Adam Greenfield has a great piece at Boxes and Arrows, "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace: Some Ethical Guidelines for User Experience in Ubiquitous-Computing Settings. As Greenfield points out, ubicomp is moving up fast on the horizon--but designers and engineers haven't yet deeply considered the immense ethical ramifications of the technologies.
It is, however, the impact of ubicomp on civil liberty that I am most concerned with. While the quality of ubiquitous interaction is more squarely within the typical ambit of our professional concerns, it is the civic sphere where our input and perspective is most critical and can be leveraged to secure the most enduring and important gains.
Ubiquitous systems lend themselves easily to—indeed, redefine—surveillance. However discrete they may be at their design and inception, their interface with each other implies a domain of action that extends from the very contours of the human body outward to whatever arbitrarily large civic space can be equipped with the necessary sensors and effectors. In short, there is no current technology with greater potential to support authoritarian and totalitarian social engineering, and the limitation otherwise of choice.
Greenfield's thoughtful piece includes a set of foundational principles (beginning with the obvious but often overlooked Principle 0: Do No Harm) and a list of useful links.
[via Boxes and Arrows]
Posted by johndan at April 30, 2005 01:01 AM | TrackBack