Everyware_ The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing - Adam Greenfield [98]
This may well be how evolution works, but it has the unfortunate effect of accommodating instead of challenging the idea that, for example, someone has the right to take your image, on your property, without your knowledge or consent. It's a reframing of the discussion on ground that is potentially inimical to our concerns.
Admittedly, this was a presentation of a prototype system at an academic technology conference, not an Oxford Union debate on the ethics of image and representation in late capitalism. But isn't that just the point? Once we've made the decision to rely on an ecology of tools for our protection—tools made on our behalf, by those with the necessary technical expertise—we've let the chance to assert our own prerogatives slip away. An ethics will inevitably be inscribed in the design of such tools, but it needn't be ours or anything we'd even remotely consider endorsing. And once the initiative slips from our grasp, it's not likely to be returned to us for a very long time.
We know, too, that such coevolutionary spirals tend to stretch on without end. There's rarely, if ever, a permanent technical solution in cases like this: There are always bigger guns and thicker grades of armor, more insidious viruses and more effective security patches.
From my point of view, then, technical solutions to ethical challenges are themselves problematic. I'm not suggesting that we do without them entirely. I'm saying, rather, that technical measures and ethical guidelines ought to be seen as complementary strategies, most effective when brought to bear on the problem of everyware together. And that where we do adopt technical means to address the social, political, and psychological challenges of ubiquitous technology, that adoption must be understood by all to be without prejudice to the exercise of our ethical prerogatives.
Thesis 80
The principles we've enunciated can be meaningfully asserted through voluntary compliance.
One of the obvious difficulties with any set of principles such as the ones we've been discussing concerns the matter of compliance—or, looked at another way, enforcement.
Can developers working on everyware reasonably be expected to police themselves, to spend the extra time and effort necessary to ensure that the systems they produce do not harm or unduly embarrass us, waste our time, or otherwise infringe on our prerogatives?
Will such guidelines simply be bypassed, going unobserved for the usual gamut of reasons, from ignorance to incompetence to unscrupulousness? Or will any such self-policing approach be rendered irrelevant by governmental attempts to regulate everyware?
No response to the drawbacks of everyware will be anything close to perfect. Even if we could assume that all of the practical challenges posed by our embrace of ubiquitous systems were tractable, there will always be bad actors of one sort or another.
Given the almost unlimited potential of everyware to facilitate the collection of all sorts of information, the extreme subtlety with which ubiquitous systems can be deployed, and the notable propensity of certain parties—corporate, governmental—to indulge in overreaching information-gathering activities if once granted the technical wherewithal, I would be very surprised if we didn't see some highly abusive uses of this technology over the next few years. I don't think they can be stopped, any more than spammers, script kiddies, and Nigerian scam artists can be.
Without dismissing these perils in any way, I am actually less worried about them than about the degraded quality of life we are sure to experience if poorly designed everyware is foisted upon us. I believe that this latter set of challenges can be meaningfully addressed by collective, voluntary means, like the five principles offered in this book. If standards for the ethical and responsible development of everyware can