Sept. 7, 2020, midnight
Ethical Technologist Issue 2: The Origins of Techno-Libertarianism, and One Way to Escape It
The Ethical Technologist
The Ethical Technologist
Howdy, and welcome back to the sophomore issue of The Ethical Technologist! In this issue I'm combining recent news along with insightful and influential pieces from as far back as 1995. The loose theme of this issue is the origins of techno-libertarianism and its influence on San Francisco/Silicon Valley tech culture. I'd consider some of these articles essential reading for understanding why so many influential tech leaders resist the idea that ethical thought has anything to offer. For them, injecting ethical reflection in the discourse is antithetical to progress. Where did that view come from? It's a complicated story, but well worth digging into.
So, this week! The history of chairs (yes, chairs) as a parable for a tech economy focused on apps designed to strip-mine us for our data. People are more susceptible to deepfakes than we knew, even bad ones. How counter-cultural San Francisco became the epicenter of techno-libertarianism. And how a catalog for organic farming (among other things) was the catalyst for that transformation. Finally, a new movement to rethink the way that tech startups can serve communities instead of VCs.
[ 🪑 The Tyranny of Chairs ]
I just can't top the title of this week's first piece. Ever wonder where the ergonomic Aeron chair came from, or why it is so beloved? Industrial designer Victor Papanek, once wrote that "industrial design has put murder on a mass-production basis" when he criticized his peers for emphasizing corporate profits at the expense of the well-being of people. The Guardian uses the history of chairs as a lens for exploring how the post-war ethos of designing for appearance—and obsolescence—has led our homes and offices to be populated with objects whose only real purpose is to enrich others, at our expense. It's a fascinating history of the concept of "universal design", and the slow awakening in the 20th century that industrial designers have ethical obligations to their customers.
And of course, it's a lesson for us as well, about the importance of focusing on humans first and foremost as we design our apps and gadgets. In an age where it's becoming clear that the design of apps like Twitter and Facebook are undermining the fabric of democracy, the story of the humble chair should be a reminder that we have a responsibility to focus first and foremost on the well-being of the people who use our product.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/aug/25/the-tyranny-of-chairs
[ ♊️ Deepfakes Don't Have to be Good to be Credible ]
Deepfakes, if you haven't heard, are a powerful AI-based tool for manipulating videos of people to make them appear to do or say things they didn't actually do or say. Such a tool could facilitate the creation of powerful disinformation campaigns, and the first studies proving their effectiveness for changing political attitudes are starting to come out. And it doesn't even have to be a good deepfake to be effective.
Researchers from the University of Amsterdam have demonstrated that not only are deepfakes "a more powerful mode of disinformation in comparison with the false news stories…and the Russian Twitter trolls", but that when they are used as part of a micro-targeted political campaign, it might not even matter that the deepfake is glaringly obvious.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1940161220944364
[ 🏝️ What Do You Get When You Cross a Hippie With a Banker? ]
Here's a deep cut from the beginning of the 90s tech boom that remains relevant today. Barbrook and Cameron argue that the unique blend of counter-culture and libertarianism found in San Francisco gave birth to the idea that we could dethrone powerful governments and corporations by arming individuals with open access to technology, made available in an unregulated marketplace of ideas and products. But this contradictory combination contains the seeds of its own demise, as those same governments and corporations will inevitably co-opt the mechanisms of empowerment to consolidate power and shore up the status quo.
https://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/californian-ideology
[ 🌎 From Organic Farming to Big Tech ]
Along the same theme, it's worth digging a little bit into Stewart Brand. Long a symbol of the Californian Ideology, he has had perhaps the greatest impact on Silicon Valley tech culture of anyone. His "Whole Earth Catalog", first printed in the 60s, advocated for empowering individuals over corrupt institutions by providing access to education and tools designed to liberate. But, as the previous article argues, the kind of free-market libertarianism at the root of this movement laid the foundation for well-funded corporations to co-opt the movement to enrich and empower themselves at our expense.
This New Yorker piece provides an excellent history of this storied catalog, and how it transformed into the world's first online community (still going!), and eventually an entire culture promulgated by WIRED magazine, tech leaders like Paul Graham, and the open source software movement.
[ 💹 Disrupting Startups ]
Historically, investors expect tech startups to generate a very high return on investment. This has meant that startups had two options for "exits": Going public on the stock market, or getting bought out for a high price. The problem is that neither of these routes are well-aligned with the interests of a startup's customers. What if there were a third way to generate a return for investors, but that was aligned with with customers' interests?
MEDLab at the University of Colorado, Boulder, has a new model they call "Exit to Community", a model designed to return a startup's value to their community of users, and create new incentives to align the startup's behavior with the interests of their customers.
https://www.colorado.edu/lab/medlab/2020/08/31/exit-community-community-primer
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That's a wrap for Issue 2! Thanks to our amazing content editor, Amy Goodman-Wilson, for all her hard work getting our second issue out the door.
And thank you for subscribing. If you enjoyed this issue, tell your friends! If you have an article that should be featured in an upcoming issue of The Ethical Technologist, let me know by either replying to this email (what, a newsletter you can reply to!?), or pinging me on Twitter.
Until next time,
yours,
Don Goodman-Wilson