Technoethics and the Frankenstein we call social media

It seems hard to escape the headlines these days, social media has a dark side, and every time we think it’s safe, some other unintended consequence pops up. From cyberbullying to the ongoing cambridge analytica scandal to Russian election interference to broadcasting of suicides/murders and even the selling of a child bride. It seems for every amazing thing social media does (like connecting to distant family members or finding long lost friends), three problems pop up. What’s worse, in order to monitor and censor some of the worst things we require people willing to do a job that likely will give them PTSD.

I understand this particular topic has been covered by the best minds and journalists out there, but the thing I keep coming back to is this:

Like capitalism, technology has no inherent moral or ethical framework, so when will we as a society demand that technologists adopt one, and as a result, think more deeply about the social impacts before releasing the latest product or service.

We just can’t help ourselves, like cats proudly leaving a beautiful, but very dead bird on an owners doorstep. As if to say, see what I can do, yet not once thinking about the larger ramifications of that senseless killing, or what it may do to the environment. We humans, by the way, are equally to blame for the imbalance created by domestic cats killing billions of birds a year.

We as an industry appear condemned to play a never ending game of after the fact whack-a-mole, because we can’t stop, even for a moment, to contemplate what we’re releasing. It doesn’t have to be this way, and I believe it’s imperative that as technologists, we adopt an industry wide code of our own. The idea isn’t anything new, in fact Dr. Mario Bunge, the Argentinian philosopher of science, and physicist first coined the term “technoethics” in his 1975 essay “Towards a Technoethics”. A piece which should be required reading for everyone in the field.

“technology is concerned with human action upon things and men. That is, technology gives power over things and men--and not all power is good to everyone.” - Mario Bunge

In the essay Dr. Bunge spends time thinking about the responsibility of the technologist as both sole creator, technology manager and technology contributor. Regardless of the role, he humanely and logically takes the position that we as technologists, whatever our position in a company, are responsible for our creations, whether they do good or harm. It appears that the industry is also awakening to this as shown by internal stands taken at Amazon over the selling of their face recognition software to ICE, or at Google over the development of a “China friendly” search engine that is ripe for censorship.

We are an industry with a highly educated workforce. We have created untold amounts of wealth and technological achievement, and yet we don’t think deeply about what we can/should contribute to the greater good beyond revenues. Isn’t it time we created working groups around technoethics? Shouldn’t larger corporations have technoethicists in house engaging with product owners? Aren’t we more evolved than cats? Let’s take some responsibility and stop to think about how our creations might affect society at large, both for better and for worse. Then adjust trajectories where necessary to try and make sure the larger whole is served positively.

I’ll leave you with this powerful thought from Dr. Bunge’s 1975 work:

“Being morally ambivalent, technology should be controlled instead of being allowed to develop unbridled in the interest of whatever group can afford it. In other words, the technologist must be held not only technically, but also morally responsible for whatever he designs or executes: not only should his artifacts be optimally efficient but, far from being harmful, they should be beneficial, and not only in the short run but also in the long term. Don't tell me that only a free agent can be held morally responsible, so that a technologist acting under orders from above must be exempted from any blame: this was Adolf Eichmann's line of defense. “ - Mario Bunge