What We Talk About When We Talk About Tech

Responsible technology and ethical venture capital: Reimagining possible futures with Sarah Drinkwater

• Rich Gall, Jennifer Riggins, Sarah Drinkwater • Season 1 • Episode 20

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Rich Gall (@richggall) and Jennifer Riggins (@jkriggins) talk with Sarah Drinkwater, the Director of Responsible Technology at Omidyar Networks to discuss how we can cultivate organisations and people that will enable a more equitable, responsible - and ultimately compassionate and exciting - technological future. 

We talk about the challenges the tech industry faces, and why it can be difficult to talk about responsibility and ethics. Sarah explains how the work she does at Omidyar Network attempts to support projects that will help us to reimagine the way that we build and use technology in society. 

We also discuss the ways storytelling can help us improve accountability in the industry, and how it can restore some sense of agency in an environment where it can feel like it's impossible to create change on a personal level. Sarah also talks about the Ethical Explorer project she put together, which offers tools to people in the industry - from engineers to product managers to founders - for tackling a range of ethical issues seriously.

Finally, we touch on a theme that exemplifies Sarah's work - joining the dots between different domains, and getting different groups of people talking to one another. We discuss the limitations of the core institutions that shape tech - large corporations and universities - and explore what could replace them and offer us a more effective way forward.