Finding Examples of People-Centered Process

The AI era’s call for greater inclusivity in governance and design decisions is not new. Many of us in civic tech still quote the phrase “Build With, Not For” that Cuán McCann popularized in 2014. I also learned this week that “Nothing About Us Without Us” entered the contemporary policy lexicon via disability rights activists in South Africa and Eastern Europe in the 1990s—and that they were referencing a 16th century Polish law.

Two expert friends released valuable resources on participation in AI governance and design recently: Tim Davies and his colleagues at Connected by Data posted findings from the People’s Panel on AI, a citizen consultation held “to address the glaring absence of public voice” at the 2023 UK AI Safety Summit and Lina Srivastava published an introduction to “Building Community Governance for AI,” based on principles to center community leaders and narrative power ...

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The Limits of Your Feelings as News

When I first worked managing reader comments at NYTimes.com, the news was the subject and the comments were the reaction. But tools like Epinions and Blogger flipped the world so that the reactions became the substance. This made Mark Zuckerberg a billionaire and also led Time magazine to declare "You" the Person of the Year in 2006.

It also heralded the slow (or maybe not so slow) degradation of the line between fact and feeling in the public square. What started as inclusion—or "presence" as we called it around 1999 when we marveled that you could turn on the houselights and let the audience see each other—became disregulation, entitlement and, worst of all, another vector for the powerful to manipulate the consumers.

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“Showing Policy Impact Isn’t Straightforward”

grayscale photo featuring a jigsaw puzzle piece jumbled in with other pieces, not yet assembled into a whole

If you've ever had to translate policy work into the urgent, human narrative of social change, this roadmap from Sarah Jane Staats and Todd Moss of Energy for Growth Hub can help you. Some of their humble, practical insights that I especially recommend include:

• Policy influence isn’t “direct, straightforward, or predictable." Multiple factors are in play.
• We “influence" and help “instigate” change. We’re not the single cause.
As a result, “attribution is messy.” Policy ideas, even the best most impactful ones, don’t usually have clear KPIs.
• To assess effective policy proposals, we can invest more in “tracking demand from policymakers.”

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I help mission-driven organizations and foundations align vision, digital strategy, communications and day-to-day work.

Work

Citizens and Technology Lab at Cornell University

Research and policy advocacy to foster digital spaces that serve the public interest

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

Building dialogue and cooperation between tech companies and civil rights groups

The Ford Foundation

Seeking an upgrade to the culture and practices that maintain the internet infrastructure

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