Why Thoughtful Technology Requires Everyone’s Attention- A Q&A with Darlene Damm (Part 1)
If we want to redo, revisit and re-imagine all the broken things that this tailspin of a time in history is exposing, it’s time for more of us to think and talk about technology and the future. In a new reality where we have virtually celebrated the birthdays of our loved ones, where we rely on screens to educate young children, and a cybersecurity issue cuts off our gas, inspires us to panic-buy and then we’re OK again — the technology we rely on to do those things (including freak out) matters even more. Even though things are clearing and giving way for in-person interaction, most of our lives are permanently intertwined with the tech we use to live those lives.
As you may have picked up on, I’ve been thinking about this. I don’t identify as a technologist but I have dabbled in related intersections in the past years. I can see and feel how fast things are and will be changing. In one corner, beautiful connections are happening that spur innovation that save lives and keep us whole. On the other end you have the dark side using it as a tool to incite fear and chaos. I don’t think those of us who use tech-enabled tools to order groceries or scroll through Instagram and TikTok realize how it’s truly changing every aspect of our lives and the world around us. I’m not sure we know what’s really coming. But we should. Or at least spend some of our time online thinking about it.
To help me understand this, I started chatting with my dear bad-ass friend Darlene Damm who is currently Faculty Chair and Leader of Social Impact at Singularity University. Singularity University was founded over ten years ago to help the world use exponential technologies (Darlene explains this later. Read on!) to solve our biggest social problems. I could think of no one better to help translate technology at its best and worst. Below is a Q&A exchange we had.
[PLEASE NOTE — Since it was a longer conversation worth having, I have broken this up into two posts. I hope you will find it as thought provoking as I did!]
ME: What inspired you to journey from being a history major at Stanford to now thinking about the impact of exponential technologies?
Darlene Damm [DD]: I grew up in a small rural town along the California Coast that had only a few thousand people living in it. I made my way to Stanford for undergrad where I studied History and had internships and part-time jobs working for nonprofits and the World Bank in international relations. I then worked at Volunteers in Asia, the Asia Society, a nonprofit in Myanmar, got my degree in International Affairs and then spent nearly ten years at Ashoka — the world’s largest organization for social innovators. I wanted to work at places that empowered people to solve their own problems and solved the root causes of problems rather than places that just temporarily helped people out.
In 2011, I began to wonder if technology could help us solve social challenges and signed up for a 10 week program at Singularity University designed to help people launch startups that would use technology to help over a billion people over ten years. During that time, I helped create a startup that launched the drone transport industry for healthcare applications (think — using drones to transport critical medical supplies to remote areas in the world) and also worked on a second startup to democratize space technology. I then joined Singularity University as one of their Faculty Chairs and currently lead their impact strategy, which is focused on using exponential technologies to solve social challenges as well as respond to new problems created by technologies.
ME: I’ve heard it said by a few thinkers in this space, that technology itself is neutral. But it can be used as a force for good and/or darkness. What is your view?
DD: At one level this is true — for example someone could use a car to drive someone to the hospital or they could use the car to run someone over. There is also the possibility that you could accidentally run someone over while trying to drive someone to the hospital. I think this is the case for almost all technologies and tools we use — so much of it depends on how humans use it.
However, in addition to that, it’s important to note that technology itself has fundamentally changed over the last decade in ways that make it more confusing, powerful and scalable. So while humans are still responsible for how it’s used, the power of the technology has dramatically increased, we don’t know it’s longer term consequences, and billions of people can now use it.
On the one hand this opens up a world where billions of people can increasingly solve their own problems as well as collaborate with others to solve previously unsolvable problems. At the same time, those same people could use technology in ways that accidentally hurt others because they didn’t understand its power, or intentionally use it to harm others in a world where the regulators have not caught up.
ME: At it’s best, what do you see technology doing to support people, support humanity?
DD: Exponential technologies follow a trend where the cost of tech goes down, while their sophistication increases, and as they are digital, they can scale to billions of people. In this sense, technology gives an advantage of solving complex problems that we don’t yet have answers for (curing disease for example) while also allowing us to do that in a more affordable way. As we have moved into a more digital world, the trend of falling prices means that we can actually produce our products, services and even energy at low marginal costs or even for free. This means we can make food, water, shelter, energy, transportation and more available to everyone. There is also a lot happening in access to information, including music, art and entertainment. As we rebuild industries digitally — that is the promise. To do it, we need to think about both the business models and the economic models.
For example, it might initially cost money to develop a robot that can grow food. But over time, we can build more robots that grow food, or robots that build other robots to grow food and bring the cost of growing food down dramatically. So then we need to ask -who benefits? Are we going to pass on those low costs to the consumer or will the owner of the robots keep it all? What about the farmworkers that might be replaced by robots? Are we helping farmworkers today build and become the owners of future farm technology to ensure they are not left out? Do we have technology training programs for farmers or innovation centers and accelerators in rural farming communities? If a robot company uses data from farm workers to train its robots, are those farmworkers being paid for sharing their data or receiving stock in the new robot company? Technology creates tremendous value over time, and we need to think about how that value is fairly shared with all who contribute to it.
Wanna keep going? Check out Part 2!
