Tag: diversity

My thoughts on this horrifying story: “Disability Activist Dies After United Airlines Destroyed Her Custom Wheelchair”

Carl Setzer
man showing distress

Earlier today I read this: Disability Activist Dies After United Airlines Destroyed Her Custom Wheelchair. Dear friends, please allow me to step upon my soapbox for a moment.

This event horrifies me. First, and foremost, United, and the airline industry writ large need to embrace that wheelchairs are beyond critical to their user’s health. Engaracia’s case demonstrates that dearly.

Her treatment by United, both in the hours at the airport (5 hours?) as well as the being strung along for resolution are monumentally horrifying. Simply stunning in the lack of basic empathy and compassion. As much as I want United to be held accountable for such dreadful negligence, I want to call out the entire airline industry. Over 10,000 wheelchairs destroyed per year is…disgusting…as is the collective shrug in their response.

I deeply value accessibility and diversity. To see something that so egregiously violates that value pains me.

Google’s Disturbing Trend In Regards To Ethical AI

Carl Setzer

Yesterday Margaret Mitchell tweeted this out:

This might not seem troublesome on the surface. However, earlier this year they fired Timit Gebru, who was the co-lead with Dr. Mitchell of Google’s AI Ethics Team.

Add to the above this behavior by Google executives (Tweet below), and I see a toxic environment dominating the company with a code of conduct statement “Don’t Be Evil“.

One of my areas of interest is Corporate Social Responsibility, and I’ve been looking at how this might be applied in the tech sphere. And Google is giving me solid evidence of those applications, in the most negative way possible.

Reflections on the Day 

Carl Setzer

I spent part of the evening watching the Google IO keynote. Seeing the diversity delighted me. Men, women, Whites, Asians, but I was solidly struck by lack of black people. Now, I was multitasking while watching, and I didn’t watch the full two hour one, opting for an abridged one. So, I might have missed the them. But that’s my big takeaway.

I’ve wondered how to increase diversity in tech. Deliberate action would the best. There’s a wide range of subjectivity to the phrase, which I’ll explore later.

One thing I love about tech: accessibility. I love the tools to bring more people to work, to have access to a living wage.

I’m delighted at the ever-increasing number of folks who are working. Thus is a key promise of tech. And though we’ve come a long way, there’s so much more.
Let’s get to work! Well, in the morning, perhaps.