In 2010, JP Morgan Chase founded the organization, Technology for Social Good. This organization works to develop technology solutions for non-profit organizations.
Three weeks ago, Mr. Teplitz, JP Morgan’s Chief Operating Officer, and Ms. Marano, the head of Technology for Social Good, came to speak to grades 7-12 about a specific project that they had recently worked on. They worked with The King Center to digitize their entire archive of Martin Luther King Jr.’s documents so that the general public can now access all of Dr. King’s files.
To accomplish this project, they used JP Morgan’s extensive resources to create imaging technology that can be used to digitize documents on various mediums. I asked Ms. Marano how she believed that this technology would be used in the future. She responded, “We would love to repurpose what we have done for Dr. King’s documents elsewhere As a start, we will be utilizing the technology at JPMorgan Chase’s own archive downtown. The JPMorgan Chase archive is a treasure trove of artifacts that tell the great history of our bank.”
Hopefully, with Technology for Social Good spearheading this project, one day there will be an archive of all important historical documents online. You will not have to go physically to a museum or exhibition to access primary sources.
Technology is slowly presenting itself to be a great resource for teachers all over the world. It opens up a whole new realm of possibilities for the future of education. With the work of Technology for Social Good, students will be able to access documents that they would never be able to see otherwise. So we should take away from the Technology for Social Good project much more than an enlightened view of Martin Luther King and a greater access to historical information. Perhaps equally important to that are the project’s societal implications: digitization is the key to expanding knowledge. We need technology to help us better understand the world around–and behind–us.
If the Dr. King imaging project is an example of the future of technology, then a great future seems to lie ahead.