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Thursday, June 28, 2018

The conscience of Silicon Valley

There has been much uproar lately in Silicon Valley, April Glaser writes in an interesting piece in Slate.  Employees at Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Uber, and others, have expressed disapproval of their companies' involvement with police surveillance, military technology, or refugee policy.  Their efforts have apparently had an impact on corporate decisions.

Thursday, April 6, 2017

Ethics in technological design

The theme of CSTV's Design & Society course is "good design".  When I ask students what this expression means, they tend to think, first of all, about technical matters, e.g., efficiency, cost, usability, and so on.  However, as the course progresses, we come to ethical issues, e.g., is the design "good" for people, and in what sense?

Although the ethical aspect of good design has always been important, it is becoming ever more immediate.  I think this is because fewer designs today are simply objects while more are really services.