HARU Technology Studies to the Save the World

Our Tech Studies program attempts to introduce and train others to do timely research on technology-society clashes in the public interest and is the linchpin to our ability to help grow the field of Public Interest Technology. Work published by past students has gone on to inspire new laws and regulations and change business practices. The first results were from Harvard students, but our current goal with the initiative is to onboard this work at schools across the country sufficient to produce 100 research papers. The main effort for our Year 3 PIT-UN Network Challenge Grant was in developing what we initially referred to as “Investigation Plans.” To fit in with our larger push in the field of Public Interest Technology, we decided to brand these investigation plans as “Tech Study Plans” and, to maximize their impact, gave them a three-step process: We provide our students with topics of potential technology-society clashes. Our students investigate these issues, form hypotheses, design experiments, and create Tech Study Plans. These plans are then made available through our Tech Studies website (techstudies.net) to our academic partners which include HBCUs, women’s colleges, smaller liberal arts institutions, and the members of the Public Interest Technology University Network. In this interest, we have already partnered with Howard University who is interested in using our model as one on which to build their own. Regarding the Tech Study Plans, the students have generated just over 180 of them. They provide descriptions of experiments that, if conducted, could yield timely results to improve the world in the public’s interest. There is a sampling of the subject matter and/or experimental models proposed by some of the Tech Study Plans in the Appendix 1. We are currently in the editing phase of these and numerous other Tech Study Plans. Once they are examined by editors specifically familiar with science and technology writing, they will be uploaded to our Tech Studies website (techstudies.net) where partner institutions can peruse them to select those which they believe they have the resources to move forward on in order to combat technology-society clashes and, in turn, further grow the field of Public Interest Technology. Also central to our progress with our Tech Studies initiative are academic research papers based on inquiries having to do with technology-society clashes and we are well on our way to our goal of eventually producing 100. Through the formal mechanism of the academic journal we publish, the Journal of Technology Science (techscience.org), we have papers in the publication pipeline on various subjects. The subject matter of those papers can be found in Appendix 2. There is also a singular “cluster” of papers which explores the issues surrounding Generative AI and we are considering them for a future special issue of the Journal of Technology Science. The subject matter of those papers can be found in Appendix 3.