Will the once-humble community remain dedicated to centering people on the margins of tech culture? Or will monied interests make it harder to fight for the people Christian theologians might call “the least of these”? And Polgar now finds himself in a networking stratosphere with people like Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, among other prominent politicos. ATIH now stands to receive millions of dollars-including funds from large foundations and tech philanthropist demigods who once ignored it. Growth has brought things to a turning point. Still, having interviewed several dozen attendees, I’m convinced that many are hungry for communal support as they navigate a world in which tech has become a transcendent force, for better or worse. And such a model has real strengths, including the ability to bring tech culture’s opposing tribes together under one big tent. These people will be a powerful force, Polgar believes, if-as the counterculture icon Timothy Leary famously exhorted-they can “find the others.” If that sounds like reluctance to take sides on hot-button issues in tech policy, or to push for change directly, Polgar calls it an “agnostic” business model. Rather, All Tech Is Human’s underlying strategy is to quickly expand the “responsible-tech ecosystem.” In other words, its leaders believe there are large numbers of individuals in and around the technology world, often from marginalized backgrounds, who wish tech focused less on profits and more on being a force for ethics and justice. The organization itself doesn’t often get explicitly political with op-eds or policy advocacy. Such programs, ATIH says, bring together many excellent but often disconnected initiatives, all in line with the ATIH mission “to tackle wicked tech & society issues and co-create a tech future aligned with the public interest.” ![]() ![]() Like other kinds of congregations, ATIH focuses on relationship-building: the staff invests much of its time, for example, in activities like curating its “Responsible Tech Organization” list, which names over 500 companies in which community members can get involved, and growing its responsible-tech talent pool, a list of nearly 1,400 individuals interested in careers in the field.
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