Scare-quote ethics
Forgive me, I need to sound off about “tech ethics”. Not the topic, though, but those fucking scare quotes: that ostentatious wink to the reader, made by someone who needs you to know they write the phrase with reluctance and heavy irony.
As you’ll see, this trend winds me up. I see it most often from a certain type of academic, particularly those with columns or some other visible presence/following. I love you folks, but can we cut this out? The insinuation – or sometimes the explicit argument – is “tech ethics” is meaningless; I have seen further and identified that the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house; these thinktanks are all funded by Facebook anyway; the issue is deeper and more structural.
As insights go, this is patently obvious. Of course the sorry state of modern tech has multi-layered causes, and of course our interventions need to address these various levels. Obviously there’s structural work to be done, not just tactical work.
But this is your classic ‘yes and’ situation, right? Pull every lever. Like, yes, I fully agree that the incentives of growth-era capitalism are the real problem. But we also need the tactical, immediate stuff that works within (while gently subverting?) existing limitations.
The problem with playing these outflanking cards, as we’ve seen from the web → UX → product → service → strategic design treadmill, is that as you demarcate wider and wider territory, your leverage ebbs away. You move from tangible change to trying to realign entire ecosystems. Genuinely, best of luck with it: it needs doing, but it takes decades, it takes power, and it takes politics. Most of those who try will fail.
I’m not equipped for that kind of work, so I do the work I am equipped for. Teaching engineers, students, and designers basic ethical techniques and thinking doesn’t solve the tech ecosystem’s problems. But I’ve seen it help in small, direct, meaningful ways. So I do it.
So please: spare us the scare quotes. Let’s recognise we’re on the same team, each doing the work we’re best positioned to do, intervening at the points in the system that we can actually affect, each doing what we can to help turn this ugly juggernaut around.
