Giving Compass' Take:

• In this Medium post, Cassie Robinson, Head of Digital Grant Making at Big Lottery Fund, discusses how civil society can stay on top of the shifts created by technology.

• How can philanthropies help protect our most vulnerable citizens from the worst misuses of tech? It may all start with funding better data sharing practices, especially given recent concerns over social networks.

• Here's why we civil society needs to ensure artificial intelligence is fair, accountable and transparent.

We can’t ignore the power that technology has, the ways it has the power to entrench and further inequalities or the haphazard and opaque nature of the change it can create  —  unpicking what binds us in community, as well as making important public institutions outdated. Automated decisions increasingly mediate civic life.

We live in a digital society now and while technology still affords all kinds of opportunity, we need to think as much about the implications of technology as we do about its applications.

Civil society shouldn’t underestimate the need to understand the social impacts of technology and actively find ways to be part of directing the impacts of technology on society. This understanding is at the root of fairness  —  making us aware of its power structures, and enables us to question what this mean for our choices, rights, and lives.

While organizations are working out what a better regulatory system looks like to hold technology to account, I’d like to see a social sector empowered to play a greater role in this, and in empowering communities to demand and benefit from technology.

Read the full article about civil society's tech future by Cassie Robinson at medium.com