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 progra­mmes. On Monday, the sc­h­o­ols announced that they had formed a new organisation 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.”

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