Let’s Stop Focusing On Shiny Gadgets And Start Using Tech To Empower People

Even though Red Burns was one of the most influential figures in the tech industry over the past 30 years — most famous for co-founding the groundbreaking Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at NYU, and in a sense, the beginnings of interaction design — it’s not uncommon for technophiles to have never heard her name. Two weeks ago, she passed away. But much more needs to be said about one of the smartest, gutsiest women I ever knew, and about what she thought about education, technology, design … and life.

Red wasn’t particularly interested in IPOs or the latest tech fetish, even though she was always exceptionally proud of her students and their accomplishments. She knew that technology was a means to an end — and that the end was people.

In that simple reframing from technology to empowerment of people, I believe there’s something everyone one of us — whether designer, programmer, entrepreneur, investor, teacher, student, parent, or child — can learn from Red. Especially in a world where we tend to focus on teaching kids to code, debating the flatness of the latest iOS, or discussing the newest and shiniest device still searching for a meaningful application.

Red is known as “the godmother of Silicon Alley” because ITP — a bold exploration into how media could be made interactive and empower communities and individuals — produced graduates such as Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley, as well as Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award winners Sigi Moeslinger (whose firm designed the Metro Card vending machines for the NYC Subway system) and Jake Barton (whose firm designed the interactive exhibits for the 9/11 Museum).