context

Wow, I have not posted in a really long time damn (last post was half a year ago). I’m one day away from officially completing my undegraduate degree (it’s lowkey starting to set in and I’m sad)—I just finished a final reflection for one of my classes (Technology and US Politics), and I’ve decided to copy it below since it illuminated a lot of my thinking regarding my current plans to pursue entrepreneurship post-graduation. Just a heads up, if some of it reads weirdly, it’s because the assignment was meant to be read by my professor/TA (I made some minor edits though).

final reflection

I originally signed up for this class for a specific reason. As a computer science major, this class is very different from the technical courses I’m accustomed to taking—I didn’t really know what to expect coming into this class, so I was simultaneously nervous and excited for what this class would bring. At the start of this semester, I already planned on graduating a year early—on one hand, I was really excited, but on the other hand, it accelerated my decision process regarding what I wanted to do after college. Among the options I was considering, doing a tech startup greatly piqued my interest—however, between school and chasing various recruiting processes for other career options, I never really had time to sit down and dedicate myself fully to exploring tech entrepreneurship. So, taking this course was one of the steps I took to learn more about the world of tech startups—my predominantly technical environment made me feel like I was lacking in understanding the nontechnical contexts of the world of technology. Another question that I wanted answered was regarding the ethics of building a tech startup—with so much controversy surrounding the tech giants today, would making my life’s goal to build a tech company prove to be a net detriment to society?

I’m not sure if you hear about a similar experience from other people studying technical degrees, but the change of pace regarding not only content but also critical thinking was really refreshing. I learned many random tidbits that I would go and share with my friends, and essay writing was legitimately an enjoyable experience—it was really interesting/fun to think of the prompt as a problem statement and then build on facts/examples to create logical statements to prove the statement, quite similar to how I would tackle a math/CS problem. I had such an enjoyable experience that this class singlehandedly almost made me consider pursuing the academia path of where these technical and historical worlds intersect—honestly, still an option, but for now, I love certain aspects of technical fields and will focus on that. However, I will definitely continue to try to learn more content in this space, and the perspective I gained from this class will definitely influence my approach to even technical work.

Another takeaway that kept popping up during this semester was how interesting it was for me to see this class’s perspective on certain technological issues versus the content that I ready/study from people within the technology space. This was one of the primary reasons why I took this class, and there were many examples of this. One particular example was our discussion (Unit 2 I believe) on Facebook/Google’s mission to increase connectivity in the world. What I’ve been taught from resources I’ve consumed over the years trying to pursue startups is that entrepreneurs are supposed to form a specific worldview of the future and try to build a company around/for that future—this actually falls in line with the sources we read, both from Zuckerberg’s statement on Facebook’s mission as well as outside commenters on the implications of Zuckerberg/Page’s worlds. Clearly, people inside the industry versus out of the industry have very different outlooks, and it was really formative for me to study and think about both perspectives.

A lot of my thinking in this class was influenced by my past startup projects, and I’m sure that the developments in my thinking from this class will influence my future projects. In the recent unit regarding data privacy, it was really interesting for me to listen to everyone’s perspectives and study the conversations around the issue—in my freshman/sophomore year of college, I had a brief spurts of obsession regarding this topic, and I spent a lot of time thinking of/building potential solutions to problems I saw in the space. After taking this class, it really illuminated just how little I knew, and it was super validating for me to be able to feel my understanding mature. Another example actually popped up while I was writing my Unit 4 essay, where I touched upon this idea that the world of tech companies inherently cannot separate borders. I actually had a long, fun conversation regarding this with my friend in my startup team, and it was really cool to envision possibly different versions of the internet/whether or not such versions could actually exist. My own experience working on data/tech products gave me a perspective into how the current internet world works, and this class has made me believe that there is potential to change/fix many of the problems we see built inherently into the internet. It’s really inspiring to see and study the massive societal changes that have resulted from technological developments, and it makes me really excited about the potential to effect good change in the world using takeaways from this class/the technical skills I’ve spent so long building.

There’s so much material in this class that I wished I could’ve studied more in depth. To be honest, during this Zoom semester, I was really unmotivated and didn’t do the majority of the readings/attend most of the lectures, which I lowkey regret since this class was so well designed, but whatever, this was a wack semester. Regarding my original reasons for taking this course, I do not have a definitive answer to my questions, but I have learned that the answer is far more complex than I originally thought but now I hopefully have the tools/passion to continue probing at the answers.