Are there off-line groups that are working to address the issues raised in this forum? I’d like to become involved in a meaningful way with an incorporated brick-and-mortar nonprofit in NYC or Westchester County. Please let me know if you are aware of any.
Thank you,
Michael McGuire
@McGuire I can hunt around a bit. See what I find…
Thanks. I am surprised at how little I was able to find, given how widely recognized the issue seems to be.
Me too! I did a bit of digging and didnt turn up much. Most opportunities are digital. 
Maybe that can be a personal project or something?
This wouldn’t be in the New York area, I’m afraid, but let me share my thoughts anyway. @khkey and I have both read World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech and been persuaded that Franklin Foer, the author, has ideas worth sharing with many people. I’m in publishing, and @khkey has a strong background in managing nonprofits. We have been chatting about creating an organization that combines our strengths and addresses some of “the existential threat of big tech.” I’ve come up with a name, First Person Plural*, and started looking into incorporating as a nonprofit.
The main purpose of the organization would be to put on conferences at which people like Foer would present their ideas for discussion. Follow-up would, I hope, arise naturally out of such discussions.
*First person plural is a category of pronouns; first person singular is “I,” and first person plural is “we.”
Thanks, @patm, for posting about this - I am so looking forward to the opportunity to explore doing this work with you and others. Creating forums where people like Franklin Foer can present and we can have real dialogue and learning, across disciplines, about the implications of their work, feels to me to be a hugely important and valuable step for us to take as we look to truly shift the direction we’ve been heading in regarding the role of technology in the lives of people, communities and societies.
Hey Michael: If you are in the NYC area, All Tech Is Human is an organization that I run that is based in Manhattan and starting to grow. We held our first event last March–planned a few months earlier, but fell right after Cambridge Analytica. We discussed the attention economy and what FB could do. It featured Max Stossel from CHT, Anya Kamenetz from NPR, and Laurie Segall from CNN who had just finished up her Zuckerberg interview (you can listen to the discussion HERE). We followed this up with an ethical tech summit in October 20th with speakers like Douglas Rushkoff and partners such as Mozilla, ADL, Data for Democracy, etc. Folks from Freedom & ResuceTime–which has been in the digital mindfulness space for years, were there.
We will have two off-line events in NYC in 2019, along with ones in Seattle (May 18) and SF (Sept 21).
Working on expanding it into a thriving non-profit…right now we are based out of ThoughtWorks (30th & Madison). Hope to meet up sometime.
Let’s connect. Here is my LinkedIn.
@McGuire (just tagging you so you see this!)
@McGuire and @patm Hi both! FYI I started the NYC chapter of HT a year ago and we hold monthly meetups out of betaworks in NYC! Check out the meetup https://www.meetup.com/HumaneTechNYC/
For some reason I thought this forum was connected to Tech Worker’s Coalition. 100% check that out; they have a facebook page and meetups.
Due to the nature of these issues (and the economy in general) I doubt you’ll find an ethical brick and mortar nonprofit. But you through TWC you will find meetups that are hosted in real time-space continuaa/ other people’s brick and mortar spaces (;
All tech is human tech by @DavidRyanPolgar has some brick and mortar stuff happening. GoBrickNow does retreats and get together as well.