This year, roughly 4 billion people – 40 percent of the world’s population – are eligible to vote in a major election. During this crucial year for democracy, technology presents us with a double-edged sword, offering greater avenues for community organizing and voter participation while also facilitating mis- and disinformation, cyberattacks, voter intimidation, disenfranchisement and more. Black History Month is a timely opportunity to remember how Black leaders and communities continue to center our shared civil and human rights during periods of great technological change. 

Public interest technologists have the tools we need to meet the challenges of technology and democracy head-on. Creating 21st century systems that are “by the people and for the people” requires not only free and fair elections, but data privacy protections, accessible cybersecurity tools, human-centered data science, and clear policies for how we design and deploy AI systems. 

Practitioners from across the Public Interest Technology University Network (PIT-UN) continue to pursue this work in a diversity of ways, building educational pathways, designing technologies in partnership with communities, and fostering public interest tech career pathways into government, industry and civil society. 

In our 2024 PIT UNiverse newsletter, we’ll be highlighting this work under the editorial theme of Building Blocks of Democracy. This month, Professor Deb Donig (Cal Poly) reminds us that “technology is not value-neutral, and neither is democracy,” and our PIT in Practice profile of Harvard University, Professor Latanya Sweeney shows how faculty, staff and students can collaborate to make an impact on the “technology-society clashes” we face.

Updates from the Network this month include our second annual PIT Career Fair RFP, a new academic journal on public interest technology, and there are new playbooks from the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago on developing community partnerships, and data science for social impact.