Why do I care about all this tech stuff?
I have had formative experiences that inform my belief that we need to invest in socialware, not just software and hardware. I am so excited that I get to work with Fortune 500 companies and NGOs who share similar beliefs.
For a brief while, I was a tech utopianist. I thought technology could be the answer to almost everything, but then my work proved me wrong.
I spent several years in the early 2000s building technology programs in underserved communities throughout NYC for non-profits. But my programs didn't result in a long-term impact for communities. The entire system of non-profits operated with technological solutionism as a guiding value: they only provided grants to build tech centers and tech skill training programs, but not social and human capital programs to teach youth how to translate their technical skills into the job market. This was my first time encountering a theme that I would continually see in my career: providing technology is not enough. Tech availability does not automatically translate to tech accessibility. And even tech accessibility doesn't necessarily translate to economic and social prosperity. Also, institutions will often make decisions that are totally disconnected and oftentimes harmful to the people they purport to serve.
When I started working in the private sector in the mid-2000s, I saw the same pattern of technological solutionism. It started with Nokia, where I witnessed business leaders over-rely on quantitative data and ignore my prediction that their current business would disappear if they didn't pivot to making smartphones. I recount the takeaways in my talk on TED. I was in a deja-vu. Like the non-profit tech programs I built, Nokia refused to see beyond the numbers.
My experiences of watching the non-profit sector and private industry privileging technology at the expense of human beings have deeply shaped my work. In all of my fieldwork around China, Mexico, and India, I learned about the importance of human desires shaping the way technology is actually used once in the hands of people. In China, I watched people repurposing social media sites to escape the repressive powers of society. In Mexico, I watched immigrant communities redesign cellphones to fit their needs of living in precarious cross-border conditions. In India, I watched women gain power their cellphone ownership in families.
All of these stories speak to the importance of the social layer where emergent human behavior happens outside of market or organizational forces.
The formal bio that people usually ask for:
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Tricia Wang, a social scientist, and consultant, is on a relentless quest to ensure technology serves humanity, fostering social impact at the intersection of data and humanity. Follow her on twitter or instagram @triciawang. www.triciawang.com
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Tricia Wang, a social scientist and consultant, is on a relentless quest to ensure technology serves humanity, fostering social impact at the intersection of data and humanity. She is currently writing a book on how the emergence of AI is leading to a shift in how we relate to tech as users to what she calls "Shapers," people who have a new set of skills to cooperate with AI.
Renowned for helping companies unearth pivotal customer behavior insights to unlock growth, Tricia co-founded Sudden Compass and has advised industry giants like Google, Spotify, and P&G. Her insights have been featured in publications like Quartz, New Yorker, Buzzfeed, Techcrunch, The Atlantic, Al Jazeera, Slate, Wired, The Guardian, and Fast Company.
In a world where data is the cornerstone of innovation, Tricia has long recognized its potential, well before the recent rush of consumer-facing AI products. Tricia's unique fusion of ethnography and data science offers an invaluable perspective on technology, design, and human experience. Follow her on twitter or instagram @triciawang. www.triciawang.com
LONG
Tricia Wang, a social scientist and consultant, is on a relentless quest to ensure technology serves humanity, fostering social impact at the intersection of data and humanity. She is currently writing a book on how the emergence of AI is leading to a shift in how we relate to tech as users to what she calls "Shapers," people who have a new set of skills to cooperate with AI.
Renowned for helping companies unearth pivotal customer behavior insights to unlock growth, Tricia co-founded Sudden Compass and has advised industry giants like Google, Spotify, and P&G. Her insights have been featured in publications like Quartz, New Yorker, Buzzfeed, Techcrunch, The Atlantic, Al Jazeera, Slate, Wired, The Guardian, and Fast Company.
In a world where data is the cornerstone of innovation, Tricia has long recognized its potential, well before the recent rush of consumer-facing AI products. Tricia's unique fusion of ethnography and data science offers an invaluable perspective on technology, design, and human experience. She has been instrumental in launching tech labs with clients, including a recent collaboration with The World Economic Forum in founding the Crypto Research and Design Lab (CRADL).
As an acclaimed speaker, Tricia's enlightening keynotes and her TED talk delve into AI, data, and their societal, economic, and personal impacts. Her concept of "thick data" advocates for deep human understanding in AI and emerging technologies, transcending conventional data analysis.
Her ethnographic fieldwork spans from China to South America and North America, offering unique insights into the adoption of social media under authoritarian regimes and advocating for consumer-centric approaches in the private sector.
Tricia’s diverse career began in the mid-1990s with mobile phone services, evolving to developing tech centers in low-income NYC neighborhoods and global business research. Her roles have ranged from filmmaker at NASA for Sally Ride, to director at New York's first youth television network, and an HIV/AIDS education advocate. She is a Fulbright Fellow, National Science Foundation Fellow, and the first Western fellow at The China Internet Network Information Center in Beijing, China.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Tricia co-founded Last Mile, an underground supply chain that distributed over 1 million masks across the USA, gaining recognition in The New Yorker in a feature story.
Tricia currently serves as an advisor to Dangerous Ventures, ReSeed.Farm, and SKU. Tricia holds affiliations with Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, US Japan Leadership Program, and Data & Society. She is a member of the World Economic Forum Global Futures Data Council and Climate Coalition and has served as a fellow at the Geo Tech Atlantic Council.
Tricia holds a Ph.D. in Sociology.
She is a semi-pro salsa dancer with the world's first queer Latin dance academy, Inlakech Dance Academy. She cherishes time with her grandmother. She honors her greatest teachers who have dropped their bodies, her grandfather and her dog, Elle. She holds Perú, Oaxaca, and Malmö close to her heart. Tricia's life philosophy is that you have to go to the edge to discover the center. Follow her on Twitter or instagram @triciawang. www.triciawang.com
Some fun bits before we dive into the projects
If you want to know things like where I was born, how I even ended up at NASA, why I’ve eaten live insects and lit fires on my body during fieldwork, or why I went to grad school, here is the long story.
When I’m not thinking, I’ve experiencing the world somatically through dancing and eating. I love modern dance and grab any opportunity to dance salsa. I love to Vietnamee Pho soup so much that my friend Adriene Hughes and I have a blog just dedicated to pho!
I currently split my time between New York, California, and Perú..
PAST Projects
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Emerging information technologies such as the Internet challenge us to think about whether access to the technology should be a privilege or a right. In recognition of the emergent social demand for broadband access, this paper urges a reconsideration of Internet access as a social right.