Expanded Prospectus

Research Slide-deck order:

1. Influence of SV tech industry

2. Ideas from psychology about business, entrepreneurship, and doing good

3. Start-up culture and corruption

4. Ideas about total shareholder return versus total societal impact

5. Principles for technologists

6. Case study: Machine learning

   1. How companies intentions differed from reality

7. Freedom of Speech and thought in SV

8. The digital divide - people with needs must influence how technology is built

9. Failing forward - we need to work together to make change and realize that one person’s ideas won’t be the answer

   1. Genuine progress is difficult to predict

Slides I cut out last minute:

Historical lens on philanthropy

The monopoly of SV CEOs on education reform

• This could be a good examples to use in the future, but I didn’t have time to include it in the slide deck, and I kept wanting to talk about how education as a whole leads to better diversity which made my whole argument too broad.

• The ML example is more concise, but in the future, I already have research on this: CEOs of Salesforce, facebook, microsoft, and netflix are involved, and this end-to-end influence represents an “almost monopolistic approach to education reform,”

• Ex: “DreamBox takes elements from animated video games, with some math lessons populated by aliens that whoosh about and animals that cluck. When students complete a math lesson successfully, they earn points that they can use to unlock virtual rewards”

• ... After noticing that he seemed more interested in spending points to customize his avatar than in actually doing math, she put the kibosh on DreamBox. “He’s not doing it at home,” she said.

• Some tech moguls are taking a hands-on role in nearly every step of the education supply chain by financing campaigns to alter policy, building learning apps to advance their aims and subsidizing teacher training.

• These philanthropists seem to have good intentions, but the effectiveness of their technology is questionable. How can research and feedback from teachers, students, and parents be used to improve tech education, and what are the barrier that are preventing improvements form happening?

The most compelling part of this research for me is how technologists can generate ideas and define impact. Given that it’s so difficult for people to listen to others and accept that they’re wrong, how can people overcome these things and build tech that is tangibly better for society.

I’m adding to the discussion through synthesizing the different ideologies around “doing good”: psychology, philosophy, and business. Also, I’m looking at the divide between intention and actual impact and exploring the positive feedback loop that exists when people build technology that divides people. Tech can be built that resists iteration and lets humans not have to be responsible for moral obligations in the short term. Ex: how machine learning leads to echo chambers of opinion and polarization although it provides quick ways of organizing data in the short term. My main message is that we need to be constantly aware of the consequences of the technology we build and work with other people to make them better and counteract our own biases.

The way I organized the concepts in the slide deck seems to work for me. I think I need a more coherent conclusion that relates everything together at the end.

I’ve been most intrigued by texts that talk about phycology concepts that explain human behavior as well as texts that criticize and reframe what companies I’m familiar with in SV are doing: It’s interesting to see how their missions are juxtaposed with certain journalists’ views of their impact

I want to research more into what is not so simple. I gave the impression that freedom of speech and bridging the digital divide is the solution to the problem, but how do we go about having that as a society and in companies and is that even the solution. Also, looking into stakeholder theory, I learned that it was Dr. F. Edward Freeman’s idea. He says that a company is responsible not just to its shareholders, but to everyone that is impacted by its decisions. Satisfying as many of those people as possible is the best way to have success as a company. I want to explore how social good and societal impact can be viewed and analyzed from an economic perspective to help understand this better.

Craig Mcdonald: Stakeholder Theory in Practice: Building better software systems (further research)

• “If you value life in the future, you should preserve the environment by addressing pollution, using sustainable extraction from the biosphere, etc…Presumably, you act in a way that you hope will express your values, and produce an outcome that makes you happy.”

• People need to determine their true values and focus on corporate social responsibility as a whole in the company, not as a separate branch.

Meeting with Brian Quigley (engineering library):

Databases:

Eric - education research

Business source complete

Google books provides a resource to look through an entire book for specific chapters and sections on my concepts

• He thought books would contain a lot of the information I’m seeking

• We found this book for example: https://www.amazon.com/Creating-Good-Work-Leading-Entrepreneurs/dp/0230372031

Search using the terms “systematic review” and “literature review” to consolidate effects of technology in the fields I’m looking at.

CITRIS - Berkeley research center for tech for social good

• “Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society”

• Something I might be interested in getting involved in later in school

• Need to look into this and initiatives like it more

Searchable Thematic Keywords/concepts:

• Silicon valley

• Social responsibility of business

• Startups, technology firms

• Social innovation

• Social good

• Social entrepreneurship

• Social responsibility

• altruism

• Tech for social good

• Technology and Compassion

  • Human centered design

  • Problems with Silicon Valley

    • Capitalism, consumerism

    • Corporate social responsibility, total societal impact

    • Greenwashing

    • Sweatshops/tragedy of the commons

      • Abuse of resources

    • External costs

    • Stakeholder theory

      • How do consumers affect company decisions

      • Digital divide

      • Freedom of speech

  • Concepts from psychology

    • Argumentative theory

    • Sunken cost fallacy

    • Confirmation bias

• Disadvantages of start-up culture

  • Pressure for immediate results

  • self-auditing/not reporting financials

  • Resisting government regulation

  • Harmful ideas that have potential in the short term

  • What consumers/governments can do to regulate startups

• Things companies can do

  • Sustainability

  • Open-source

  • Research-oriented

    • Forwarding scientific knowledge

    • Building things that help us understand the world and ourselves, not just things that seem cool

  • Need-based

  • Legal regulations

  • Customer feedback

  • Awareness of external costs

• Machine learning

  • Criminal justice system

  • Polarization

  • Is ML a way to solve problems

  • Large-scale use of ML

  • Addiction

  • Stakeholder theory

  • Tendency to only want to associate w people like oneself - also included in startups/idea formation - need to listen to other opinions, but it’s hard w social media

• Education

  • Instructional Effectiveness

  • Education technology

  • What people think learning should accomplish versus actual desirable results

    • Information being available to learning vs learning soft skills like teamwork (more desirable)

  • Some approaches seem promising but have failed:

    • Gamification

    • Personalized learning

    • Habit tracking/big data

  • Monopolization of the industry

• Digital divide

• Free Speech in Tech industry

  • Diversity of opinion

  • Democratic process for allowing startups in cities

  • Current government systems

  • Resources for companies to realize their true effects on the world.