1	""I" "I am part of the culture, as you may well be... consider how you use the technologies. What roles do these devices play in your own life? How do they sustain or change your relationships? How will the sum of these small impacts change the way we live? ...use it to reflect on the changes we rarely question." Dr. J. A. English-Lueck
2	Ethics and Design CMPE 80E Engineering Ethics Spring 2003
3	Outline Popular view of product development. Creating social-technical systems How and when do ethical aspects and problems manifest themselves during the design process? Questions to ask: Of a design Of a designer The social context of use
4	Assumptions of the Popular View of Product Development Product attributes define the space of possible offerings. Different points in the space will appeal to different customers. There is a sweet spot in the space that will maximally appeal to customers and establish dominate market position. (The notorious “killer app.”) We strive to identify that sweet spot prior to release by using skilled designers, engineers, and marketers to build a product that hits the sweet spot. The market itself pulls products toward the sweet spot as customers try different product variations.
5	Finding The Sweet Spot (or the “Killer App”)
6	Outcomes of the Popular View Approach We try to predict the sweet spot prior to product release. Release a new (or enhanced) product. Try to persuade customers that the new product does exactly what they want and is exactly what they need. And we hit a lot of “peaks and valleys” in the process. Sometimes even get lost and exit the market completely (sometimes purposefully, sometimes accidentally).
7	Product Generation Circle
8	Network Age “Today’s technological transformations are intertwined with another transformation – globalization – and together they are creating a new paradigm: the network age. These transformations expand opportunities and increase the social and economic rewards of creating and using technology. They are also altering how – and by whom – technology is created and owned, and how it is made accessible and used. A new map of innovation and diffusion is appearing” Human Development Report 2001: Making New Technologies Work for Human Development, United Nations Development Programme, 2001
9	Social Change “Our society is enmeshed in a major social transformation, driven in part by, and deriving much of its distinctive character from, the amazing advances in technologies of information… The technical changes in turn facilitate large shifts in most of our fundamental institutions: in nation-states, communications industries, churches, armies, factories, friendship networks, and more. The rate of social change is intoxicating, disorienting, and probably accelerating.” Harnessing Complexity, Axelrod and Cohen, 1999
10	We Design and Build Socio-Technical Systems Research on society and technology shows: ICTs are embedded – They do not exist in social or technological isolation. Their cultural and institutional contexts influence their development, implementation , use and role in organizational and social change. ICTs are socio-technical networks that can be configured in ways that influence their uses and social consequences. ICTs have both enabling and constraining effects on groups, organizations and larger scale social orders.
11	Research Results The relationship between ICTs and social structures is reciprocal. Research has shown that: ICTs can restructure workplaces through the ways they are incorporated into the everyday lives of the users. Technologies are shaped by the everyday actions of those who routinely use them in the social contexts within which they are implemented. A stable configuration of work practice and ICTs is reached after which changes are incremental. Until there is some event(s) -- small or large – that generates new conditions that need to be adapted to.
12	Research Results Research on work practices shows that people utilize ICTs and reshape them in ways their original designers did not anticipate. This reshaping of system use suggests that an ICT will change from its original design. System design does not end with delivery of a product because: Most ICTs are designed to be used for long periods of time and the circumstances and situation of use changes. Complexity of systems design and contexts of use make it impossible to anticipate all issues of importance. Flexible use of ICTs by different groups requires that ICTs be designed for many different contexts of use.
13	J. Peterman Company You may of heard the business story of rise and fall of J. Peterman and his catalogue sales company. In his second “Owner’s Manual No. 1” there is this philosophy: “I think that giant American corporations should start asking themselves if the things they make are really, I mean really, better than the ordinary. Clearly, people want things that make their lives the way they wish they were.”
14	Product Adaptation and Changing Social Meanings
15	This is a Complex Adaptive System Introduction of new products changes the market context so carefully researched before their release. This effect is increased by multiple products from multiple vendors. The meanings of new products – what they are for, how they are used, what they communicate to people – are determined by the consumers themselves, not by the designer, the marketer, or the original manufacturer. Products and meanings co-evolve. The effects of forces shaping these systems do not add up in a simple manner – there are non-linear interactions among components.
16	Putting It All Together (Static)
17	Putting It All Together (Dynamic)
18	Socio-Technical Assumptions New products are part of a collaborative search for market “sweet spots” that may not yet exist. Need to discover what a product means to people – how they use it, how they feel about it, what it communicates, the product’s relationship to other meanings, how it is valued, and how the attached meanings could be richer. Need to listen to customers and be ready to adapt products quickly to emerging meanings. Need to understand the personal, social, and economic context into which products are released and the shifts in context that are caused by the products. Need great agility to explore the product space and context.
19	Outcomes of Socio-Technical Perspective Understand and explore the social construction of meaning – what people do with products and why – in the wider personal, social and economic context. Rapidly generate and evaluate variants of products that explore the three dimensions of value proposition, delivery mechanism, and charging model. Model and simulate the market so as to help guide a collaborative search for the product’s sweet spot.
20	Questions to Ask of A Design What are the requirements that have to be met and why? What are the ethical aspects? Which ethical principles or considerations underlie these ethical aspects? What are the ethical problems arising? How could they be resolved, diminished or avoided? What, in general terms are the implications for: the social regulating and controlling of technological risks, the collective decision-making relating to technological risks, the professional practice of engineers? Under what circumstances and upon what grounds may or must technological risks and the activities producing them be viewed as ethically acceptable or permissible?
21	Questions to Ask of The Designer How do you deal with conflicting norms and values in the design process? What are the strategies and methods that you use in actual practice? What are the ethical and methodological problems connected to those strategies and methods? What kinds of formal methods and models exist for dealing with conflicting norms and values? What is the methodological and normative justification given for these methods and models? To what extent are these justifications problematic and/or open to improvement? What sorts of methodological and ethical requirements should be placed on (methods for) dealing with conflicting norms and values in the design process? How, on the basis of such requirements, can existing methods and practices be improved?
22	The Precautionary Principle The precautionary principle is included in a large number of international declarations and conventions such as the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development: "Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation." How is the precautionary principle used in present policy? On what kind of moral basic assumptions, principles is it based? What are the methodological and ethical problems related to ignorance that it tries to solve? What are the methodological and ethical problems related to technological risks that it tries to solve?
23	Informed consent When dealing with technological risks and in particular with the question: When is a risk acceptable? the following two phenomena are certainly ethically relevant: The fact that the possible consequences of the relevant technology do affect others than those executing and assigning-the project, and There is often evidence of insufficient knowledge when it comes to the matter of the hazards and risks of the relevant technology.
24	Responsibility (Accountability?) How can individual and collective responsibility be interpreted in a societally acceptable and workable way? 1. What might be the most suitable typology for responsibilities in technological projects? To what degree does the changing (and increasingly collective) character of technology have a role in this? 2. To what extent is (traditional) individualistic ethics usable for the responsible decisions of individuals who contribute to collective actions and how might that be supplemented? Where and after what degree of effort does individual responsibility end (think of whistle-blowers)? 3. How does the law deal with the consequences of large-scale technological actions, especially when the law is so ‘constructed’ that individuals cannot be touched? 4. Can a notion of collective responsibility be created that is an effective and acceptable way reduce the undesirable effects of (the risks of) technology? If so, how can this be implemented?
25	Question and Answer? "I am part of the culture, as you may well be... consider how you use the technologies. What roles do these devices play in your own life? How do they sustain or change your relationships? How will the sum of these small impacts change the way we live? " Dr. J. A. English-Lueck “…that technology is used to empower people, allowing them to harness technology to expand the choices in their daily lives.” Human Development Report 2001: Making New Technologies Work for Human Development, United Nations Development Programme, 2001