Perspectives on Public Purpose: Virtual Conference 2022

Overview

Overview

TAPP’s Perspectives on Public Purpose Week (April 12-14) will showcase in-depth research projects completed by the TAPP fellowship cohort. The week of virtual events will include a keynote from Belfer Center and TAPP Project Faculty Director and 25th U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter. The week-long of sessions will explore tech and public purpose topics including the digital divide, deep tech entrepreneurship, data sharing and platform urbanism and others. See below for additional information on specific sessions.

Tuesday, April 12 

• Design From the Margins: Centering the Decentered

• Lab to Impact: Scientists and Entrepreneurs Building Deep Tech Ventures

Wednesday, April 13

• Bending the Arc: Operationalizing Tech and Public Purpose in 2022 -- Keynote Session 

• Recommendations and Democracy: A Way Forward

• Data Sharing and Platform Urbanism: Contested Digital Sovereignty in the Emergent ‘Smart City’

Thursday, April 14

• Current and Future Threats of the Digital Divide

• UNREAL: Disinformation, Technology Policy, and the Future of Governance

Please Note: All events require pre-registration which can be found on individual event pages. 

Sessions

Sessions

The following six online series will engage audiences in conversations on a wide variety of public purpose issues including: digital divide, deep tech entrepreneurship, data sharing and platform urbanism and many others.

All sessions will be recorded and will be posted following the event. 

Tuesday, April 12th

Design From the Margins: Centering the Decentered

There is a far reaching demand to design technology for marginalized people. We need to take this idea out of abstraction and show that it can work for everyday communication technologies in the same way that it has worked in countless other contexts.  In many industries there are successful examples of design patterns that focus on the “extremes”, “outliers” and “edge cases” (which is what marginalized people are often seen as in design) as a fundamental core - this should be applied to communication technologies.

With experts from technology and human rights fields,  including company representatives from Grindr and WhatsApp, TAPP fellow Afsaneh Rigot will discuss her new research documenting the impact of tech on LGBTQ people in the Middle East and North Africa and a new design methodology – Design From the Margins — that looks to provide established ways to center and mitigate harms faced by at-risk and marginalized people from the weaponization of tech.

• Event Recording

Lab to Impact: Scientists and Entrepreneurs Building Deep Tech Ventures

At first glance, scientists and entrepreneurs might seem very different. However, over the past few years these groups have started to collaborate more closely. This unusual, interdisciplinary “couple” made a bet on building companies based on scientific discoveries, developing electric cars, exploiting novel therapeutic modalities (mRNA) and launching rocket ships. A a result, venture capital began to pour billions of dollars into this new approach, now called “deep tech”.

Where does innovation come from? How can R&D discoveries can be translated into new ventures? This fireside chat hosted by TAPP fellow Livio Valenti will discuss the journey of a scientist and an entrepreneur in bringing new scientific breakthrough from the lab to those who need it the most. 

• Event Recording

Wednesday, April 13th

Bending the Arc: Operationalizing Tech and Public Purpose in 2022

This year, like the last, bore witness to a fundamental concept well captured by W. B. Yeats: “things fall apart; the center will not hold.”  

We have lived through historic and extraordinary moments over the last several months alone, including the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, a new wave of the COVID pandemic, the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war, high inflation, and rising political extremism. Although formidable, it is in these moments that we are provided a window of opportunity to create profound change—to set in motion policies and practices that will help bend the arc of progress towards public good. And of course, technological innovation plays a central role in this process, having the ability to both help and harm progress.  

In this session, Belfer Center Director, 25th U.S. Secretary of Defense, and TAPP Faculty Director Ash Carter will lead a discussion with our 2021-2022 TAPP Fellows to look at the role technology played this year in a few key priority areas: crisis management, consumer safety, inclusion and equity, national competitiveness, and the information ecosystem. The session will also dive into ways we can improve the development and management of technology to better elevate concepts of public purpose, touching on the specific projects of each fellow.  

• Event Recording

Recommendations and Democracy: A Way Forward

The recommendation systems for platforms like Facebook and YouTube determine what kinds of behavior get attention—and attention translates to money and power. These systems currently reward people who seek to divide us more than those who aim to bridge divides—which incidentally impacts the kinds of politicians and businesses which are likely to succeed.

This discussion, hosted by TAPP fellow Aviv Ovadya, will explore an alternative—bridging-based ranking, and a potential means to overcome blockers to implementing such platform changes—platform democracy.

• Event Recording

Data Sharing and Platform Urbanism: Contested Digital Sovereignty in the Emergent ‘Smart City’

Does data about the city belong to the city? Who should have the right to civic data generated by private digital technologies and services deployed in urban space? This emergent thorny issue of data sharing and power in the “smart city” is taking new form as local officials develop and enact regulations mandating access to the digital information urban platforms capture.

Join TAPP fellow Stephen Larrick and a group of experts as they explore the implications and discuss best practices for practitioners—and how to hold them accountable as they navigate sometimes competing interests of tech oversight, user privacy, and community needs.

• Event Recording

Thursday, April 14th

Current and Future Threats of the Digital Divide

Digital inequities reinforce income inequality, making the benefits of technology remote for millions of Americans. This session will showcase the lesser-known impact that the digital divide has on individuals and the aggregate cost nationwide when millions of Americans are locked out of a digital economy.

Join TAPP Fellow Francella Ochillo for a conversation about how current and future digital inequities shape the way in which Americans work, live, and experience one another. The presentation will also feature insights from Harvard Kennedy School's Professor Jason Furman, Tufts University's Fletcher School Dean Bhaskar Chakravorti, former Federal Communications Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, and other thought leaders in the broadband landscape.

• Event Recording

UNREAL: Disinformation, Technology Policy, and the Future of Governance

From Section 230 reform, to addressing state-sponsored, technology-enabled disinformation campaigns, to new executive branch office proposals, the United States Congress has increasingly grappled with the question of how and in what ways to regulate and address public harms created by technology and information, and how to ensure that technology policy truly serves the public interest.

This webinar, hosted by TAPP fellow Leisel Bogan, will focus on Congress has responded to emerging technologies, artificial intelligence, mis and disinformation, technology-enabled fraudulent information, and the question of whether current approaches to policy, governance structures, and new policy proposals are adequate for preserving democratic institutions in the modern era.

• Event Recording

Our Fellows and Publications

TAPP 2021-22 Fellowship Cohort

Leisel Bogan

Leisel Bogan is the Director of the Congressional Digital Service Fellowship for TechCongress. Prior to her current role she served as the Senior Fellow for Cybersecurity, Technology and National Security in the office of Senator Mark Warner.

Stephen Larrick

Stephen Larrick, head of city success at urban-tech startup Stae, is an urbanist and open gov advocate who has worked at the intersection of community planning, municipal governance, and data & technology for over a decade.

Francella Ochillo

Francella Ochillo is Executive Director of Next Century Cities, a nonprofit that focuses on expanding high-speed broadband connectivity across the U.S. She is an attorney and digital rights advocate whose work underscores how widespread broadband adoption can improve educational outcomes, economic mobility, the ability to age in place, and pathways for participating in our democracy.

Aviv Ovadya

Aviv Ovadya is a technologist working to ensure that our mediums of communication can facilitate a “good society”—that they not only support our everyday lives, but also promote the collective trust and intelligence necessary for taking on existential global challenges.

Afsaneh Rigot

Afsaneh Rigot covers issues of law, technology, LGBTQ, refugee, and human rights. She is a senior researcher at ARTICLE 19 focusing on the Middle East and North African (MENA) human rights issues and international corporate responsibility. 

Livio Valenti

Livio Valenti is a sustainability entrepreneur leveraging scientific discoveries to build innovative companies in the healthcare, biotechnology and material science field. He is the co-founder of Vaxess Technologies, a biotechnology company developing a new class of vaccines that can be delivered with a silk-based skin patch.

Recent Publications

About the TAPP Fellowship

Technology and Public Purpose Fellowship 

In recent years, dilemmas posed by rapid technological innovation have become more complex and acute. The TAPP Fellowship, crafted in response to a greater need to train people to carry out tech policy and practitioner analysis in both government and industry, is tailored for individuals from all disciplines with a demonstrated interest in technology and public purpose. Fellows are appointed for a one-year term and are part of a cohort responsible for conducting research in a tech and public purpose field, such as improving digital media, managing the geopolitics of technology, designing ethical AI and biotech, improving the alignment of new forms of work with human fulfillment, and in general shaping technological progress to enhance public purposes.

The program itself is comprised of three main components: trainings and workshops, community building events, and fellowship project research and development:

• Trainings and Workshops: A mixture of trainings, research methodology and practical skills workshops, and fellow-led talks that aim to expand fellows’ understanding of technology and public purpose topics, as well as equip fellows with the necessary knowledge and skills effectively accomplish their research projects.
   
• Community Building: Events and activities which aim to build and strengthen relationships between the fellows - within their cohort, the larger TAPP Fellowship community, and between other technology policy fellowship programs.
   
• The Fellowship Project: Research and development for individually scoped fellowship projects related to technology and public purpose. The project cycle runs the full duration of the fellowship, with structured phases and key milestones; all fellows are expected to produce a project output by the end of their fellowship period. The project component is supported by a formal mentorship and advising program with relevant experts in the TAPP and Harvard community, as well as by the other two listed programming components.

At the end of 9-month program, fellows will present their project during a public “Showcase Day” event. The event will act as a presentation and close out event to demonstrate the results of their research and work.

• Learn more about TAPP and the TAPP Fellowship

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