Difference between revisions of "Tristan Harris"

Revision as of 15:36, 12 March 2021

Tristan Harris

Birthname	Tristan Harris
Date of Birth	~1984
Birth Place
Nationality
Occupation
Biography	Information ethicist

Tristan Harris (born ~1984) ^[1] is a former software engineer, computer scientist, psychologist [2], and is most recently and widely known as a prominent information ethicist. He was also recently featured in the major documentary “The Social Dilemma” by Netflix where he talks about his experiences and realizations while working at Google [2].

Early life and education

As a child, Tristan Harris was fascinated by magic [3]. As he grew older and went to college, he found an interest in technology and computers. In college, Tristan studied computer science at Stanford University with a degree in Computer Science and graduated in 2006 [5]. While studying at Stanford, Harris interned at Apple and helped to create the “Spotlight for Help” feature. In addition to his computer science classes, Harris took supplemental classes in behavioral economics, social psychology, behavior change, and habit formation. He really began to focus on human behavior change while working at Professor BJ Fogg’s Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab. His supplemental studies encouraged him to pursue a master's program in the “psychology of behavior change” [4]. He did not end up finishing his degree. Instead, while in school, Harris founded Apture, which was a service that allowed blogs and news sites to add additional facts or insights to their content. The company was so successful that Google eventually acquired the company. [6] Once Apture was sold to Google, Harris joined the team as a product manager.

Work and Career

At Google, Harris started and headed Google’s “Reminder Assist” project, which is now spread across Google products. It is essentially an autocompletion engine to help users ‘remember things that they want to do.’ [4] While he was working as a product manager, Harris went on a trip to Burning Man. After he returned, he created a 144-page slide deck [7] titled [8] “A Call to Minimize Distraction & Respect Users’ Attention” that talks about how big tech companies are abusing the attention economy. In his presentation, Harris demonstrates the severity of this issue in a simple, yet powerful quote: “Never before in history have the decisions of a handful designers working at 3 companies (Google, Apple, and Facebook) had so much impact on how millions of people around the world spend their attention.” [7]. Although Harris only shared the slideshow to 10 people internally in the company, it somehow spread to 5,000 Google employees and even reached the CEO at the time Larry Page. Thousands of employees applauded him for his statements and agreed. Despite all of this, Harris states that nothing changed. Product roadmaps and requirements still had to be met. However, this presentation did allow Harris to transition from being a product manager to a design ethicist and product philosopher at Google. Here, Harris could make a stronger impact on the company and the way information ethics were handled.

Current Work in Information Ethics

As a design ethicist and product philosopher at Google, Harris’ primary job was to study the way that screen applications affect users in terms of overall mental health and behavior [6]. Using the findings from this study, Harris was working on developing a framework for how technology could possibly, ethically steer the thoughts and actions of millions of people [9]. He also spent a lot of time trying to make big tech companies realize the huge social costs of products. At Google, however, Harris felt limited and unable to bring about change, so he founded the Center of Humane Technology. At the Center of Humane technology, he is creating and spreading awareness about the dangers of technology. He claims that technology is responsible for the following: reducing attention spans, distraction, information overload, polarization, social isolation, etc. [11]. He also created the Humane Design Guide [11] which educates designers how to identify opportunities to create humane technology. In addition to his work at Google and the Center of Humane technology, Harris often has held multiple relevant talks that have spread his message. Harris has testified to Congress about how technology giants are taking advantage of people’s attention in a session titled “Optimizing for Engagement: Understanding the Use of Persuasive Technology on Internet Platforms.” In his Ted Talk, “How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day,” Harris lists 3 radical steps that we must take to counteract how these companies are hijacking our minds. Transform our self-awareness: Many people believe that they are not susceptible to persuasion. Reform the way that these systems are inherently designed. One way to do this would be to remove comments with a ‘Let’s Meet’ button. Harris talks about this as a way to make our time unfragmented. Instead of a bunch of distinct groups of time, it is better to make our timeline clean and clear. Transform business and increase accountability: social media companies monetize through corrupt advertising models. Business models should not use advertising which targets demographics of people and polarizes sets of people. Instead, we should transition towards subscriptions and micropayments. Similar to how society is moving away from coal, tech giants need to make this transition for a more socially sustainable future.

References

1. ↑ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/11/the-binge-breaker/501122/