I work in tech. I have for a long time. It’s given me a closeup look at how both hardware and software get made. The further tech progresses, the more concerned I get. The people creating technology (myself included) are not somehow superior beings, we are developers, coders, product managers, writers. We’re just people.

Back when I was working at my Mom’s learning center, I was teaching kids to build websites. This was back in the Geocities days, coding the HTML by hand. One of those kids, while working on another project, said that surely things on the web are reliable, you can’t just put anything up there. I said, “did you have to send your website to anybody to put it up?” His eyes went wide. I think I kind of blew his mind.

We forget that the people behind our screens are people, the people who build our screens are people… and people are imperfect. People can be malicious! People can be kind! People are complicated!

We have to remember that technology is a tool, a thing people made to do things. Like a shovel. Or a kitchen knife. Tools are beneficial or harmful depending on how they are wielded.

• everyone knows – We know technology can do tremendous harm. How do we mitigate that harm?