The Smart Nonprofit

CHAPTER 3The Evolution of Smart Tech

INTRODUCTION

Advanced digital technology took decades of research and development, testing, iterating, failure, and finally commercializing the technology for it to become commonplace today. Its seemingly sudden arrival for end users can feel startling and frightening.

We have been here before technologically. Calestous Juma writes, “There has been ongoing societal tension between the need for innovation and pressure to maintain continuity, social order and stability throughout human history.”¹ For hundreds of years, we have created tools to make work faster and easier, safer, and more efficient. From the printing press to telephones to mainframe and then desktop computers, each generation has made life and work easier. However, those tools weren't “smart”; they didn't make decisions for people and decide, say, who receives services and who doesn't.

This chapter provides an overview of the history and development of smart tech, an explanation of how it works, and its applications for the field of social good, which enables us to understand how best to use it now. We also cover important emerging trends as smart tech becomes ubiquitous.

A BRIEF HISTORY

The history of smart tech begins at the Dartmouth Workshop in 1954. John McCarthy, a computer science professor at Dartmouth College, coined the phrase in his grant proposal to the Rockefeller Foundation to support the workshop. He wrote: “Every feature of intelligence can be precisely described ...