From Andover to Facebook...back to Andover again

Many advancements in technology have, of course, been good. Consider the connections we all have been able to maintain via reliable video calling during an era of lockdowns and travel restrictions. But much of that same technology has been built in a way that exploits our reliance on it for profit. Platforms that connect us to friends and family also track our behavior across the internet and in the physical world, deriving insights about our personalities, political views, and consumer habits, infringing on our individual freedom without providing any ways to truly opt-out. The technology students interact with now is still largely unchecked and unregulated and increasingly advanced and insidious. It is far more influential in their lives than it was when I was a student at Andover. This means an educational framework for understanding these hard problems will be crucial for all students.

For the next two years, I will rejoin the Andover community as the Tatelbaum Visiting Scholar in Ethics and Creating. I will explore these questions in classes with students, collaborations with faculty peers, and my own research and writing. I plan to host seminars (or webinars) to discuss topics of interest to the community. I will develop new coursework for the Ethics of Technology course and I will connect Philosophy coursework to Andover’s Makerspace, the Nest, once we can safely do so. These interactions with students will give me first-hand opportunities to better understand the technology that students interact with, allowing me to write and publish here on the Tang Institute blog and elsewhere. I hope that this work contributes to a broader change in educational values, leading the next generation of engineers to be guided by an ethical code that values lives and liberty over self-enrichment. In other words, Non Sibi.

Matthew Appleby ’11 is the Visiting Scholar in Ethics and Creating. He has a B.S. in Product Design and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University. He previously worked at Facebook as a mechanical engineer designing Oculus virtual reality products. He would like to thank Joe Tatelbaum ’78 for his vision in supporting the position of the Tatelbaum Visiting Scholar in Ethics and Creating at the Tang Institute.