Starting April 2019 I have looked back at the previous month and made a public review on my opinion. What impact this have had in my life, my values, my thoughts, my habits etc. is difficult to distinguish from other influencing factors, due to the complexity of life – but I do believe I can see some pattern:
1. I have less doubt in that I’m doing the right thing.
I used to have second-doubts whether I should proceed on the difficult journey that I’m on, building a responsible tech-giant. I were often tempted by quick bucks. However, last year I haven’t had those thoughts much at all.
2. I have started seeing the world in a more networked way
We are all reliant on each-other. Whether that’s a food & medical supply-chain (we can’t survive very well on our own) or the social Internet. Back in the days (pre-industrial civilisation, pre-corona) accountability was an ingrained part of society (at the farm or the office). However now that we work from home, some of us on our own project, we’re an isolated unit. It’s good to take steps to become part of the network again.
3. I’ve seen that accountability-as-a-software is net-good
Sharing some of my life public, ex. how productive I’ve been, some of the stuff I been working on, hasn’t felt too intrusive, at least for me.
The benefit for the society is that it creates accountability. Ex. imagine if Zuckerberg or Jack Dorsey, who is that the users who research why, and how, I built the products – can trust that it’s with the intent of Goodness, rather than fortune or fame.
Going further
I will continue to be publicly accountable. However I believe there are better ways than monthly reviews. As such, I will put on a higher priority to get a working system up and running that supports tiered-transparency reporting (myself, friends & family, public see different things) which is semi-automated in real-time with storage of historical logs to validate actions.
In essence, everything I do shouldn’t be shared public – that’d be intrusive. However, some things I do can be shared without harming the world or harming me. It also builds accountability of my actions, similar to how society have public records of their elected officials, so should we have of our current and future tech leaders, who these days shape society more than politicians.