INTRODUCTIONDesign strategy for the ethics of sociotechnical systems
‘Trace’. 2020. Watercolor on paper. Roxanne L. P. Hjorth“Now that the salient environment is becoming that of a turbulent field, a greater emphasis on collaboration is mandatory, and relevant changes need to be fostered in large-scale social systems as well as within organizations.”
Why do we try to solve societal issues with technology with more technology?
Purely technological solutions that don’t engage with or consider the interconnected web of societal needs consistently create additional technology problems.
This is an ancient pattern, illustrated in the mythology of the Greek deity Hephaestus. In the many legends of Hephaestus, he has a problem, and he uses technology to create a beautiful, perfect, genius, solution. That solution, in turn, creates new problems. Which Hephaestus is bound to attempt to solve, this time, using, you guessed it, technology again.
Thankfully, Hephaestus is a fan of the ‘undo’ function. However, as an eternal Greek character, both frozen in time and endlessly in motion, he repeat the same iconic arc, with similar morals each time. In these stories, like comics and detective novels or any narrative formula, there is comfort in knowing that we will end back where we started, and can begin again. There is comfort, also, in the hope that a mechanical solution can solve a social or emotional problem, which are, for many people, much more complex and difficult to think around. Perhaps we could invent something – a magic button or a golden handmaiden - that would help.
The seed of hope that powers these myths is the repeated creation of problems that one knows how to solve, in which one is the protagonist and hero.
In the many stories of Hephaestus’ creations, they have unintended consequences. Hephaestus cannot fix all of these problems on his own, despite his skill and craftsmanship. In the case of a golden throne which trapped his mother Hera, Dionysus needed to step in. In the case of Pandora’s box, he needed the help of multiple gods and multiple solutions, outside of his skill to develop or apply.
To truly solve a human problem, more than a technical solution is needed. We need to understand second-order effects and potential futures. We need foresight, and social understanding, and many more tools than just technical ones. Ethical technology requires thinking of who else might be impacted in the world, today, tomorrow, and when the technology fails. It also requires imagining how to repair past injustices done in the creation of that technology. It is more than a question of policies, it is a moral problem, and requires a moral analysis and response