Tech, policy and design

Jake Schonberger

Blog containing assignments, thoughts and reflections on tech, policy, and how the future might look.

WhatsApp, fake news and how to protect our citizens

Quick briefing: The recent mob killings, lynching, and targeting of over 20 innocent people as a result of rumors, largely spread on platforms including WhatsApp, cause an imminent threat to our citizens (and visitors) personal security. The horrific ...

Tradeoff values & personal data

In a recent blog post, here, I reflected on a conversation with Thomas Arnold, an ethicist at Tufts University who helps design & engineering teams understand the ethical and long term implications of certain robot/computer-human interactions. We talke...

Data, Ethics & Autonomous Wheelchairs

In a conversation with Thomas Arnold, ethicist at the Tufts center for human-robot interaction, we focused on understanding different ethical frameworks, and suggesting how those frameworks would be applied to different concerns in product development ...

Should educational institutions require the use of password managers?

"A cyber-attack cripples Harvard University daily activity: Passwords to the university-wide course management software, Canvas, were obtained and changed in order to derail the universities day to day life." "An Elevation of Privilege (EoP) attack re...

Government as a Platform: Where to start?

A Letter to the Massachusetts Commonwealth CIO: I want to thank you for trusting me to take on this vast and incredibly powerful project. In addressing your questions about service-driven government, I’ve outlined my thoughts on how I believe we need...

Lean, Learning, Failure & the Media Industry

Facebook has long been associated with "Move Fast and Break Things1," but large parts of the revenue driving side of the company butts up against traditional, slow moving processes. Large, old, and regulated brands (Banks, Pharma, etc) have long term r...

Thoughts on "the new road"

What happens to the cultural aspects created by our connection to the modern vehicle and its transport platforms, when autonomous systems become ubiquitous? The main purpose of the first mass produced car and the most recently design Tesla or Honda are...