Tristan Harris
| Birthname | Tristan Harris |
| Date of Birth | 1984 |
| Birth Place | San Francisco, CA |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Founder of the Center of Humane Technology |
| 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].
Contents
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 [4]. 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” [5]. 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. [2]. 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.’ [5] 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 [1] titled [6]
“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.” [1] . 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
Speaker Events
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Bosker, Bianca The Binge Breaker Retrieved 12 March 2021.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Bosker, Bianca How Burning Man Inspired The Social Dilemma's Tristan Harris To Speak Out Retrieved 12 March 2021.
- ↑ Harris Biography Retrieved 12 March 2021.
- ↑ Lachenal, Jessica Future Society Retrieved 12 March 2021.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Harris, Tristan Tristan Harris LinkedIn Retrieved 12 March 2021.
- ↑ Minimized Distractions Slide Deck Retrieved 12 March 2021.
