Ever wish you could talk to the people who design, build, or study technology about how *they* deal with technology in their own homes — with their own kids?
Well, that’s what this is.
Personally, I navigate uncertainty by talking to people and hearing their experiences, and I’ve been doing this for about a year now with colleagues, but 1:1. More often than not, I walk away thinking “man I wish I had recorded that because [insert friends name] is struggling with exactly that question.” So I’ve decided to have more of these conversations, but this time record and share them.
Maybe it will be interesting to people, and maybe it won’t and I’ll just have a good time talking to myself and screaming into the void. But I’m doing it. (Manifesting, etc. etc.)
What is “it”?
Basically an informal podcast made up of conversations between me and experts in technology who also happen to be parents.
Also, written words (sure, you can call it a newsletter) shared on some regular cadence that may or may not be affected by sick kids and the volume of school emails during any given week.
This is not intended to be an academic exercise and I am absolutely figuring it out as I go. It will be informal and unvarnished, and there will likely be some cursing and typos. You’ve been warned.
If you want to follow along…
find clips on Instagram
full interviews wherever you get your podcasts
full interviews with video on YouTube for you crazies who actually *watch* interviews, and don’t listen to them while driving or doing laundry or sitting on the sidelines at soccer practice…
And of course, subscribe to this Substack
So who am I & why should you care
I am a parent (kids are 8, 8, and 6) who also happens to have spent 20 years using new and emerging technology to connect underserved populations to things that they need — from women entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia, to U.S. Veterans, from healthcare to capital. My work has always been about the use of technology to accomplish a specific goal — not the potential, but the (often messy) practice. More about my background here.
Suddenly, I am finding those experiences surprisingly relevant as I try to make sense of the increasingly concerning technical infrastructure that has become social infrastructure — social infrastructure that we now have to raise our kids in.
I do not have a specific agenda or goal. I’m honestly I’m just trying to figure out what the f*ck is going on, and how I can responsibly help my kids develop the muscles they need to navigate **looks/gestures around** this, and whatever new constellation of these technologies is ahead.
That said, I do have a few core beliefs. In the interest of transparency, here they are:
(& when I say “technology” here, I’m talking about digital technology and products.)
Potential breaks down in implementation. The practice doesn’t match the potential or the promise. Sure, new technology COULD be used in particular ways, and it COULD improve X Y or Z. The question is DOES IT actually do what we imagine it can do? How does it actually perform in the context it’s used in? How do humans actually use it, in practice? What matters is how technology is actually used — not how you imagine people might use it.
Technology exponentially scales age-old problems. Abuse, hate, racism, lies, and fraud: None of this is new. But the unprecedented speed and reach enabled by technology exponentially increases the harm. From abuse and fraud, to discrimination and mis/disinformation, examples are legion. None of it is new. What is new is the speed and scale. Might kids attempt suicide without chatbots assistance? Sure. But these products have removed every grain of friction, facilitating and even encouraging the most grievous behaviors.
Technology is neither the entire problem nor the entire solution. Yes, they are designed to addict us and we are not exactly being given an “opt out” from emerging tech like AI. But eliminating technology is an easy answer to a complex problem — and there are no easy answers to complex problems, especially when industry-wide financial incentives collide with human behavior and culture.
Technology is a reflection of us. Most tangibly, products and systems are a reflection of the people who designed and built them. Code is simply a set of instructions created by humans. You can also think of these as rules for computers. And the beliefs and values of the people who write these rules are encoded into the products and systems we use. But technology is also a reflection of the people who use it — a reality that products are designed to respond to and exploit in order to increase engagement.
We need to lean into what we already know. Yes, we need research to understand any number of things in this insane rapidly changing world. But how much evidence do we need to be confident that what we already know is true offline is also true online? We can already do some of the math.
What I hope to do here is some of that math, with people who have spent their careers creating or studying the technologies that have become part of the social infrastructure that we now are raising our kids in.
We all want it to be simple — it’s not. Let’s hear from people who understand that complexity, and learn more about how they show up as parents.
