Honoring All Expertise: Social Responsibility and Ethics in Tech: featuring Kathy Pham & Friends from the Berkman Klein Community; Berkman Klein Luncheon Series, Harvard University, April 17, 2018

[Video] Berkman Klein Luncheon Series, Harvard University;

Honoring All Expertise: Social Responsibility and Ethics in Tech:
featuring Kathy Pham & Friends from the Berkman Klein Community

"The Ethical Tech Working Group at the Berkman Klein Center will host a series of lighting [sic] talks exploring social responsibility and ethics in tech. Speakers will draw on their perspectives as computer scientists, critical race and gender scholars, designers, ethnographers, historians, lawyers, political scientists, and philosophers to share reflections on what it will take to build more publicly-accountable technologies and how to bridge diverse expertise from across industry and academia to get there."

[Kip Currier: One of the speakers in this video is Ben Green, Computer Science PhD Student, Harvard University. His talk is titled "Travails in CS Academia".]

Ben Green quote:

[8:46 in video] "What was particularly disturbing for me as I entered the [computer science] field was to see the actual dismissal of non-technical voices and non-technical perspectives in the field. 

I had one experience where I heard a fellow graduate student of mine scoff at the idea of a social scientist being an actual scientist. And I had several conversations with faculty members in the department where they told me that the work that I wanted to do that was socially- and policy-minded was not computer science and wasn't worth doing."

Southerners Tore Down Silent Sam. Now Northerners Need to Tear Down Confederate Flags.; HuffPost, August 29, 2018

Alex Pareene, HuffPost; Southerners Tore Down Silent Sam. Now Northerners Need to Tear Down Confederate Flags.

"At a certain point, we stopped telling ourselves about how we freed the United States."

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: what sports have taught me about race in America; The Guardian, August 28, 2018

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, The Guardian;

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: what sports have taught me about race in America

"Athletes who speak out are proclaiming their loyalty to a constitution that demands equality and inclusiveness, not to the government officials who try to undermine those ideals by silencing its critics."

Kelly Marie Tran: I Won’t Be Marginalized by Online Harassment; The New York Times, August 21, 2018

Kelly Marie Tran, The New York Times; Kelly Marie Tran: I Won’t Be Marginalized by Online Harassment

"Editors’ note: The actress deleted her Instagram posts this summer in response to online harassment. Here she speaks out for the first time...

"I want to live in a world where children of color don’t spend their entire adolescence wishing to be white. I want to live in a world where women are not subjected to scrutiny for their appearance, or their actions, or their general existence. I want to live in a world where people of all races, religions, socioeconomic classes, sexual orientations, gender identities and abilities are seen as what they have always been: human beings.

This is the world I want to live in. And this is the world that I will continue to work toward.

These are the thoughts that run through my head every time I pick up a script or a screenplay or a book. I know the opportunity given to me is rare. I know that I now belong to a small group of privileged people who get to tell stories for a living, stories that are heard and seen and digested by a world that for so long has tasted only one thing. I know how important that is. And I am not giving up.

You might know me as Kelly.

I am the first woman of color to have a leading role in a “Star Wars” movie.

I am the first Asian woman to appear on the cover of Vanity Fair.

My real name is Loan. And I am just getting started."

All Eyes on the Presidency; The Atlantic, August 22, 2018

Adam Serwer, The Atlantic; All Eyes on the Presidency

"Manafort and Cohen may see prison time. But even if they are held to account, no one should be under the illusion that the outcomes of their cases on Tuesday legitimize a system of justice in which wealthy people who commit financial crimes can fully expect to get away with them. Trump did not create the rot in this system. He has merely made it obvious."

What Are “Ethics in Design”?; Slate, August 13, 2018

Victoria, Sgarro, Slate; What Are “Ethics in Design”?

"Examples of product design that fail on the ethics front are all too easy to find—like news feeds promoting fake news, ride-hailing companies psychologically exploiting workers, and virtual home assistants perpetuating negative gender stereotypes. It’s not that product designers don’t care about the ethical ramifications of their work—far from it. It’s that, too often, they assume that such considerations fall outside of their job description

Mike Monteiro, co-founder and design director of Mule Design and author of the influential essay “A Designer’s Code of Ethics,” says that this ignorance has become an issue with the rapid change in scope of design over the past decade. “Designers have been running fast and free with no ethical guidelines,” he told me. “And that was fine when we were designing posters and sites for movies. But now design is interpersonal relationships on social media, health care, financial data traveling everywhere, the difference between verified journalism and fake news. And this is dangerous.” 

Increasingly, though, the industry is taking ethics seriously. Every year at SXSW, John Maeda, the global head of computational design and inclusion at Automattic, presents the “Design in Tech Report,” which serves as a kind of State of the Union on design in technology. This year, Maeda focused on inclusion as the future of design. Maeda defines inclusive design as designing products for a broader audience—whether that’s people with disabilities, people living outside of the U.S., people of color, or older people. On his list of “the top 10 most critical issues and challenges currently facing design,” “ethics in design” came in third, behind “design not having a ‘seat at the table’ ” (No. 1), and “diversity in design and tech” (No. 2)."

A conversation with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar at the 2018 Trademark Expo; Director's Forum: A Blog from USPTO's Leadership, August 6, 2018

Guest blog by Linda Hosler, Deputy Program Manager for USPTO partnerships;
A conversation with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar at the 2018 Trademark Expo

"On July 27 and 28, guests poured in to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History to participate in the 2018 National Trademark Exposition. This free biennial event supports the USPTO’s mission of educating the public about the vital role intellectual property protections—in this case trademarks— play in our increasingly competitive global marketplace. More than twenty exhibitors, including government entities, non-profits, small businesses, and corporations from all over the country provided thought-provoking interactive displays and educational workshops.

Keynoting at this year’s expo was NBA All-Star, author, and entrepreneur, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. I had the opportunity to sit down with Abdul-Jabbar to find out what made him the industry giant he is today—not surprisingly, it is much more than his 7 foot 2 inch stature."

'Peanuts' First Black Character Franklin Turns 50; NPR, July 30, 2018

Cecilia Lei and James Delahoussaye, NPR; 'Peanuts' First Black Character Franklin Turns 50

"It was especially defining for a 6-year-old Robb Armstrong, author of Fearless: A Cartoonist's Guide to Life and creator of JumpStart, one of the most widely syndicated black comic strips ever.

"1968 is a very vivid year for me," Armstrong told NPR's Renee Montagne in an interview for Weekend Edition. Two months after King was killed, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Armstrong's older brother also died that year, just 30 days before Franklin's debut.

For Armstrong, a young black boy who declared to his mother at the age of 3 that he was going to be a cartoonist, Franklin's inclusion was extraordinary."