Full Circle Associates

Scott Berkun has a very thoughtful essay (#48 in a series) on Good, evil and technology. Scott, who I met and listened to at MindCamp, came across to me as a thoughtful, energetic change agent (first impression - we didn't get a chance to talk much. He also was very graceful when I was a challenging audience member!). In #48, Scott asks designers and engineers to think about their values as they become expressed in the things they make. He writes:

The implications of things
Every tool has an implied morality. There is a value system that every machine, program, or website has built into it that's comprehendible if you look carefully. As two polarizing examples, look at these two things: a machine gun and a wheelchair.

Machine gun

Wheelchair

Both of these have very clear purposes in mind and behind each purpose is a set of values. The wheelchair is designed to support someone. The machine gun is designed to kill someone (or several someones).

Many of the products we make don't have have as clearly defined values. However as I mentioned earlier, the absence of value is a value: not being explicitly evil isn'’t the same as being good. If I make a hammer, it can be used to build homes for the needy, or to build a mansion for a bank robber. I can be proud of the hammer'’s design, but I can'’t be certain that I'’ve done a good thing for the world: the tool'’s use is too basic to define it as good or bad.

It's common to see toolmakers, from search engines to development tools, take credit for the good they see their tools do, while ignoring the bad. This isn't quite right: they are equally involved in the later as they are in the former.

The conclusion to this is that to do good things for people requires a more direct path than the making of tools. Helping the neighbor'’s kid learn math, volunteering at the homeless shelter or donating money to the orphanage are ways to do good things that have a direct impact, compared to the dubious and sketchy goodness of indifferent tool making.

Of course, I'm nodding in firm agreement because I do believe everything we create carries, in some ways, our values and beliefs. Thus technology is never neutral. Our cultures are infused into it. Likewise, the things we make are not always used as we intend. That, however, does not abdicate the responsibility to be aware of what we carry into what we build and our thoughtful consideration and choices in how we do it.

Categories: values, responsibility