Tag: Ethics

It’s true that when you try to anticipate future harms, you won’t spot them all. But as the muscle gets stronger, your success rate improves and you develop better foresight senses. But even spotting some harms is preferable to not looking in the first place.

Fantastic post from Marcy about the consequences of the way we build, and how we can improve.

Cennydd expands on something he discussed in his (excellent) book, Future Ethics: why hiring a chief ethics officer may not be a particularly effective approach.

A chief ethics officer would be too distanced from product and design orgs, where most ethical decisions are made; their duties would come into conflict with those of the CFO, who is already on the hook for financial ethics; and the seniority of the role would mean this person would be seen as an ethical arbiter, an oracle who passes ethical judgment. This is IMO a failure state for ethics. Loading ethical responsibility onto a sole enlightened exec doesn’t scale, and it reduces the chance of genuine ethical discourse within companies by individualising the problem.

The Tarot Cards of Tech are a set of provocations designed to help creators more fully consider the impact of technology.

Some important questions here to answer before building any new piece of technology.

There is so much to like in this post by Lisa Maria Martin about keeping politics out of talks.

I love the careful definition of political versus partisan:

First, let’s get one definitional issue out of the way. Sometimes when people hear the term “political,” they understand it as “partisan.” To be political is to acknowledge the lived experiences of people outside of yourself. To be partisan is to advocate for the beliefs or propaganda of a specific party affiliation.

And also her point that the impact of our technology is never neutral:

“Please keep politics out of your talks” takes neutrality as a baseline. It relies on the premise that our viewpoints exist in frictionless purity, and we simply need to keep them there to communicate them appropriately. But this is a myth; there is no such thing as neutrality.

And again:

Our choices are always guided by something—laws, morals, values, rules. And because that something is not neutral, our choices cannot be either. And what is design, if not a series of choices? Our web work, no matter how insignificant we may think it, is inherently political, and to pretend otherwise is willful ignorance.

I am not saying every talk needs to be about the political ramifications of your work. Just don’t pretend those ramifications aren’t there. Recognize that your choices draw boundaries.

Viewing the broader context of what we build is something I’ve been thinking a lot about as of late (while reading some great books on the topic). We need more discussion like this.

Jeremy has been thinking about when the ends justify the means, a topic I’ve been thinking about a lot as of late as well.

When do the ends justify the means? Isn’t the whole point of having principles that they hold true even in the direst circumstances? Why even claim that corporations shouldn’t influence politics if you’re going to make an exception for net neutrality? Why even claim that free speech is sacrosanct if you make an exception for nazi scum?

Those two examples are pretty extreme and I can easily justify the exceptions to myself. Net neutrality is too important. Stopping fascism is too important. But where do I draw the line? At what point does something become “too important?”

It’s a lovely post that connects dots between censorship, AMP, HTTPS as a requirement for new features and more.