A Legacy that Opens Doors: The Mary Evaline Wagner Scholarship Fund
The Wagner Scholarship expands access to the Master of Liberal Arts.
Former diplomat Rob J. Mann wrote a thesis for the University of Chicago Master of Liberal Arts that explores how using the Internet can be a better and healthier experience. Based on his own professional background in bringing internet connections to remote regions, Rob proposed a suite of tools that would allow users to align online life with their own goals and values. He has since built on the concepts in his thesis by debuting The Good Internet Project.
For Rob J. Mann, a transformative educational and professional journey started with a casual conversation about honeybees.
As part of Rob’s career as a Foreign Service Officer for the U.S. State Department, he spent time stationed in North Macedonia. Talking with his European colleagues one day, he was impressed by the way his peers fluently shifted among a wide range of topics unrelated to their careers. They went from exchanging perspectives on labor issues in the Balkans to discussing agriculture in the context of the Macedonian documentary film Honeyland, which portrays a wild beekeeper’s endangered way of life.
That conversation played a role in shifting how Rob thought about higher education. In the past, he had often treated university programs as primarily stepping stones toward his professional objectives. For his next educational adventure, however, he decided to let his wide-ranging interests flourish.
“That conversation planted the seed of this notion of making space for intellectual curiosity without some clear, tangible purpose at the end,” Rob said.
The search for a more vibrant intellectual life led Rob to enroll in the University of Chicago Master of Liberal Arts (MLA). The MLA gave him the resources to synthesize methods and concepts from multiple disciplines, writing a thesis that presented ambitious ideas for making the internet a more congenial virtual environment for users. Following his curiosity, he delved into unfamiliar fields and laid out the groundwork for an unanticipated business venture.
An educational adventure and professional transition
Starting with Rob’s first conversation with MLA staff, he immediately sensed that he’d found the right academic community. The University offered connections to peers, faculty, and alumni who were similarly dedicated to the spirit of open exploration and inquiry.
“I knew this was the home for my mind that I was looking for,” Rob said.
Through the MLA program’s optional concentration in Ethics and Leadership, Rob examined complex questions of decision-making, responsibility, and leadership. In Socratic dialogue with his classmates, he engaged with literary, philosophical, historical, and political works, developing multidisciplinary frameworks for thinking through the ethical dimensions of leadership.
While engaging with new perspectives in his MLA courses, Rob made another major transition. He left government service for a private-sector role at Astranis Space Technologies, a San Francisco-based firm that builds high-orbit satellites for applications like communications and GPS. As Director of Global Affairs, Rob was responsible for traveling to remote areas and nurturing international partnerships that would expand global access to high-speed, broadband internet.
“My career change was in some ways inspired by the journey of discovery I was on through the program,” he said.
The MLA’s online format enabled Rob to continue progressing toward his degree while at home in California or traveling for work. He also seized the chance to interact with peers and faculty members in person, visiting the UChicago campus twice for Residential Seminars, which are optional, week-long sessions devoted to studying and discussing a topic in depth.
“I could not recommend the Residential Seminars in stronger terms,” Rob said. “They were some of the most fulfilling weeks I ever had in the program and in my adult learning journey.”
As Rob progressed through the MLA, he considered how the concepts he was exploring could be applied to the issues he encountered in his professional role. He formed the basis for his thesis project by viewing the social and cultural problems raised by today’s internet through the lens of multidisciplinary inquiry.
How can we build a better internet?
Rob decided that his capstone project would address the conflicts he encountered in places like Canada’s far north, where he worked to provide indigenous communities with broadband access. His work in global connectivity had put him in touch with both the promise and dangers of the online world, and he realized this topic was fertile ground for research and bold solutions.
“I was traveling the globe meeting folks to talk about their communications needs, and I started getting this idea about what it really means to connect the unconnected,” Rob said. “In bringing broadband to communities that don’t have it today, you’re affording them educational, economic, and social opportunity that they don’t otherwise have and that has become something of a digital human right.”
At the same time, Rob thought critically about what greater connectivity can put at risk. In addition to delivering benefits, the internet can also expose users to systems designed to capture attention, accelerate misinformation, and encourage unhealthy patterns of engagement, all issues he had been wrestling with in his Digital Ethics class. In Rob’s view, algorithmic platforms have played a major role in destabilizing democratic institutions while also making it more difficult for individuals to discern truth, form healthy interpersonal relationships, and maintain their mental health.
Rob investigated technical strategies to counteract the negative outcomes of today’s internet without sacrificing the good it does. He argued that organizations and individuals should cooperate to reduce the Internet’s scale and speed, prioritize users’ intentions, and incentivize positive social interactions. To that end, he proposed a set of solutions called The Good Internet Project (TGIP), a suite of tools that work on the level of code to empower users so they can shape an individualized experience that fits their own values and goals.
TGIP would establish rules, behaviors, and architecture for online interactions based on the user’s responses to questions, prompts, and reflections. On a network level, bandwidth management programs and firewalls would serve to slow down and filter content. Tools would nudge users toward prosocial content while discouraging long periods of aimless scrolling. At times, they would receive check-in messages inquiring whether their online activities were aligned with their actual intentions.
“Unlike with industries such as energy or healthcare, internet users do not have to depend on government action and regulation to one day come and change the system,” Rob wrote in his thesis. “With the internet, as projects like TGIP can demonstrate, the public itself, from small communities to even individual users, already have the power and means to change the product.”
Finding support and a way forward
After switching from public service to the private sector, Rob had seen how technology professionals often moved quickly from ideas to implementation. That entrepreneurial energy encouraged him to think about his MLA thesis not only as an academic exercise, but as the beginning of a larger inquiry into how digital tools shape human experience. To take the TGIP from a mere concept to a fleshed-out proposal, Rob had to push beyond his own areas of professional experience and expertise.
“The challenge of writing a cohesive argument based on other people’s research is really hard, and it’s a wonderful thing,” he said. “There’s real value in donning an academic’s hat and bringing something to fruition.”
The MLA gave Rob a structure for pursuing this ambitious project with guidance from faculty and staff. MLA Writing Advisor Millie Rey worked with him to define the scope of the thesis, striking a balance between academic argument and practical implementation.
“Rob was a joy to work with,” Millie said. “He was super-interested, engaged, smart, and creative.”
Millie reached out to faculty in multiple departments to find the right advisors for a project that contended with both complex social issues and technical problems. Nick Feamster, the Neubauer Professor of Computer Science and Faculty Director of Research at the UChicago Data Science Institute, became Rob’s thesis advisor. Alexis Schrubbe, then serving as Director of the Internet Equity Initiative at the Data Science Institute, was a secondary advisor, offering the hands-on technical guidance that enabled Rob to craft and refine his concepts.
“Rob’s one of the rare projects where there is the component of making a case for something and then figuring out how to put it into practice,” Millie said.
Since completing the MLA, Rob has continued developing The Good Internet Project beyond a thesis, with a first tool, Genkan, currently in beta testing. Positioned between the user and potentially exploitative apps, Genkan asks users to identify their objectives when they open an app, tracks the time spent in-app, and follows up afterward to reflect on their experience.
Additional tools are in development, with the goal of helping users bring more intention and agency to their online lives. For Rob, the project represents the kind of unexpected outcome that can emerge when intellectual curiosity is given room to grow. A journey that began with a conversation about bees ultimately led him to a new way of thinking about technology and the conditions that help people live and connect more intentionally.
“The real representation of the value of this journey through the MLA is that it compelled me to do something I would have otherwise been totally afraid to do, or simply never thought of,” he said.
For more details about concepts behind TGIP, read Rob’s full thesis. To learn more about how the University of Chicago masters of Liberal Arts supports intellectual exploration, explore the program.
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