{"id":4079,"date":"2018-06-25T22:16:47","date_gmt":"2018-06-25T22:16:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/25\/civic-tech-in-a-time-of-technopessimism-the-atlantic\/"},"modified":"2018-06-25T22:16:47","modified_gmt":"2018-06-25T22:16:47","slug":"civic-tech-in-a-time-of-technopessimism-the-atlantic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/25\/civic-tech-in-a-time-of-technopessimism-the-atlantic\/","title":{"rendered":"Civic Tech in a Time of Technopessimism – The Atlantic"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cWhen we started it was just about technology,\u201d Pahlka said. \u201cNow it\u2019s really about the outcomes of the operations\u201d \u2014 outcomes like reducing recidivism or increasing the percentage of people who are eligible for food stamps who actually receive them. And improving government can make tremendous change. \u201cThe math shows that at least in safety net services, being 10 percent more effective <\/i><\/span>would be as impactful as doubling all philanthropic spending,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Pahlka wasn\u2019t alone in her initial technological optimism. In Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s 2012 <\/span>letter<\/a> <\/span>describing Facebook\u2019s IPO, he said the company\u2019s tools for sharing \u201ccould lead to more direct empowerment of people, more accountability for officials and better solutions to some of the biggest problems of our time.\u201d For most tech companies, that triumphalism continued all the way through the 2016 election, when revelations about misinformation and foreign meddling forced an industry-wide reckoning with its own power.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

\nBut it\u2019s not as if digital tools and services have become <\/span>less<\/i> <\/i><\/span>important in the broader world. Nor does the national political situation obviate the needs of people in local communities all across the country. Code for America now has about 75 full-time employees and 22,000 active volunteers, and in the areas where Code for America has dedicated the most resources, there is huge room for improvement.\u201cIf you are vulnerable to that cycle of poverty and incarceration, government services are awful to use and they don\u2019t work very well,\u201d Pahlka said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t have to work that way.\u201d<\/div>\n

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https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/technology\/archive\/2018\/06\/civic-tech-in-a-time-of-technopessimism\/563696\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhen we started it was just about technology,\u201d Pahlka said. \u201cNow it\u2019s really about the outcomes of the operations\u201d \u2014 outcomes like reducing recidivism or increasing the percentage of people who are eligible for food stamps who actually receive them. And improving government can make tremendous change. \u201cThe math shows that at least in safety […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3pfIY-13N","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4079\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}