Category Archives: Tech Tools

UN Digital Cooperation report released

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The age of digital interdependence: Report of the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation has just been released. 

In July 2018 the Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) appointed a panel to consider the question of “digital cooperation” – the ways we work together to address the social, ethical, legal and economic impact of digital technologies in order to maximize their benefits and minimize their harm. The Secretary-General asked the panel to consider how digital cooperation can contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – the ambitious agenda to protect people and the planet endorsed by 193 UN member states in 2015. He also asked the panel to consider models of digital cooperation to advance the debate surrounding governance in the digital sphere.

The Co-Chairs of the panel are Melinda Gates (USA), representing the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Jack Ma (China), Executive Chairman of the Alibaba Group. Ex officio members are Amandeep Singh Gill (India) and Jovan Kurbalija (Serbia) of the Secretariat of the High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation. Members of the panel that contributed to the report include:

  • Mohammed Abdullah Al Gergawi (UAE), Minister of Cabinet Affairs and the Future, UAE
  • Yuichiro Anzai (Japan), Senior Advisor and Director of Center for Science Information Analysis, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
  • Nikolai Astrup (Norway), Former Minister of International Development, now Minister of Digitalisation, Norway
  • Vinton Cerf (USA), Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist, Google
  • Fadi Chehadé (USA), Chairman, Chehadé & Company
  • Sophie Soowon Eom (Republic of Korea), Founder of Adriel AI and Solidware
  • Isabel Guerrero Pulgar (Chile), Executive Director, IMAGO Global Grassroots and Lecturer, Harvard Kennedy School
  • Marina Kaljurand (Estonia), Chair of the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace
  • Bogolo Kenewendo (Botswana), Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry, Botswana
  • Marina Kolesnik (Russian Federation), senior executive, entrepreneur and WEF Young Global Leader
  • Doris Leuthard (Switzerland), former President and Federal Councillor of the Swiss Confederation, Switzerland
  • Cathy Mulligan (United Kingdom), Visiting Researcher, Imperial College London and Chief Technology Officer of GovTech Labs at University College London
  • Akaliza Keza Ntwari (Rwanda), ICT advocate and entrepreneur
  • Edson Prestes (Brazil), Professor, Institute of Informatics, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
  • Kira Radinsky (Israel), Director of Data Science, eBay
  • Nanjira Sambuli (Kenya), Senior Policy Manager, World Wide Web Foundation
  • Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah (Australia), Chief Executive, Oxfam GB
  • Jean Tirole (France), Chairman of the Toulouse School of Economics and the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse

From the report:

Our dynamic digital world urgently needs improved digital cooperation and that we live in an age of digital interdependence. Such cooperation must be grounded in common human values – such as inclusiveness, respect, human-centredness, human rights, international law, transparency and sustainability. In periods of rapid change and uncertainty such as today, these shared values must be a common light which helps guide us… 

We need to bring far more diverse voices to the table, particularly from developing countries and traditionally marginalised groups, such as women, youth, indigenous people, rural populations and older people…  

The resulting report focuses on three broad sets of interlocking issues, each of which is discussed in one subsequent chapter: 

  • Leaving No One Behind argues that digital technologies will help progress towards the full sweep of the SDGs only if we think more broadly than the important issue of access to the internet and digital technologies
     
  • Individuals, Societies and Digital Technologies underscores the fact that universal human rights apply equally online as offline, but that there is an urgent need to examine how time-honored human rights frameworks and conventions should guide digital cooperation and digital technology.
     
  • Mechanisms for Global Digital Cooperation analyses gaps in the current mechanisms of global digital cooperation, identifies the functions of global digital cooperation needed to address them, and outlines three sets of modalities on how to improve our global digital cooperation architecture – which build on existing structures and arrangements in ways consistent with our shared values and principles.

Some of my observations about the report:

  • I like the three broad sets of interlocking issues.
     
  • I was very pleased to see so much emphasis on countering misinformation and on the need to use online tools to build trust and social cohesion.
     
  • The date of the publication is nowhere to be found on the report. I think it was published in June 2019. 
     
  • The term non-governmental organization (NGO) is never mentioned in the report. Not once.
     
  • Activists nor activism is never mentioned in the report. None once.
     
  • The phrase civil society is used. Does that include the work of NGOs, or activists, including those opposed to government or promoting alternative strategies to those being promoted by more mainstream international NGOs, all of whom mobilize people to engage online as consumers, clients, campaigners, supporters, proponents, opponents of activities by corporations/businesses and the government?
     
  • People with disabilities and their unique needs regarding access digital technologies are lumped in with other marginalized groups, which ignores the unique needs of people different kinds of sight impairments, people with hearing impairments, people with different mobility issues, and a range of other physical and intellectual challenges that people creating online tools do not design for. And there’s no mention that improving accessibility for people with disabilities improves access for EVERYONE. The scant references, lumped in with other marginalized groups, are easy to find: just look for the word “disabilities.” This would have been remedied if the panel had included Sharron Rush (USA), of Knowbility or anyone from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

For the next year or two, this report will be used to justify what any UN initiative does regarding ICT4D – and used to dissuade other proposals, like supporting the needs of human rights activists online, or initiatives that make a centerpiece of promoting accessible web design. And given those ommissions, it’s a mixed bag – a followup is most definitely needed to address this. 

See a list of all United Nations Tech4Good / ICT4D Initiatives to date (yes, I track them, since I was involved with two of them, United Nations Technology Service (UNITeS). and the UN’s Online Volunteering service (formerly NetAid).

Here is the panel’s official web site. You can also follow the initiative on Twitter @UNSGdigicoop.

Also see:

Harms caused by persuasive technologies – what your nonprofit needs to know

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Nonprofits, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), charities, government agencies, schools and other mission-based organizations, no matter what that mission is, needs to be aware of persuasive technologies and how that tech is being used to gather data and use it to target people to get them to buy or do something. You should even consider how you can educate your board, your other volunteers and your clients about persuasive tech and they can better recognize such.

This is from a recent email newsletter of the Center for Humane Technology:

We are as concerned as you are about the harms caused by persuasive technologies. A key lever in our theory of change at the Center for Humane Technology is applying pressure on technology companies by educating policy-makers. When government officials understand the harms more deeply, they can create guardrails to protect society.

On June 25, Tristan Harris, a co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, testified on Capitol Hill in the U.S. Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing, “Optimizing for Engagement: Understanding the Use of Persuasive Technology on Internet Platforms” with Rashida Richardson (AI Now Institute), Maggie Stanphill (Google, Inc.) and Dr. Stephen Wolfram (Wolfram Research). Tristan’s opening statement argued that persuasive technology platforms have pretended to be in an equal relationship with users, while actually holding the upper hand in an asymmetric relationship. Paired with an extractive business model that is based on predicting and controlling people’s choices in the name of maximizing engagement, this inevitably causes serious harm. Algorithms like YouTube recommendations suggest increasingly extreme, outrageous videos to keep us glued to tech sites. In the hearing Tristan said, “Because YouTube wants to maximize watch time, it tilts the entire ant colony of humanity towards crazytown.” 

While many people feel they are opting in as an equal, in reality, algorithms hold asymmetric power over us — they know more about us than we know about ourselves — even predicting when we are going to quit our jobs or are pregnant. As platforms gain the upper hand over the limits of human brains and society, they cannot be allowed to have an extractive relationship but a “Duty of Care” or a “Fiduciary” relationship.

To learn more, check out CHT’s testimony, watch Tristan’s comments (17 min video) and read this Gizmodo article, “This is How You’re Being Manipulated.”

The Gizmodo article does a great job of showing that, the longer you spend in these social media ecosystems, “just scrolling”, the more machine learning systems learn about you. They build a profile of you, based on what you are looking at, what you have “liked,” what your friends have liked, etc. Think of that profile as an avatar – as, Tristan Harris, the executive director of the Center for Humane Technology, puts it, “a voodoo doll-like version of you inside of a Google server. And that avatar, based on all the clicks and likes and everything you ever made—those are like your hair clippings and toenail clippings and nail filings that make the avatar look and act more and more like you—so that inside of a Google server they can simulate more and more possibilities about ‘if I prick you with this video, if I prick you with this video, how long would you stay?’ And the business model is simply what maximized watch time…”

“Without any of your data I can predict increasing features about you using AI… All I have to do is look at your mouse movements and click patterns […] based on tweet text alone we can know your political affiliation with about 80-percent accuracy. [A] computer can calculate that you’re homosexual before you might know you’re homosexual. They can predict with 95-percent accuracy that you’re going to quit your job, according to an IBM study. They can predict that you’re pregnant.

Lawmakers weighed in on the issues as well:  

  • Sen. Schatz (D-Hawaii) “Companies are letting algorithms run wild and only using humans to clean up the mess. Algorithms are amoral. Companies designed them to optimize for engagement as their highest priority, and in doing so eliminated human judgment as part of their business model.”
  • Sen. Thune (R-South Dakota) “The powerful mechanisms behind these platforms meant to enhance engagement also have the ability, or at least the potential, to influence the thoughts and behaviors of literally billions of people.”
  • Sen. Tester (D-Montana) “I’m probably going to be dead and gone—and I’m probably thankful for it—when all this s— comes to fruition, because I think that, this scares me to death.”

So… what can you do?

  • Consider creating a workshop jointly with other agencies to educate volunteers and clients about how social media is used to gather information about them and their children, and how that technology is designed to encourage them into action and beliefs in ways they may never have realized.
  • Write your elected national representatives and tell them you believe these companies should be required, by legislation, to do a better job of talking about how they target users to keep them engaged.
  • Create a written social media policy that makes a commitment to never “like” or share any information on social media that does not fit absolutely into the mission of your organization and that cannot be verified. Know what your social media manager is doing (watch, don’t just ask). If a board member or prominent volunteer asks you to share something via the organization’s social media account that you feel does not meet that criteria, be prepared to explain to that board member why you will NOT be sharing such.
  • Create a page on a private GoogleDoc or a public web page that has a list of links to the Facebook pages you want to check in regularly regarding news and updates instead of liking those pages on Facebook (I have a private page where I have listed the Facebook pages of all of the city and county governments of my area, political groups I support, nonprofits I want to keep an eye on, sports teams I like, etc.). Any time you want to get an update, you just go to that page you’ve created and click on the link of any group or office you are interested in. Unlike every Facebook page except those you want to publicly, officially endorse by doing so. The result: you are more likely to get the updates you want from the groups you most want, because you aren’t relying on Facebook to show such in your timeline.
  • Get rid of your Facebook group for volunteers, clients, etc. Facebook data mines every post made to these groups, even if you set the account to private. Also, not everyone wants to use Facebook, because of its data-mining/profile-building and selling practices. Free alternatives include YahooGroups, Groups.io, and MeWe. Or consider making the investment for a completely private platform to create an online space for working with your volunteers or clients – my favorite is Basecamp.
  • Be flexible about how you communicate directly with volunteers and clients online and be ready to use whatever tool they seem most engaged in – and be ready to change as they change. That may mean using WhatsApp for a year or two to send direct messages to volunteers or clients and then switching to Telegram because that’s what your volunteers or clients are switching to.
  • Keep using Facebook if its proven to be a good way to get your message out and engage with others, but never use it as your only avenue for online outreach: your web site should be always up-to-date, you should post to Twitter and create content for YouTube, and you should post information, as appropriate, to online communities on other platforms, like Reddit and even Craigslist. I find places to potential new places online to post information by asking clients or volunteers where they are getting ANY information.

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Funding for Technology

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I just updated a web page I have on my own web site that’s meant to help nonprofits, charities, NGOs, schools and other mission-based organizations and programs to fundraise for technology needs – for hardware (like tablets, smart phones, laptops, etc.), software, a system to subscribe to, etc. The advice is focused on what information you need to have read to share with donors, how to frame your story about the need for this technology in human terms, and how to identify potential supporters.

I originally developed the page, and continue to update it, because I get emails from people who want to know where to find “the” list of foundations or corporate giving programs that fund software or hardware at nonprofits. And there really isn’t such a list – foundations and corporate giving programs are looking to fund program activities/causes, not equipment, specifically. Grants go to particular kinds of programs – those to help children, the environment, the arts, women experiencing domestic violence, a community in need of better cohesion, etc. But if you can show how technology is a program cost, how it helps you better serve people or your cause, it has a much better potential to attract funding. In other words: show how this is #tech4good. 

I say on the page:

Technology can help an animal shelter better track their animal in-take process and get animals ready for adoption more quickly. Technology can help make a professional theater better track ticket buyers who might be good prospects for donations. Technology can help a program supporting homeless teens to better identify trends and needs. Make your pitch for funding based on what technology will allow you to do regarding your organization’s clients – not so much about what the technology is. Again, a corporation doesn’t want to fund the purchase of 10 tablets for your organization – but a corporation would love to fund a resource that helps, say, homeless families, and if you can show exactly how the purchase of those 10 tablets will allow that, then funders will be much more attracted to such.

Have a look and share your thoughts in the comments below.

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into developing material, researching information, preparing articles, updating pages, etc., here is how you can help.

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Pioneering Internet Initiatives Deserve To Be Remembered

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So much of what the press and bloggers herald now as pioneering or disruptive on the Internet isn’t at all. In 1995, I was talking online with friends, old and new, in all the ways I do now, with the exception of live video: we were writing messages in real-time and messages posted somewhere to read later. We were making and sharing audios and videos. We were creating communities. We were using online tools to train, to learn, to change minds, to promote ideas and to research. The names of the tools have changed, and they have all definitely gotten more sophisticated, but rarely do I read an article about something new online and find that, in fact, it really is something new, innovative, or disruptive. Many tech pioneers and early tech history have been forgotten, and web sites that detailed these efforts are gone, sometimes not even available on the Wayback Machine (archive.org). In addition, attempts to preserve some of this important, rich early Internet history on Wikipedia often get wiped out by veteran Wikipedeans who don’t think the entries are worth remembering – especially if the entries involve women primarily. There are certain tech-related initiatives from the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s that I think are worth not only remembering but worth reviewing and mining for lessons we can use right now – and worth celebrating. I also think the people involved in these early initiatives are worth looking up by researchers and the press alike, to find out what they think about where our networked world has been and where it might be going. Below is a list of pages on my web site that are a part of my attempts to preserve some of this important history and to make it more findable on various search engines. Note how most are focused on nonprofit and government initiatives, rather than for-profit companies – just like those that created the Internet:
  • Early History of Nonprofits & the Internet The Internet has always been about people and organizations networking with each other, sharing ideas and comments, and collaborating online. It has always been interactive and dynamic. And there were many nonprofit organizations who “got” it early — earlier than many for-profit companies. So I’ve attempted to set the record straight: I’ve prepared a web page that talks about the early history of nonprofits and the Internet. It focuses on 1995 and previous years. It talks a little about what nonprofits were using the cyberspace for as well at that time and lists the names of key people and organizations who helped get nonprofit organizations using the Internet in substantial numbers in 1995 and before. Edits and additions are welcomed.
  • What Was NetAid? First there was Band Aid, then Live Aid, and Farm Aid, and then came NetAid, an initiative that was also launched with celebrity-laden concerts and a great deal of media coverage. The NetAid initiative was meant to harness the Internet to raise money and awareness for the Jubilee 2000 campaign, to raise awareness for the challenges in developing countries, and to allow people to volunteer online, donating their skills to help people in the developing world. NetAid’s goal was to make global philanthropy more efficient. This page reviews who was involved, how the initiative evolved, and its legacy regarding virtual volunteering.
  • Impact Online: A History Impact Online was a nonprofit organization founded in the mid 1990s. It was one of the first web sites, and maybe the first web site, where nonprofits could post their volunteering opportunities and people that wanted to help could sign up to help. It later became VolunteerMatch. Unfortunately, someone requested that old versions of the Impact Online web site be removed from the Internet Wayback Machine, and so all archives of the original web site are gone. Luckily, I downloaded some of text and graphics from that original, pioneering web site. I’m sharing them here because the original Impact Online initiative deserves to be remembered and honored.
  • Al Gore Campaign Pioneered Virtual Volunteering Back in 2000, when Al Gore ran for president, his campaign championed virtual volunteering by recruiting online volunteers to help online with his election efforts. I’ve tried to present some of what his campaign did – this pioneering effort deserves to be remembered, as do some of the lessons from such.
  • A history of the Smart Valley initiative In 1994, perhaps earlier, an initiative called Smart Valley was launched in California. Smart Valley was a 501(c)(6) nonprofit organization focused on creating an “information infrastructure” in Silicon Valley, California – Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Cupertino, San José, Santa Clara and the surrounding area, creating projects to enhance the quality of life in Silicon Valley. Smart Valley’s projected included SmartSchools NetDay and PC Day, Smart Voter, to help people learn about upcoming elections, Connect 96: The Global Summit on Building Electronic Communities, the Public Access Network (PAN), a Telecommuting Initiative, and the Smart Valley Webmasters Group. Smart Valley was also affiliated with the nonprofit organization Plugged In, one of the first digital divide efforts, working to bring “the tremendous technological resources available in the Silicon Valley to youth in low-income communities” in East Palo Alto and SV-PAL, the Silicon Valley Public Access Link.
  • San Francisco Women of the Web (SFWOW): A History In the 1990s, various associations sprung up all over the USA to support women using the Internet as a primary part of their work – or who wanted to. These associations created safe, supportive, content-rich, fun spaces, both online and in real spaces, for women to talk about their tech and online-related work, to ask questions, and to learn from each other. One of the best well-known at the time, San Francisco Women of the Web, chose 25 women in 1998, in 1999, in 2000 and in 2001, recognizing them with their Women of the Web award. To help highlight some of the many women who played important roles in the 1990s Internet – which I consider the “early days” – as well as some truly pioneering tech projects that laid the groundwork for the success of so many initiatives today, I have reproduced this list of Top25 Women on the Web on my own site.
  • United Nations Technology Service (UNITeS), a global volunteer initiative, created by Kofi Annan in 2000, that both supported volunteers applying information and communications technologies for development (ICT4D) and promoted volunteerism as a fundamental element of successful ICT4D initiatives. It was administered by the UN Volunteers program, and during the tenure of UNITeS, the UNV program helped place and/or support more than 300 volunteers applying ICT4D in more than 50 developing countries, including 28 Least Developed Countries (LDC), making it one of the largest volunteering in ICT4D initiatives. The activities of UN Volunteers, as well as those by tech volunteers working through NetCorps, CompuMentor, the Association for Progressive Communications, Australian Volunteers International, NetCorps, Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) and Volunteers in Technical Assistance (VITA), were tracked and promoted by UNITeS as part of its overall mission. Part of the UNITeS mandate was to try to track all of the various tech volunteering initiatives and encourage them to share their best practices and challenges with each other. UNITeS was discontinued as an active program in 2005.
  • United Nations Tech4Good / ICT4D Initiatives, a list of the various United Nations initiatives that have been launched since 2000 to promote the use of computers, feature phones, smart phones and various networked devices in development and humanitarian activities, to promote digital literacy and equitable access to the “information society,” and to bridge the digital divide. My goal in creating this page is to help researchers, as well as to remind current UN initiatives that much work regarding ICT4D has been done by various UN employees, consultants and volunteers for more than 15 years (and perhaps longer?).
If you are a Wikipedia volunteer, I encourage you to try to create and maintain entries for the initiatives named on these pages, especially if you are male or perceived as male online – male contributors, or those perceived as such, have a MUCH easier time of it on Wikipedia than females. Also see: Wikipedia needs improvement re: volunteerism-related topics Why Do So Few Women Edit Wikipedia? Insights into virtual volunteering Crowdsourcing / Hive Mind – it’s been happening since at least 1849! History & Evaluation of UNV’s Early Years volunteers scramble to preserve online data before government deletes it
If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into developing material, researching information, preparing articles, updating pages, etc., here is how you can help.

Proliferation of SmartPhones leads to proliferation of rape videos

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I have talked with women who help manage or even just use community tech centers all over the world – in Egypt, Afghanistan, Jordan and various countries in Africa – and very often, they have told me something that they never put into a program report for UNDP or whomever was funding the center: that the men and boys coming to the center used the computers to view porn more than any other subject.

This story from the BBC has brought this memory back to me. Here’s an excerpt:

…even as it becomes easier to access pornography thanks to cheap data and smartphones, there is concern that this isn’t being accompanied by any meaningful understanding of sex and relationships. Local boys in the village freely admitted to the BBC that they watched videos of molestation and rape. One 16-year-old said he had seen more than 25 such videos, adding that his friends often shared them on their smartphones.

Sunita Krishnan, the founder of Prajwala, an organisation in the southern city of Hyderabad that deals with issues of sexual violence and trafficking says these violent videos reinforce the old belief that a woman’s choice is insignificant and she has no agency.

This earlier story from BBC about the kidnapping, rape and murder of a child talks about some of the reasons for the attitude in the country about women.

India is not alone when it comes to high rates of incidence of rape. But many believe patriarchy and a skewed sex ratio may be making matters worse. There is public apathy as well: the rights and security of women never become election issues.

This story for INews by Divya Arya gives more background:

India has seen an internet revolution of a different kind in the past few years. Low-cost smartphones, cheap data and popular social media apps have enabled vast rural parts of the country to stream videos like never before. Pornhub, widely reported to be the world’s largest porn website, claims that India is now the third largest consumer of its content in the world after the United States and United Kingdom. The majority of its content in India is accessed using mobiles.

For many young Indian men, their introduction to sex is the first time they watch porn. India does have an Adolescent Education Program but implementation remains a challenge and girls and boys rarely mix with each other in smaller cities and villages. As I started travelling and talking to young men about this for a new BBC World Service documentary airing as part of the 100 Women season, the impact of watching porn in the absence of real interaction with women became clear. It was not only leading to objectification of women in their mind, but also re-enforcing the entitlement men have traditionally felt on women’s life decisions. In marriage, motherhood and desire to work, women remain secondary citizens…

Multiple men confirmed to me that videos of molestation, and professionally shot violent pornographic content, both were the most searched content online in cities as well as more rural areas. As more violent content became available, watching simple sex stopped being the preference for many. These men confided about wanting to replicate what they saw online and some of them explained that it did affect their personal relationships adversely.

Clicked on a link within the original story about a related story and it opened with a situation that sounded all too familiar to me:

On his many trips to Internet cafes in the bustling central Indian city of Indore, lawyer Kamlesh Vaswani discovered what he calls the “epidemic” of pornography.

“I would go to download important Supreme Court judgments, and pornographic adverts would pop up instead. And when I looked around, I saw rows of children surfing porn openly without a care in the world,” 

There are calls for bans on porn but there are fears this will lead to banning sites regarding sexual health, even breast cancer.

Here’s an hour-long documentary from BBC’s 100 Women series about the proliferation of online porn in India via smartphones.

I’m glad to see the discussions about what to do about the massive increase in the use of smartphones and social media leading to widespread myth-spreading and all of the consequences of that – but what about this very real issues of these online tools being used to promote and encourage violence against women?

Also see:

Many app4good efforts fail to get stakeholder input: lessons from UNHCR

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Developed in a ‘bubble’, many apps that were developed by various IT dogooders for refugees duplicated existing well-used communication platforms. They didn’t take into account complex issues of trust, how information (or rumors) spread, nor how rapidly the political and protection landscape changed. There was also demonstrated naivety around data protection and the political sensitivity related to information being shared.

“I definitely don’t want to disparage the motivations nor the commitments demonstrated by thousands of volunteers during in Europe. But, ‘tech-led solutions’ to complex challenges failed to solve the significant communication issues.”

Katie Drew of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) writes a much-needed piece about the many apps4good / tech4good efforts launched to help migrants that didn’t last past their splashy launches. She also provides helpful advice for future efforts. Her advice is applicable to ANY hackathons / hacks4good that think a room full of IT folks can solve an issue faced by migrants, people experiencing homeless, women facing domestic violence, or any mission of a nonprofit or non-governmental organization.

Also see:

guide to ethics in app & other tech tool development

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I really love this and I would love to see this guide built into all hackathons / hacks4good, the development of apps4good, etc.:

Ethical OS Toolkit: a guide to anticipating the future of impact of today’s technology
Or: how to not regret the things you will build

I have only one disappointment with the guide, but I’ll save that for the end of the blog.

This is from the guide, and explains why this document is needed:

As technologists, it’s only natural that we spend most of our time focusing on how our tech will change the world for the better. Which is great. Everyone loves a sunny disposition. But perhaps it’s more useful, in some ways, to consider the glass half empty. What if, in addition to fantasizing about how our tech will save the world, we spent some time dreading all the ways it might, possibly, perhaps, just maybe, screw everything up? No one can predict exactly what tomorrow will bring (though somewhere in the tech world, someone is no doubt working on it). So until we get that crystal ball app, the best we can hope to do is anticipate the long-term social impact and unexpected uses of the tech we create today.

The last thing you want is to get blindsided by a future YOU helped create. The Ethical OS is here to help you see more clearly.

The guide includes:

  • A checklist of 8 risk zones to help you identify the emerging areas of risk and social harm most critical for your team to start considering now.
  • 14 scenarios to spark conversation and stretch your imagination about the long-term impacts of tech you’re building today.
  • 7 future-proofing strategies to help you take ethical action today.

The risk zones that the guide identifies are:

  • Truth, Disinformation, and Propaganda
  • Addiction & the Dopamine Economy
  • Economic & Asset Inequalities
  • Machine Ethics & Algorithmic Biases
  • Surveillance State
  • Data Control & Monetization
  • Implicit Trust & User Understanding
  • Hateful & Criminal Actors

The Ethical OS is a joint creation of the Institute for the Future and Omidyar Network’s Tech and Society Solutions Lab.

The guide has lots of discussion questions that developers can explore. It’s not so much that the questions have right or wrong answers – they are meant to spur consideration of how a new technology meant to help people could be misused, something that all too many developers DON’T think about.

The guide also has suggested questions for board members and trustees to ask themselves about tech development, so they can understand the possible risks to their organizations as a result of use of the app.

My only disappointment with the guide – and it’s a BIG disappointment – is that the section on Economic & Asset Inequalities never mentions accessibility for people with disabilities. When tech tools are not accessible for people who have sight impairments, people who have hearing impairments, people with mobility issues, etc., those tools create economic and asset inequalities. It’s really inexcusable that this wasn’t mentioned even once.

Some other blog posts regarding tech4good and work ethics:

A history of “Smart Valley”

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I recently wrote (and published on my web site) a history of Smart Valley, a 1990s initiative in Silicon Valley, California to create an “information infrastructure” to benefit people, communities, governments & businesses.” Smart Valley was an initiative of Joint Venture: Silicon Valley. It was a 501(c)(6) nonprofit organization focused on creating an “information infrastructure” in Silicon Valley, California – Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Cupertino, San José, Santa Clara and the surrounding area.

Smart Valley’s many activities included coordinating SmartSchools NetDay II and PC Day in Silicon Valley, creating an Internet Technical Guidebook for Schools, leading a Smart Voter campaign to help people learn about upcoming elections by leveraging online sources (one of the first of such initiatives), creating and supporting the Public Access Network (PAN), hosting Connect 96: The Global Summit on Building Electronic Communities, promoting telecommuting, hosting a monthly series of lectures, Smart Talks, that featured “leaders of the growing information infrastructure”, and hosting the annual Smart Valley Corporate Executive Forum “to touch base with the senior executives of our member companies to review the year’s progress and to explain our plans for the future.”

Among its affiliated projects, many of which originated at Smart Valley and were spun off as independent initiatives:

  • ABAG, Association of Bay Area Governments
  • BAMTA, The Broad Alliance for Multimedia Technology and Applications
  • BADGER, The Bay Area Digital Geographic Resource
  • CommerceNet, “the premier industry association for Internet Commerce”
  • Plugged In, one of the first digital divide efforts, working to bring “the tremendous technological resources available in the Silicon Valley to youth in low-income communities” in East Palo Alto (you can see archived versions of this initiative at archive.org by searching pluggedin.org before 2012)
  • SV-PAL, the Silicon Valley Public Access Link, is a non-profit volunteer organization which brings Internet access to the South Bay community including local schools, organizations, businesses and individuals.

Why do I care about the history of Smart Valley? Because I was the internal communications manager for Joint Venture in 1995-1996. Smart Valley is one of Joint Venture’s pioneering initiatives that has disappeared from the Internet and is rarely referenced these days, which is a shame, because it was a pioneering effort. I wasn’t involved with Smart Valley, but I really admired what it was doing.

I would have written the Smart Valley history at Wikipedia, but I’m worried it will just get deleted by some guy who decides it isn’t worthy of a Wikipedia entry…

Also see:

  • Early History of Nonprofits & the Internet
    The Internet has always been about people and organizations networking with each other, sharing ideas and comments, and collaborating online. It has always been interactive and dynamic. And there were many nonprofit organizations who “got” it early — earlier than many for-profit companies. So I’ve attempted to set the record straight: I’ve prepared a web page that talks about the early history of nonprofits and the Internet. It focuses on 1995 and previous years. It talks a little about what nonprofits were using the cyberspace for as well at that time and lists the names of key people and organizations who helped get nonprofit organizations using the Internet in substantial numbers in 1995 and before. Edits and additions are welcomed
  • Lessons from NetAid and onlinevolunteering.org
    Some key learnings from directing the UN’s Online Volunteering service from February 2001 to February 2005, including support materials for those using the service to host online volunteers.
  • United Nations Tech4Good / ICT4D Initiatives
    a list of the various United Nations initiatives that have been launched since 2000 to promote the use of computers, feature phones, smart phones and various networked devices in development and humanitarian activities, to promote digital literacy and equitable access to the “information society,” and to bridge the digital divide. My goal in creating this page is to help researchers, as well as to remind current UN initiatives that much work regarding ICT4D has been done by various UN employees, consultants and volunteers for more than 15 years (and perhaps longer?).
  • Al Gore Campaign Pioneered Virtual Volunteering
    Back in 2000, when Al Gore ran for president, his campaign championed virtual volunteering by recruiting online volunteers to help online with his election efforts. I’ve tried to present some of what his campaign did – this pioneering effort deserves to be remembered, as do some of the lessons from such.

UN Launches High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation

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United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres announced on July 12, 2018, the launch of a High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation. The Panel has a total of 20 members, representing a cross-section of expertise from governments, corporations, civil society, academia and what it calls the “technical community.” Melinda Gates, Co-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Jack Ma, Executive Chairman of Alibaba Group, have been appointed by the Secretary-General as Co-Chairs. It is supported by a small Secretariat funded by donor resources, and based in New York and Geneva, headed by Amandeep Singh Gill of India and Jovan Kurbalija of Serbia.

The Panel will hold its first in-person meeting in late September 2018 and is expected to submit its final report to the Secretary-General within nine months. The Panel will undertake a wide range of public consultations, including at least two public events and an open process inviting global inputs including through online engagement activities starting in September.  Follow on Twitter @UNSGdigicoop for updates.

The Secretary-General has asked the Panel to contribute to the broader public debate on the importance of cooperative and interdisciplinary approaches to ensure a safe and inclusive digital future for all taking into account relevant human rights norms. The Panel is expected to identify policy, research and information gaps, and make proposals to strengthen international cooperation in the digital space.

“Digital technologies make a significant contribution to the realisation of the Sustainable Development Goals and they cut uniquely across international boundaries,” saidGuterres. “Therefore, cooperation across domains and across borders is critical to realizing the full social and economic potential of digital technologies as well as mitigating the risks that they pose and curtailing any unintended consequences.”

This is the latest in a long line of UN initiatives focused on ICT4D and Tech4Good – initiatives looking at how various computer and Internet technologies benefit, or could benefit, individuals, communities, causes and the environment. Various United Nations offices have launched initiatives to promote the use of computers, feature phones, smart phones and various networked devices in development and humanitarian activities, to promote digital literacy and equitable access to the “information society,” and to bridge the digital divide. These UN Tech4Good initiatives are listed here. The first was the Digital Opportunities Task Force (DOT Force), established in July 2000.

AccessU: three days accessible design courses

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Accessible online design – design that welcomes people with disabilities – is a part of addressing the digital divide and meaningful digital inclusion.

John Slatin AccessU is an interactive and communal conference where attendees learn everything needed to integrate accessibility into online products. Presented by the nonprofit Knowbility, AccessU provides methods and resources that can immediately be put to use by designers, developers, project managers, administrators, and anyone who is responsible for online content and development.

Classes at Knowbility’s AccessU include:
Accessibility 101: Beginner’s Basics, Annual Accessibility Legal Update, Accessible Office – Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Accessible PDF Documents, Accessible iOS Development, Building Accessibility into Design, Designing Accessible Forms and Tables, Mobile Accessibility, Accessible User Experience Design Studio, Practical Accessibility Testing Tools for Everyone, Usability Testing for People with Disabilities, and much more.

John Slatin AccessU
Mon, May 14, 2018 – Wed, May 16, 2018
Austin, Texas
https://knowbility.org/programs/accessu/

More than 49 million Americans have some type of disability. One in five people will experience a disability at some point in their lives, and those numbers are sure to increase as the population ages.

People with disabilities want to be able to learn online, to work, to buy things, to attend online classes, to volunteer, to donate and to contribute to their society just as everyone does. And just like other people, they want to use the Web and other online technologies to access information and network with others.

Also note that Title II of the ADA prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in all services, programs, and activities provided to the public by State and local government. That has been interpreted by the courts to include online services and programs.

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