Kat Zhou

How does your upbringing affect how you understand your relationship with technology today?

My Yeye (paternal grandfather) raised me, shaping my childhood with important life lessons masked under mirth and mischief. It was after he passed that I would learn about his own childhood, which was predominantly spent in hiding because the Communist Party targeted his family. When my Yeye was in college, Chairman Mao announced the Hundred FlowersCampaign, encouraging “flowers” (scholars) to give feedback to the Party. My Yeye spoke up, criticizing the Party’s human rights violations. The Party Arrested him and other activists, labeled them “Rightists,” and sentenced them to decades of hard labor. My Eye was set free years later, though theParty has never issued an apology or reparations to the “flowers.”

It is precisely what my Yeye stood up for -

the notion every person deserves dignity - that informs my relationship with technology.

How does our technology empower and lift up the marginalized?

How does our technology disrupt existing, harmful power structures? How does our technology respect and support our mental health? 

My own relationship with technology is only one small part of the picture. As someone who works in tech,I have the privilege and responsibility of shaping how others understand their relationships with technology. If I’m not actively considering the aforementioned questions, then I’m not doing my job.

Let’s talk more about technology and power structures. Why do tech companies continue to struggle with diversity & inclusion?

Regarding diversity and inclusion (D&I), what happens in the tech industry is merely a reflection of the systemic issues that our societies have reinforced and struggled with for years. Tech companies struggle with diversity and inclusion because, like the surrounding system in which they exist, these companies continually fail to center the marginalized. You Can see this struggle in the way that D&I is often treated as a public relations move, rather than a meaningful and genuine effort.

You can see this struggle in the fact that oftentimes, leadership in companies overwhelmingly consists of white men- not to mention the fact that the so-called recruiting pipelines at most prominent companies largely neglect to hire black and brown folks. You can see this struggle in the way that certain products are built and marketed, almost as if marginalized communities were not considered at all in the product life cycle.

Representative Ayanna Pressley once said, "The people closest to the pain should be closest to the power." That is currently not the case in most tech companies. This industry will only continue down its current trajectory until A) it gets properly regulated by governing bodies (which also need reform), B) its employees speak up and insist on change from within, C) marginalized folks are centered (and fairly represented!) with decision-making power in tech companies.

Are the technological transformations we’re experiencing today fundamentally different from those of the past, with regards to how they’ll affect the distribution of wealth or opportunity in society? If so, how?

I would argue that the technological transformations we see today are more similar than you might think to those of the past. The technologies we’ve developed have continued to perpetuate existing systems in our society. Yes, in some cases, technology has enabled more reach and access to folks who were historically marginalized. However, technology has also enabled the continuation of racist redlining in cities, allowed for invasive surveillance on citizens, and expanded political polarization and misinformation in countries all around the globe.

In each of the situations, those with the least privilege in society are the ones who are most negatively impacted. The technology we’ve created cannot live up to its potential of leveling the playing field unless we change the existing playing field in which this technology is placed.Existing inequalities will only be magnified at a rapid scale.

As we’re building these technological solutions, we need to consider: who’s getting first and premium access to these products? Who’s mining the metals that create our devices? Who are the passengers, guests, and riders? Who are the drivers, hosts, and chargers? Who are the folks that are doing the surveillance? And who are the ones who are getting surveilled?

When we start answering some of these questions, we see that we still have a long way to go before we see net positive changes in the distribution of wealth/opportunity in society at the hands of tech.

What needs to happen to encourage broader mainstream adoption of ethical design frameworks and practices within the field of design?

I think one of the biggest hurdles to broader adoption of ethical design practices (or ethical tech in general) in our field is that we don’t prioritize ethical decisions. The tech industry prioritizes financial growth, and sometimes that growth can come with pretty severe costs. Professor Ruha Benjamin (author of “Race After Technology'') points out that racism can be profitable in our current society, which is why we see some tech companies selling problematic, predatory software.When we zoom in, we need to ask ourselves, why is it tricky for product teams to wholeheartedly embrace ethical design practices in their sprints? We can see that while those practices often are viewed favorably, they inevitably getrainchecked for other priorities that are more beneficial for those teams to reach certain metrics of success they've already delineated. More often than not, those metrics are directly related to the bottom line.

It’s not enough for designers, engineers, and data scientists on the ground to advocate for more ethical practices. It really does have to come from the executive level as well. And more importantly, we need an overhaul of the tech industry (and modern capitalism).