By Kaitlin Van Loon
Alum Joe Toscano left his job as a consultant for Google after grappling with the realities of how technology impacts society. In the documentary, Toscano helps make the dangers of data sharing more known to those who may not understand how their data is being used.
Toscano’s interest in coding first peaked when he took an interactive media design course led by director of undergraduate programs and associate professor of advertising and public relations Adam Wagler.
“He’s always been a go-getter,” Wagler said. “After he finished the courses needed to complete his psychology undergrad, he decided to add on an advertising and public relations major.”
During his last year at UNL he worked on the strategy side at the student-led advertising agency Jacht where his interest in data and privacy developed even more.
Following graduation, Toscano was the front-end developer for HIVE UNL. The Hive was a coding and entrepreneurship program that got him into the creative tech program at University of Colorado Boulder.
His next big gig was at R/GA in San Francisco, and his main client was Google. As an experience designer, embedded at Google, his main role was to make sure each product strategically fit the Google market. He had to think about how a product would evolve and how the teams’ decisions would affect business goals later.
Toscano left his job at R/GA when he realized he could no longer ignore the morality issues he faced in his everyday duties. He went on to write a book and is now featured on a Netflix documentary called “The Social Dilemma.”
“There are much bigger problems with how our data is being used,” Toscano said in an interview with Danielle Davis for KMTV News. “This film really reveals that in a way that is relatable. It humanizes the algorithm and reveals it as this huge manipulative thing and humanizes it and you can see it as if the algorithm was a human and what it would be like."
Toscano’s unrelenting drive and passion for ethics led him to co-found the Better Ethics and Consumer Outcomes Network (Beacon). As the Chief Innovation Officer he compiles education tutorials and strategic tactics in order to inform communities on technology that helps a business grow and keeps society safe. Values is at the center of this social innovation organization.
For more information on Toscano and “The Social Dilemma” look here.
