humane technology, and empowering us to counteract harmful algorithms in numerous ways. They produced The Social Dilemma, which should give an idea about their perspective.
- Numerous universities have projects focused on using tech for social good: The Oxford Internet Institute’s Programme on Democracy and Technology aims to engage in “real-time” social and information science, to make better tools for detecting and ending interference with democracy.
- The Notre Dame University Tech Ethics Lab “promotes human values in technology, helps develop standards related to the moral and ethical use of technology, and seeks to inform technology-related laws, policies, and governance”.
- The Freedom of the Press Foundation uses technology to protect public-interest journalism through projects like whistleblower submission system SecureDrop, and trainings in cybersecurity for newsrooms globally. They also funded Signal, the E2E encrypted messaging app, so another point there.
- The Stanford Internet Observatory offers, among other projects, a undergraduate course on Trust and Safety that aims to “An introduction to the ways consumer internet services are abused to cause real human harm and the potential operational, product and engineering responses.”
- While algorithmic bias is a big topic, lots of researchers are dedicated to lessening its negative impacts on marginalized communities. The University of Chicago has a team focused on reducing algorithmic bias in healthcare. The Brookings Institution gives a thorough documentation of the issue, then supplies best practices for mitigation and policy.
- Mila is a Canadian organization focused on the socially responsible development of AI. Their projects under AI for Humanity are pretty neat.
- In terms of sheer scale, there’s this hefty publication from the Program on Democracy and the Internet at Stanford University, which considers the scale, scope, and power exhibited by Big Tech: Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, and Apple.
- As a counterpoint to MANGA, or whatever we’re calling them, check out this repo of co-op tech companies, providing an alternative job experience outside of Tech Giants and startup culture.
- Check out Mastodon, which is open-source, non-algorithmic, and independent. There’s /r/socialistprogrammers for general discussion with developers who hate Capitalism, and finally, Quantified Self, which aims to help people learn about themselves through their own data.
This is just a selection. I’m still somewhat cynical at times about our collective digital existence – but countless other bright minds are grappling with our position and finding the way through. If they can, so can I.
