Top Universities Join to Push ‘Public Interest Technology’
"As
technology becomes increasingly pervasive in American life,
universities across the United States have been devising ways to teach
students how to grapple with the consequences on society.
Now,
21 leading universities are banding together to promote their various
programs. On Monday, the schools announced that they had formed a new
organization called the Public Interest Technology University Network.
Members
of the group include Arizona State University, the City University of
New York, Harvard University, Howard University, the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Stanford University and the University of
California, Berkeley. Their goal is to train the next generation of
software engineers, policymakers, civic leaders and social justice
advocates to develop, regulate and use technology for the public good.
In other words, the group aims to both humanize technologists and technologize humanists.
“We think about two halves of the pipeline,” said Alexandra Givens, executive director
of the Institute for Technology Law and Policy at Georgetown Law
School. “One is helping technologists think about the social, ethical,
legal and policy implications of their work.”
