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Abstract

For eighty years, digital technology visionaries have imagined and created systems to support human knowledge, learning, creativity, medicine, health, communications, community, and commerce. These developments have given us both power and convenience. Yet these advances have been subverted by ill-advised uses and bad actors creating hate speech and disinformation, job loss and industry disruption, monopolistic abuse of market dominance, helplessness, mental distress, injustice, loss of privacy, and poor security and safety. In addition, we are now faced with worldwide (and especially in the U.S.) oligarchic authoritarianism leveraging surveillance technologies and seeking to remove all the guardrails that were designed to protect us.

These nightmares seem overwhelming, but there is much that we can do, much that we must do.

We digital technology professionals can make a positive difference in at least seven major ways. There are many career options that focus on computer science applications in the service of good. We can anticipate how our creations may be subverted by poor design or bad actors and adjust our development goals accordingly. Throughout our careers, we can be guided by our conscience and by ethics. Looking outwards, we can educate people to better understand digital technologies and their uses and misuses. We can work with citizen groups seeking to avoid adverse consequences of tech deployment. We can seek systems and standards of effective tech education and accountability. Finally, we can work with governments to ensure appropriate legislation and enforcement.

I will pay particular attention to artificial intelligence, a technology of great potential for human betterment that may be negated by harms that arise when it is deployed before it is reliable and safe.

Biography

An internationally recognized innovator, author, speaker, teacher, and mentor, Ron is Emeritus Professor of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, where he co-founded the Dynamic Graphics Project (DGP). He also founded the Knowledge Media Design Institute (KMDI) and the Technologies for Aging Gracefully lab (TAGlab). He now teaches Computers and Society at Columbia University each fall.

He has been named one of the 60 Pioneers of Computer Graphics by ACM SIGGRAPH, elected to the CHI (Computers and Human Interaction) Academy by ACM SIGCHI, named an ACM Fellow, and given a Canadian Digital Media Pioneer Award. He received the Social Impact Award at ACM CHI2020 and is an ACM Distinguished Speaker for 2022-8. He is the founder of 5 software firms.

His five most recent books (see https://ronbaecker.com), are:

- Computers and Society: Modern Perspectives (2019, Oxford University Press)

- The Covid-19 Solutions Guide: Health, Wealth, Technology, and the Human Spirit (2020, 2nd Edition)

- Ethical Tech Startup Guide (2023, Springer Nature)

- Digital Dreams Have Become Nightmares: What We Must Do (2024, 2nd Ed., with Jonathan Grudin, ACM Press)

- Reinvention: Meaningful Ventures in Later Life (2025)