02/07/2018

New Group Takes on Tech’s Addictive Tendencies

How one organization is gaining its footing by launching an awareness campaign

Some of the people who helped Silicon Valley build the technology that we use every day are raising fundamental questions about its impact. To underline the point, they launched a new group this week to push back against the worst elements of that technology.

The Center for Humane Technology counts an array of former technologists and executives associated with firms such as Facebook, Google, Mozilla and NVIDIA as its cofounders. And the group wants to rebuff the abuses of modern technology—abuses which largely appear in the form of the theft of attention and in the addictive nature of the devices.

Tristan Harris, a former Google employee also known for founding the startup Apture, will head the new group as its executive director. Other cofounders include former Mozilla designer Aza Raskin, whose father, Jef, helped create the Apple Macintosh; early Facebook investor Roger McNamee, who has emerged as a critic of the company he financially supported; and Randy Fernando, who both worked at NVIDIA and ran a nonprofit focused on mindfulness issues.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Associations Now.