High-Tech Heroes Who Work for the Public Good
It’s time--overdue, actually--to celebrate some heroes and heroines of the Information Age.
In this column, I have repeatedly taken the high-tech industry to task for its lack of vision, leadership and engagement with difficult public issues.
But there are many technically gifted people in the U.S. who are dealing with important national and international problems, and most of them get insufficient credit. The list below is intended as a counterweight to the overabundant and tired lists of the cyber-elite, such as Time magazine’s “Cyber 50” published two weeks ago, and Vanity Fair’s annual list of the “New Establishment.” The people below are the unsung heroes of the digital era.
* Severo Ornstein, Laura Gould, Terry Winograd and Eric Roberts--These four are the founders and backbones of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (https://www.cpsr.org). After 17 years of hard work, CPSR is still the most interesting and substantive public-interest organization in the computing field. Ornstein and Gould, who are husband and wife, are retired from Xerox Corp.’s Palo Alto Research Center; Winograd and Roberts are professors of computer science at Stanford. All are technical leaders in their fields as well as tireless crusaders for the public interest. Also, hats off to Aki Namioka, Marsha Woodbury and others who are keeping CPSR going now. (Disclosure: I was CPSR’s first executive director but left the organization five years ago.)
* Marc Rotenberg, David Sobel, David Banisar of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Jerry Berman of the Center for Democracy and Technology and the folks at the American Civil Liberties Union. Fighting for privacy and freedom of expression in cyberspace is a never-ending struggle, and no one could ask for tougher allies than these guys. EPIC, in particular, has set the benchmark for relentless and principled advocacy on the main issues of public concern about the Internet and computerization.
* Ceasar McDowell, Larry Irving, Nolan Bowie, Oscar Gandy and Lodis Rhodes. No other issue is as important as the “digital divide,” the troubling disparity between people of color in poor communities and the rest of an increasingly wired society. These African American leaders and intellectuals are doing something about it. McDowell, of MIT, is chairman of the Civil Rights Forum on Communications Policy (https://www.civilrightsforum.org/). Irving is assistant secretary of the Department of Commerce and director of the National Telecommunications & Information Administration (https://www.ntia.doc.gov/). Bowie, Gandy and Rhodes are professors at, respectively, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Texas at Austin.
* Anthony Wilhelm and Harry Pachon. Just as the low level of Internet access among African Americans should be a national concern, a similar problem exists among Latinos, the country’s fastest-growing ethnic minority. Wilhelm is director of information technology research and Pachon president of the Tomas Rivera Center, a multistate research program on Latinos and public policy. Wilhelm wrote the center’s 1997 report “Out of Reach: Latinos, Education and Technology in California.”
* Amy Borgstrom, Steve Snow, Bart DeCrem, Richard Civille, Wally Bowen, Sue Beckwith, Ana Sisnett, Jessica Bray, Doug Schuler and everyone who works for community networks. Community networks, the nonprofit movement to bring computers to low-income citizens throughout the U.S., is one of the most promising and inspiring examples of socially responsible computing. There are more than 250 community networks in the U.S., most of them running on a shoestring and the dedication of their leaders.
Borgstrom and Bowen work in poor rural areas in Appalachia and the mountains of North Carolina. DeCrem, Sisnett, Beckwith, Snow and Bray work in poor urban neighborhoods in East Palo Alto, Calif.; Austin, Texas; New Orleans, and Charlotte, N.C. Schuler, in Seattle, has written the definitive book on this movement, “New Community Networks: Wired for Change” (Addison Wesley Longman, 1996).
* Barbara Simons, Anita Borg and Ellen Ullman. Another disparity in computing is the underrepresentation of women in the field. These three are exemplary role models, all technical experts and dedicated to expanding the role of women not only in computing but in public leadership.
Simons is chairman of US/ACM, the public-policy arm of the Assn. for Computing Machinery. Borg is the founder of Systers, a networking and mentoring group for women in computing. Ullman, a professional programmer in San Francisco, is, I believe, the best writer about technology these days. Her book, “Close to the Machine,” (City Lights Books, 1997) brought a fresh, humane, clearheaded and feminist voice to discussions about technology in society.
* Mario Marino and Mitch Kapor. The pair made a lot of money in the computer business, Marino in telecommunications and Kapor as the founder of Lotus Development Corp., and they’ve both used their money to serve public-interest causes. The Marino Institute helps support community networks and democratic initiatives. Kapor co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation and is engaged with issues such as “technorealism.” Each is setting an example for entrepreneurs who have been made wealthy by technology.
* Rachelle Hollander. A lot of people in the public-interest community owe their survival to Hollander, director of the National Science Foundation’s Ethics and Values Studies Program for the last 25 years. As a funder, mentor, role model, hand-holder and more, Hollander has, behind the scenes, been a stalwart for ethics and values in technology at the country’s premier science agency. It hasn’t been easy.
* The Benton Foundation and the John and Mary Markle Foundation. These two organizations, Benton in Washington and Markle in New York, have shaped the agenda for public-interest media in the telecommunications field for the last 30 years. They publish reports, advocate for things such as universal e-mail and phone service, and, in the case of Markle, fund projects that have transformed the nation. Markle’s past president, Lloyd Morrisett, has been one of the most influential figures in U.S. communications in modern times, pioneering public television, educational TV for kids and political participation through new media.
* Ted Smith. Director of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition and chairman of the Campaign for Responsible Technology, the San Jose-based Smith is often portrayed as high-tech’s worst nightmare. But he’s fighting to make the business live up to its reputation as a “clean industry” by pushing laws that protect workers and the environment. It’s no accident that Silicon Valley has the country’s largest collection of Superfund cleanup sites--making chips turns out to be a very polluting business. Smith stands up for citizens and production workers in technology manufacturing plants.
* Jon Postel. And last but not at all least, Postel, who passed away Oct. 16, was longtime director of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority at USC. He was one of the technical “fathers” of the Internet, performing essential services that enabled its phenomenal growth. He was the kind of national hero, an exemplar of selfless service, who rarely gets his due. Without his dedication, the Internet wouldn’t work. But on top of his technical contributions, he was a charming, modest and public-spirited man who will be painfully missed.
The United States is a rich country, but richest most of all in the kind of people represented above. And there are many more like them, people who get up in the morning and go to bed at night thinking about how to make the world a better place. They’re also technically fluent and skilled, belying the stereotype that expertise with technology has little overlap with social conscience. The nation should be grateful.
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Gary Chapman is director of the 21st Century Project at the University of Texas at Austin. His e-mail address is gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu.
