I look forward to the most collaborative year humans have ever seen. Though as I type this diary entry of a woman in business learning to speak tech, I am not particularly thrilled with human collaboration as it stands. If I am honest, I think we can do a lot better.
In recent months, I have flexed my collaborative muscles to learn how to do tech better: studying data practices, working with incredible women leaders at education funds and economic centers, and perfecting my pitch with innovation hubs. Whilst I will be the first to admit that I still have a lot to learn, my notes from these years as a tech startup leader show me that the world of tech has a lot to learn, too.
I will skip the overwhelmingly dramatized state of the world we have been doom scrolling on and head straight to the call for help that I know our species needs in order to continue. Arguably, tech is not going anywhere so can we at least use it as a vehicle for social change? There have got to be some other industry disruptors out there that feel the same way, right?
Tech Is Not Going Anywhere. So Let's Make It Better.
Let's face it, I would not be able to soap box as a thought leader on the topic of using tech for good without the use of all sorts of tech; from the laptop I type on, to the project management software my team and I are communicating on, all the way to the particles that deliver this cheeky entry to your digital doorstep. Tech is here to stay but why can it not be better, more collaborative, and for that matter actually inclusive?
Whilst certain tech billionaires and their followers track private aircraft in their quest to follow the next publicity stunt, we women of the world are sitting here going: WHAT THE ACTUAL F*CK? Who cares where this guy's jet is? We have bigger catfish to fry.
Modern Day Tech Is Not Collaborative. It Is Extractive.
Spoiler alert: big tech has not been built for anyone but the early pioneers of the internet's wild west frontier. They and their forefathers (literally) have been claiming credit for the ideas of less known innovators for generations.
Take Hedy Lamarr. Hedy was known for her late 1930s Hollywood star power but also for developing a radio guidance system, also known as frequency hopping technology, which is early internet infrastructure, for Allied forces during World War II. Women in tech: vintage, glam, AND tech savvy.
A collaborative nod must also be paid to Dr. Philip Emeagwali for his early work integrating much of this same science with the modern version of what we now know as search technology. Dr. Emeagwali stands in a long line of innovators including Granville T. Woods (1856-1910), whose patent was bought by Alexander Graham Bell, most commonly credited as inventor of the telephone but it was really Woods who was key to its development. And Marie Van Brittan Brown (1922-1999), a nurse who developed a prototype for closed circuit television security, or as we more commonly call it, CCTV. You can thank Ms. Brown for your smart doorbell and any other tech trinkets that allow you to monitor your own home.
The pattern is clear: the people who built foundational technologies were far more diverse than the people who got credit and capital from them. If we want tech for good, we have to start by acknowledging who actually built the good tech in the first place.
The Way Silicon Valley Built Success Is Not Consent Based
But what if we framed the use of the internet in a fully different way? Like what if it was generative instead of its current use of being absolutely, 100% extractive? Aside from the innovator grabs that have historically shown the white guys get to market first with groundbreaking tech, what if we shifted the way tech was built altogether? This, of course, would mean we need to shift who holds the power of the tech, the check book and the mighty microphone.
The way most of Silicon Valley has built their success has been on extractive vibes. There, I said it. Modern day tech is in no way collaborative. It is exploitative at best and the pattern does not just start in the dm's. The way this "could be technology collaboration" fails is because it has not been built to better the human species; it has been built to take and take and take. I think we can do collaboration better. I KNOW we can.
Three Ways We Can Do Tech Better
1. Be More Inclusive as We Build Tech
This is an obvious solution but it has to be said over and over AND over again. Creating advanced solutions for humans to do better tomorrow cannot just be band aids for today. We could certainly do better TODAY to ensure a variety of voices and differentiated lived experiences are part of the build of that technology. But we have to ensure the moves today stick for tomorrow and the next day.
Take AI's freshest tech for example. Super cool way to shave minutes, hours, maybe even days off of our busy workloads. But I am curious about this technology reflecting the insights of not just the white men who have historically run tech and been chiefly responsible for its development. Sentient robots seem mildly helpful, if even a bit scary, but even scarier are they if they have the emotional bandwidth of a narrow demographic. I would suggest a swipe left on that.
2. Build Better Pipelines to Talent
We can be so much more collaborative in the process of sourcing talent by building better pipelines to these jobs in the first place. I was recently talking with a woman in tech, a Black woman, and she shared with me just how far we are missing the mark of diversity from those entering the workforce in tech and related sciences.
She reports directly from her post in tech that whilst women, particularly women of color, are the most educated group in the US at present, she does not feel like she has stable footing in her upper management role. Why, if women are becoming so well trained and educated, is it so hard to get a good, secure seat at the tech table? And what about that good old fashioned meritocracy?
We also do not yet have a space designed by, built for, and with the safety of women in mind to commune online. B4G exists to change that. Certainly there are niche groups doing important work: communities that center collaboration, platforms for financial literacy, spaces for sex positivity through romance literature, civic engagement groups. But because women have not been taken into account when large platforms were created, there are zero non-niched online forums where women can show up safely to just exist and speak about things which matter to us without the worry we will be attacked, blamed, or shamed for doing so.
3. Share Tech Resources with the Next Generation
The third way I can see us collaborating in the world of tech better has to do with diligently preparing the youth for success. And I do not just mean buying them more tokens for games. Let's assist the survival of next generations that will undoubtedly be tech centered by creating programs for young people at various socioeconomic levels. Big tech could do well to build stronger pipelines into their hiring pool by offering access to not just computers, tablets, and smartphones but ensuring high speed internet access is as accessible as clean water. But, as we know, we are also still working on that.
This Is a Call to Action
Whilst this entry might be read as an attempt to save all the tech whales, it is really a call to action around how we use tech daily, what we are willing to put up with, and how we equip ourselves and our future selves for interactions that actually serve us instead of us serving the internet beast. As it has been built, we are quite literally working for an extractive model.
And it does not have to be this way.
It may well be wise for us as a culture, as a species, to invest in diversity and thereby true collaboration in all things innovation because technology is not leaving the planet anytime soon. If you would like to join our mission through B4G in building the safest and most important marketplace on the internet for women, I personally invite you to learn more about what we are building. We know there is always a way to do better.
We encourage you to try doing something different today; particularly if you identify yourself as a thought leader, industry disruptor, or business activist who wants to see the world change to a more equitable place. We know that when women have more access to information around money, sex and politics, and a safe place to make those exchanges of thought into action, we see ripple effects in our own lives, with our families, and in our work places.
Love,
Rose
