The Story of All Tech Is Human
Why We Exist and Where We Are Headed
"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent." -Calvin Coolidge
Hello, everyone. David Ryan Polgar here, Founder of All Tech Is Human. I wanted to use this space today to share with you why All Tech Is Human exists and where we are headed.
First of all, I am glad that you are reading this. Whether you recently found out about our organization or have been involved with us for years, I am glad that some part of All Tech Is Human resonates with you. Our community here is made up of tens of thousands of people from different backgrounds and perspectives, a beautiful mix of technologists, ethicists, academics, artists, designers, students, attorneys, and everyone in between.
Meshed together to learn, cross-pollinate, and collaborate.
That is entirely by design.
And that is one of the main reasons why All Tech Is Human exists and needs to exist: our typical approach to tackling thorny tech & society issues doesn’t work anymore. We need an interdisciplinary approach that understands the broader public, rapidly distributes knowledge to key stakeholders and levers of change, and can move at the speed of tech.
That’s why I launched All Tech Is Human in 2018, a few months after coining the phrase in a 2017 piece. We needed to be more participatory, less top-down, more agile, and capable of distributing collective intelligence and insight across a multistakeholder network while moving quickly.
Easier said than done, of course. Like a Rubik’s Cube, it involves moving interconnected parts to make progress, and progress happens through stages of activity:
Stage 1: Shift the narrative and build a cohesive multistakeholder, multidisciplinary community that can understand important values, tensions, tradeoffs, and best practices.
Stage 2: Utilize the power of a global network to inform and influence key levers of change. Have a tech future that is better aligned with the public interest by having a structure that offers crucial insight and involvement. All Tech Is Human will evolve into a necessary component to speed up the flow of information between stakeholders across civil society, government, industry, and academia.
The shift involves All Tech Is Human being seen less like a civil society organization and more as a complex adaptive system that is designed to understand community sentiment, provide access to an extensive interdisciplinary network, and mobilize activity.
The key throughline through all of my previous work that has helped shape All Tech Is Human is: informed decision-making requires broad participation and perspective. In my life, as you will read below, I have straddled between grassroots and elite communities and seen firsthand how we require a greater connection and open line of communication between those with enthusiasm and great ideas (grassroots) and those with power and influence (elite).
One reason, in my opinion, that we are not able to make as much forward movement on glaring tech & society issues is that our traditional approach is still very much top-down thinking. Everyone impacted by technology deserves a seat at the proverbial table, and, just as important, our participation is what also creates the needed understanding around values, tensions, and tradeoffs.
This second stage builds on the relational infrastructure we’ve laid down, conducive environments for solution-making we’ve helped create, and a large network that we have numerous touchpoints with.
In addition, the very phrase, “All Tech Is Human,” gets at our underlying philosophy that technology is not an independent factor outside of our control. This is an essential point, since many of the major voices that are steering the current conversation and overall narrative around AI have a tendency to treat emerging technology as if it is on a separate evolutionary track, as opposed to the sum of our decisions.
All Tech Is Human’s aim, since I launched it in 2018, has been about reasserting our agency through collective understanding, involvement, and action as we tilt our tech future in a human-centered direction.
The urgency couldn’t be clearer:
If you think that nobody is driving our tech future forward, that’s just a convenient marketing ploy to absolve people of the inherent moral responsibility for the technology that we design, develop, and deploy.
Our tech future is being driven in an anti-human direction, as opposed to a pro-human direction that values technology for its ability to enhance our lives on an individual and societal level.
I’ve spent years focused on Stage 1 with All Tech Is Human, and now we are heading into Stage 2. But to fully understand All Tech Is Human, I wanted to back up and let you know about my backstory and how it makes our organization unique.
Some of our values include:
Connecting any dialogue about the design and deployment of new technologies with the impact on people, communities, and society
Fostering a proactive and solution-focused approach to understanding and addressing any Responsible Tech issues
Celebrating unique and interdisciplinary professions and perspectives that extend the boundaries of the Responsible Technology field
Affecting change through different levers of power – education, policy, and participation. Elevating the work of organizations and institutions globally that are committed to the notion of Responsible Tech
It is important to note that All Tech Is Human is focused on the third step of how we typically go about solving a problem:
STEP 1: Understanding that there is a problem
Organizations and initiatives focused on this step build awareness campaigns. These are crucial because a person isn’t motivated to solve a problem if they don’t perceive that there is a problem.
STEP 2: Understanding why we have a problem
Organizations and initiatives focused on this step conduct research and release white papers to understand the root causes of a problem. This step is essential because you can’t start solving a problem if you don’t know how to approach it.
STEP 3: Solution-building
This is the step that All Tech Is Human is generally focused on. Most people in our community already know we have a “tech problem.” In addition, our broad network is filled with experts doing valuable research. Our focus is on this last step because it is the area where society is often stuck. In my opinion, what we require is a paradigm shift in our approach.
Why Is the Direction of Our Tech Future Important?
Back in 2012, I was an attorney and educator who was becoming deeply interested in the interplay between human behavior and technology development, with our history and values being embedded into our technology, and from the other direction, how social media and emerging technology were impacting how we communicated with one another, saw the world, and even felt about ourselves.
For me, that was a wake-up call to be actively involved in shaping the future and shifting the general narrative that technology is neutral (it’s not) to one that emphasizes that every piece of technology carries human intent and consequence. (In the early years, I was asked repeatedly why someone with a law background was “getting involved in tech.” Today, I am surrounded by attorneys involved in Responsible Tech, especially in the field of Trust & Safety. To me, it was always painfully obvious: some backgrounds are great for solving problems, while others lean towards finding problems. And you can’t solve a problem if you can’t see it.)
On a personal level, numerous incidents solidified the urgency to get involved. One involved receiving a friend request on Facebook from a high school acquaintance, only to find out from a friend that he died shortly after (before I accepted). Another key moment was being stuck all day in a waiting room for jury duty, having forgotten my phone, but feeling phantom rings in my pocket. The latter incident inspired me to deliver a TEDx in 2013 about feeling this onset of digital distraction, which led to companies and media outlets reaching out my way.
I knew I had something important to add to the conversation, but didn’t have a clear pathway to effect change. I was an outsider wanting in. This early experience informed the setup of All Tech Is Human, recognizing the importance of onramps for new voices to get plugged into the ecosystem. Connecting a broad range of voices to traditional power structures (which can be quite insular) is a central element of All Tech Is Human.
So starting in 2012, I set out to write and speak about how technology was impacting us from an ethical, legal, and emotional level. There wasn’t a clear path; in one of my first speaking gigs, an older gentleman asked me about his computer problems, and an entrepreneur asked me for website SEO tips. This was a pre-techlash era when tech boosterism was all the rage, and there was a Pollyanish sense that the rise of the web would lead to a more informed citizenry and the spreading of social media would coincide with the spread of democracy.
To me, it was crystal clear that the overall direction of tech was divorced from the wants and needs of the general public. Because there have always been people warning about the impact of technology and social media, society often treated these individuals as critics of technology, as opposed to necessary participants in a conversation that requires diverse perspectives in order to have a better understanding of a complex problem.
In other words, having a technologist, political scientist, and ethicist in the same room should be a requirement, not a novelty. [Check out System Error.] We still live in a time of hyper-individualism, where we look towards one person to have answers to a complex problem. I think that is wrongheaded and the antithesis of how All Tech Is Human is designed.
The Rise of Tech Ethics
One component of shifting the narrative involved the importance of language. When I first started speaking and writing about the impact of technology, I was still being placed in the “gadget guy” bucket that TV programs and media outlets commonly had. The term “technology” carries a strong connotation with being a technologist (I’m not), and I was often talking about tech ethics. This is when the label “tech ethicist” got applied to me, which I then embraced and helped popularize and define. This was crucial in helping to open the Overton Window slightly, paving the way for a profession and a shift in the narrative.
I wanted to emphasize the need for interdisciplinary thinking, highlighting that ethics, psychology, sociology, law, and public policy are just as important as engineering when it comes to responsible tech development.
On a personal level, my career was starting to take off with writing, speaking, and consulting opportunities. People were telling me to hit the road and write a book. I met with a well-known talent agency that puffed me up with a long-term plan of book deals and rising speaking fees, and got involved with a TV pitch.
But there was always something nagging at me: sure, getting flown around and treated nicely feeds the ego and bank account, but, in my opinion, it wasn’t getting at the heart of the problem: we didn’t need another lone wolf thought leader, we needed community.
In my mind, I have always viewed my work with building All Tech Is Human as interrelated with our crisis of connection. That’s why I always try to emphasize that the heart is just as important as the head when we are dealing with tech & society issues. After all, we’re not walking CVs. We’re people who intimately feel the effects of technology and deeply care about its impact on us as individuals, our loved ones, society at large, and future generations.
Community is something I have always respected, and community-building is something that I have been nurturing for over twenty years. In 2015, I co-founded the Digital Citizenship Summit, which held its first gathering at the University of Saint Joseph in the Fall of 2015, and then was held at Twitter headquarters in San Francisco (RIP) in the Fall of 2016. I knew I had a knack for bringing together groups that didn’t normally mingle, which I have always viewed as essential to tackling hard problems.
My experience with the Digital Citizenship Summit laid a lot of the foundation for what would become All Tech Is Human. It was clear that people hungered for community and conducive environments for solution-making.
The Head Versus the Heart
Being a speaker and occasional media commentator, I was well attuned to taking points. What I found interesting, however, was that subtle environmental differences dramatically impacted how people would talk about issues. In other words, if you put someone in an environment where they feel the expectation of sounding smart and impressing people, they will naturally speak with ten-cent words and a stiffer demeanor.
In my opinion, this is a great disservice. Emerging technology is not just an issue to be thought about, but felt. That’s why in June 2017, I launched a monthly live show in NYC and weekly podcast called Funny as Tech; we discussed tech ethics inside of a comedy theater. You’d be amazed by how much that affected the answers that guests would give. Instead of delivering their talking points that would be typical in other formats, they had permission to talk about their reflexive feelings on a topic.
Our tagline was: “Our relationship with technology is messy…let’s discuss!” This learning about the difference between how one intellectually thinks about an issue versus how it viscerally makes one feel is something I have carried with me to All Tech Is Human.
Straddling Multiple Communities
An interesting aspect of my life that has stayed with me to inform All Tech Is Human is the recognition that there is a wide gulf between the elite and grassroots structures, which I believe is a major source of why society is not more successful in tackling complex issues. In my opinion, the rise of the web starting in the 1990s brought about a sea change in the expectation of how the public contributes, but most of our structures for implementing change are still very hierarchical and exclusive.
In my life, I have straddled both of these communities. For example, I now live in Manhattan and often get invited into insulated spaces where I can wax poetic over smoked Old-Fashioneds, but I am also still a guy who grew up in Upstate New York with no clear pathway into elite structures, who, through grit and perseverance, created my pathways. That will always stay with me.
My experience as an outsider breaking in helped solidify the need for illuminated pathways for all of the voices that should be part of the discussion.
My experience straddling multiple communities and seeing firsthand how traditional power structures tend to be insulated and unaware of how the general public feels about an issue has helped inform All Tech Is Human's design that allows for broad participation that accesses needed insight and ideas.
My experience helping establish and popularize being a tech ethicist gave me an important understanding of how to holistically approach the creation and expansion of the Responsible Tech ecosystem, which we did by defining the field through our Responsible Tech Guide (first released in September 2020), elevating the career path through our Responsible Tech Job Board, and building a multistakeholder, multidisciplinary community through our Responsible Tech Summits, Mixers, and livestreams.
In other words, you can’t solve a problem if you can’t see a problem. And you can’t understand a pain point if you aren’t surrounded by people’s pain. That’s why I am the one behind the screen who has now sifted through over twelve thousand applications to participate in our large Slack community. Sure, it takes a lot of time and would typically be done by someone other than the founder. But to me, those applications offer an essential window into how people feel about the complex tech & society issues we are facing. They often let me know their struggle. It all informs the work we do.
Founding All Tech Is Human in 2018
Which brings me up to 2018, the year that All Tech Is Human was founded. In March 2018, I put together a panel conversation on the misaligned interests between tech companies and those on their platforms. Laurie Segall, a technology correspondent for CNN, was one of the panelists (she was an earlier guest on Funny as Tech). A few days before the event, the Cambridge Analytica fiasco rocked Facebook and created a strong interest in our gathering. Furthermore, Laurie was able to secure the first post-Cambridge Analytica interview with Mark Zuckerberg to take place the day before our event. Everything went off without a hitch, and it became clear that there was a need to weave together different stakeholders and build up a community.
Following this event, I decided to try and put together a larger summit. I had been having earlier conversations with Thoughtworks, a company with a large social impact commitment, and they agreed to provide their space for 200 people for a Fall gathering. Here is the LinkedIn post aiming to gather interest. One of the individuals who saw this post, Paula Goldman, had been seeing some of my tech ethics work and reached out. Paula was with Omidyar Network at the time, and connected me with Yoav Schlesinger (also with Omidyar Network at the time), who came to support what was called All Tech Is Human: a Summit on Ethical Tech.
Despite a limited budget, the gathering quickly sold out as we had individuals fly in from across the country and a few from Europe. I recognized right away that the framing of All Tech Is Human resonated on a deeper, more emotional level than if this were from a traditional center or institute. Our underlying philosophy is right in our name, and that runs counter to the typical Silicon Valley ethos that can often view technology as an independent factor and tends to see technology as a fix for everything.
All Tech Is Human operates on a different frequency.
For our inaugural summit, some of our speakers included Douglas Rushkoff (who, like Laurie, had been a guest on Funny as Tech), Kathy Pham, John C. Havens, and Sherine Kazim—the latter who would become an advisor for All Tech Is Human and now a colleague. We also had involvement from DotEveryone (RIP), a great organization out of the UK that had a shared ethos with All Tech Is Human.
The success of the summit allowed me to get some additional small funding from Omidyar Network to set up four gatherings in 2019 (two in NYC, one in SF, and one in Seattle). At these five gatherings, there was a common question that I was asked over and over that effectively stated, “I want to add my voice and be part of the solution. But how? Do I belong with my background? How can I find the others?”
On a personal level, my wife (Leslie) and I committed to moving from West Hartford, Connecticut, to NYC—a city that I viewed as embodying the diverse composition of backgrounds (tech, media, advocacy, philanthropy, policy) that is best fit for All Tech Is Human’s vibe. We started renting a shoebox apartment and had a plan to fix up our house and put it on the market within a year. Leslie’s support and faith in the concept have been instrumental, as it required trusting the heart over the head.
In February 2020, I put together a gathering at Thoughtworks on how we can build a cohesive Responsible Tech ecosystem. In an attribute that has served to establish and grow our organization, so many people showed up wanting to help. And since at this time All Tech Is Human was comprised of me, advisors, and volunteers, I needed all the help I could get.
And then Covid came in March 2020 and put a wrinkle in the plans. I packed my bags and moved full-time back to Connecticut. For a silver lining, the lack of in-person gatherings caused me to lean into livestreams, which helped grow a global community. My plan of action was to try and grow the grassroots All Tech Is Human community as a funded organization. In hindsight, I wish I had experience in a unique world of non-profits. What I had was a good idea, perseverance, and, most importantly, the insight of the community.
The community was speaking loud and clear in wanting illuminated pathways into this nascent ecosystem. Who should I contact? What organizations can I get involved with? What are the career pathways?
The community clearly needed something like the Responsible Tech Guide, which effectively helps map the ecosystem. I put together a pitch that was turned down. In my mind, since I was surrounded by people telling me a clear pain point, it seemed mindboggling to be told by a prominent funder that there was no need for something like the Responsible Tech Guide. But as someone who was straddling between the elite and the grassroots, it was readily apparent that there was a major need—they just couldn’t feel it.
I could feel it. The rejection, of course, can set you off course. “Are they right? Am I off my rocker?” Personally, I have a great deal of dissonance in my life as I straddle between these two very different worlds. Constantly inflated by stories about how All Tech Is Human helped individuals find their purpose, and regularly deflated by the somewhat degrading process of raising funds for an organization.
So in the summer of 2020, stuck at home in Connecticut during the lockdown, I set out to just create the Responsible Tech Guide. This is again where the community came to the rescue, as I put out a call for a working group and volunteers. Despite a very shaky grasp on graphic design, I opened up an account on Canva and brewed a pot of coffee. And in a moment of mania that might make the ghost of Jack Kerouac proud, I worked for two straight days typing away at my laptop. The first Responsible Tech Guide was released in September and created a wave of activity.
The moral of the story: always trust the clear needs of the community over the opinions of those in insulated spaces. Getting turned down was disheartening and certainly made me question whether I was on the right path, but I am glad I listened to the community. That little Responsible Tech Guide has led to numerous new voices getting involved in the ecosystem, new organizations being launched, and altering the narrative for the next generation that now sees themselves as proactive change agents in creating a better tech future.
So in May of 2021, Leslie and I moved full-time to Manhattan (unexpected twist, it was very easy to sell a house then). In June, Michelle Shevin from Ford Foundation became the first person to fully sign and support All Tech Is Human. In her words, we were building “the center of gravity” for the movement. Shortly after, I met with Vilas Dhar of The Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, who signed on to support. (In our breakfast meeting, he asked, “David, I know many parts of this elephant, but what’s the elephant?” As someone who thinks in analogies and metaphors, that’s my kind of thinker.)
With support coming in, we had a liftoff. The needs of the community, which were understood by having my ear to the ground and not being swallowed by elite circles, proved right.
So the lesson I have taken from the last thirteen years of being involved in the movement towards a better tech future is that you can’t understand a problem if you don’t understand the broader community, and you can’t solve a problem if you don’t involve the community. To have a human-centric future, we need to have a human-centered approach.
This very community that has been built creates the needed resilience we need to make it through this current moment of disruption. Solving hard tech & society issues is not just about white papers, but also about shifting mindsets and planting seeds for the next generation.
Let’s do this, together.
-David | drop me an email to let me know your ideas
