Als sociaal werker leerde Wilneida Negron dat ze kwetsbare mensen kon helpen door contact te leggen met andere experts en bruggen te bouwen. Ook met technologie, want:

when applied in ways that serves the public interest – like helping to connect vulnerable communities to vital information and resources, and building movements – technology could be one of those bridges.

Technologie als brug

Steeds meer mensen realiseren zich dat onze moderne technologie, van smartphone tot het surveillance-kapitalisme van Facebook en Google, veel negatieve effecten heeft. Maar er zijn dus lichtpuntjes. Technology for Good, zeg maar. Die dit soort problemen kunnen helpen oplossen:

[a] loophole in Facebook’s API allowed law enforcement to monitor the social media accounts of young men of color I counseled after they were released from detention, and without their knowledge. (After pressure from advocates, Facebook fixed this glaring privacy problem in 2016.) And how the low-income families I was assisting, already dealing with limited broadband access, were plagued by online ads for predatory loans whenever they tried to search for information online. For these youth of color and low-income families, their experience of technology and the internet was already being shaped by their race, gender, and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Verbinden voor betere technologie

En de kennis en ervaring van andere niet-technische specialisaties helpt nu om technologie eerlijker te maken:

More recently, this curiosity and desire to build connection brought me to work with computer scientists to develop technical solutions to algorithmic discrimination . As computer scientists were trying to figure out how to codify concepts of “fairness” in algorithmic decision-making tools, we knew we needed to seek the expertise of racial justice advocates, criminal justice reformers, and the civil and human rights communities to define specific fairness criteria based on real-life cases and issues.

Dus geen “move fast and break things” maar juist “Move carefully and purposely, and embrace complexity.” Mooi!