August 2023 Responsible Tech Mixer and Speaker Series: Tech is Infrastructure!

(August 30, New York, NY) All Tech Is Human is delighted to release its panel discussion featuring Dr. Saima Akhtar, Matt Mitchell, Claire Liu Yang, Lyel Resner, and moderated by Elisa Fox from our Responsible Tech Mixer and Speaker Series at Betaworks in New York City on August 24, 2023.

All Tech Is Human, a 501c3 organization dedicated to building the Responsible Tech Movement, is thrilled to announce more than 200 people came out for our Responsible Tech Mixer and Speaker Series at Betaworks in New York City on August 24, 2023. This gathering was produced with the support of our partners at Tekalo.

The panel focused on how innovation is necessary in workforce development in order to recruit a wide range of disciplines and voices to foster a more equitable tech ecosystem. It also explored how a diverse range of backgrounds and voices are required in cybersecurity and public interest technology.

Chief of Staff at Silicon Harlem Claire Liu Yang reminds us that technology is infrastructure. Liu Yang’s reminder served as the framework for the evening, making us question how we perceive, develop, and deploy technology.

“So I'm gonna return to that sentence that I hope all of you remember, technology is infrastructure, right? What does that mean? What does that mean when you think about it? Technology is infrastructure…Do you think one person built [the] New York City subway? Do you think one person can build that? Is that possible? No. Because infrastructure is not a single skillset, right?…So there's so many different skillsets needed, and I bet that in this room we have a good combination of them. And that's what's beautiful about it.” Liu Yang said to the capacity audience.

Building off Liu Yang’s reminder, Dr. Saima Akhtar addressed how it is essential for people to consider that inequitable structures produce inequitable results.

“Technology is infrastructure and the way that I think about it really is that like, I studied the built environment, right? I think about the inequities that are built into the world around us. We think about these buildings as just magically appearing. No, there was an architect, there was a patron, there was a plan, and in that same way, the internet is, whether it's virtual or infrastructure. So those same inequities are gonna be built in our virtual world if they don't get resolved in our physical world. And so I think that it's really important to think about all hands on deck ways of thinking about the future of technology and its impact on society” Dr. Saima Akhtar said.

To help summarize the panel, All Tech Is Human Program Associate Elisa Fox synthesized three key insights.

Lived experience is essential.
If you wanna do it, you can do it.
Technology is infrastructure.

All Tech Is Human launched its 2023 Responsible Tech Speaker Series in March 2023 to bring together a wide range of stakeholders working to co-create a better tech future as part of its 2023 Responsible Tech Mixer Speaker Series. Almost 2,000 unique people have signed up to attend monthly events in New York, which feature authors, technologists, youth advocates, trust and safety professionals, data advocates, and people working at the forefront of a responsible tech future. Our supporters include Atlantic Council, Crisp, a Kroll Business, Tekalo, Mozilla, and Project Liberty. If you’d like to support an upcoming Responsible Tech Mixer series please reach out to hello at alltechishuman dot org.

About the panelists

Saima Akhtar is the Senior Associate Director of the Vagelos Computational Science Center (CSC) at Barnard College. She is a computational social scientist with a background in architecture and software engineering. Prior to joining Barnard, Saima was a postdoctoral associate in the Yale University Department of Computer Science, where she managed digital cultural heritage preservation projects between the fields of computer science and architecture. At Barnard, Saima works with faculty and students to creatively and critically think about the application of computing across disciplines.

Matt Mitchell is a well known security researcher, operational security trainer, and data journalist who founded and leads CryptoHarlem, impromptu workshops teaching basic cryptography tools to the predominately African American community in upper Manhattan. He hosts a weekly livestream that educates all people on how to stay safe from digital harms. Matt is also the Senior Cybersecurity Program Manager at The Ford Foundation.

Claire Liu Yang is an emerging leader who demonstrates that female leadership can transcend social stigmas and shatter barriers. With a passion for building infrastructure that’s blind to gender, age, income, race and disabilities, the chief of staff at Silicon Harlem manages the broadband that provides internet service for affordable housing in underserved communities.

Lyel Resner is currently Visiting Faculty and the Head of the Public Interest Technology Studio at Cornell Tech, where he leads programming for 400+ graduate students on creating tech to create a more just future, and co-leads the Startups & Society Initiative (SSI) — a non profit research project backed by Ford, OSF, and Omidyar to support founders and investors with responsible innovation practices. As part of SSI, Lyel Co-founded the Responsible Innovation Founders Summit — an annual event that has attracted 700+ global tech leaders including founders backed by Y-Combinator, General Catalyst, and Sequoia, and published the Responsible Innovation Primer for Founders — a distillation of 100+ interviews of influential tech and civil society leaders about building tech companies responsibly.

Moderated by: Elisa Fox comes to All Tech Is Human with a decade of program management experience in a variety of sectors ranging from higher education to the think tank space. Her past work and research have focused on cyber policy in the global south and ways to bring different perspectives into the policy conversation. Elisa holds a B.A. in Politics and M.S. in Global Affairs from New York University.