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The Net As New Jerusalem, Part Two
from the last-days-of-politics-(cont.) dept.
(Second in a series)
"I have worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into the human body," wrote Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley's great novel. "For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart."
In our time, Victor Frankenstein would be in Silicon Valley, taking one meeting after another with venture capitalists, angling for a profile in Wired, wrangling tens of millions for his new company, lifeinthebody.com (based in Cambridge, Mass.), beginning commercial licensing of the discoveries of the Human Genome Project.
In contemporary America, Victor wouldn't have to hole up in a remote tower far from human observation. He could partner up with somebody out in the open and promise to create perfectly engineered babies, cure cancer, and stop aging. The venture capitalists would be drooling all over him.
Ethical morasses lie at the heart of modern-day technology, increasingly run by highly-educated, wealthy elites who have little awareness that everybody isn't as technologically-inclined, -equipped or advanced as they are. In this Jerusalem, half the country is still outside the gates.
But perhaps these ethical quandries could form the foundation for a new kind of ethical and rational politics that addresses social divisions among the techno haves and have-nots, the future of gene mapping, intellectual property questions, the use of nano-technologies, the creation of ubiquitous and expensive technologies that are poorly designed or environmentally damaging, the intrusion of government. As in Victor Frankenstein's time, we hear little public or civic discussion about these choices. They haven't surfaced during the presidential campaign and debates. They get crowded off front pages and TV newscasts by hype-laden stories about dotcom greed, crackers and sexual predators online.
We need an ethical framework for technology, and while I'm not a technologist, I'm happy to start the discussion by suggesting some opening questions to ask about developments technological.
Do we need it?
Can we support it? Can the people who buy or use what we make get free, readily-available help?
Are new technologies open to peer review and scrutiny, that is, are the software, hardware, systems and design of new technologies available for public and other inspection in order to root out potential mistakes, problems and flaws?
Will everyone have equal access to new technologies, or will they become the property of corporate and social elites with specialized knowledge and lots of disposable income?
Do new technologies have unintended consequences? Have academic, business or civic analysts examined them? Have their ramifications been explained to the people affected (as in telling Victor Frankenstein's neighbors that a monster would soon be running around the community?).
Can technologies be created with consideration both for the environment and for consumer's convenience? Can batteries, parts, cartridges, support and service be standardized, so that consumers don't have to continuously scramble? Can software and computer makers agree on ethical standards for their product's lifespan, so that people who invest in expensive technologies can be assured that they will last a few years, and that products and software for them will be available in the future?
Can the sale and licensing of gene research to private bio-tech corporations be halted until critical social issues can be discussed and resolved? The public has yet to grasp the consequences of such researching falling into the hands of a few corporations, lulled as they are by scientific and political promises of cures for cancer, aging and heart disease.
Is downloading music or a novel theft? Do the ethics of copyright and intellectual property need reconsideration? Or elimination? Is there a more rational alternative to the Sonny Bono and Digital Millennium Copyright Acts?
How can we ensure that technology and software companies and Web sites prominently disclose privacy provisions and implications? It ought to be illegal to distribute people's personal information with their knowledge and permission.
Perhaps we should require that before new technologies are licensed, deployed or sold, we need a technological impact statement. Like the environmental statements designed to make people aware that their surroundings could be affected by construction or research projects, a TIS would mean that before projects like the gene map are sold and distributed, ordinary people are aware of the technology and its possible impact on their lives and those of their children.
The courts will catch up. (Score:3)
No, I don't think I should. Silicon Valley isn't the new anything. A lot of people have tech jobs there. A lot of people have other sorts of jobs. Yes, technology has got to the point where we can pirate. Just because we can doesn't mean the courts are forced not to prosecute us, as we are still responsible for our actions. Yes, gene research and biotechnology will have ramifications. Six months after an outcry, there'll be legislation (or at least there'll be lawyers).
While things change, it all stays the same really. Yes, technology impacts on things, but yes, the courts will catch up. We're not above the law. There's nothing stopping me going to kill someone, much like there's nothing stopping me pirating software, or invading somebodies privacy. The difference is that the crime of murder has been around a lot longer.
It's too easy to think the world will suddently melt down, if you read too much stuff from the net. (Like this article). Whether we need it, or want it, we'll get legislation. Nothing slides too much without being nailed down. We pay lawyers too much.
thenerd.
...But not Jon Katz as William Blake (Score:3)
Answer: no, there is no problem actually defined here, though the tenor of the questions implies that the reader is supposed to believe there is one--though not exactly what it is. The imagery and emotional hot-buttons pushed through Katz's choice of phrases have a vague neo-Luddite, Naderite ring to them, which floats away in the swamp of unanswered questions.
The answer to the questions is: Yes, and Maybe.
At the bottom we have a nice "perhaps":
"Perhaps we should require that before new technologies are licensed, deployed or sold, we need a technological impact statement. Like the environmental statements designed to make people aware that their surroundings could be affected by construction or research projects, a TIS would mean that before projects like the gene map are sold and distributed, ordinary people are aware of the technology and its possible impact on their lives and those of their children."
Translated:
"Perhaps we should have more government paperwork required before any innovative business is allowed to do anything, so that more bureaucrats can make a living, getting a power trip from saying "no", holding their hands out for bribes--er, campaign contributions--, and so that established business have yet another legal roadblock they can use to squash competition, and so that any fringe group that doesn't approve of your politics can use the process to shut you down regardless of the actual merits of your product or business."
Reality check: the problem with your "perhaps" is the same old one: WHO DECIDES? Who decides whether my product or business is permissable? Do you really want to hand over to a government body or political group or ANYONE AT ALL the power to FORBID you to research or invent something new?
(Dragoness hands Jon Katz a copy of "Atlas Shrugged", and crawls back into her lair.)
...or, The Modern Prometheus (Score:5)
Humanity's most precious possession is our most terrible curse: memory. We're adept at freeing genies from bottles, but inept at putting them back...or leaving them there even if we do manage to reimprison them.
It's easy to say we shouldn't pursue a technology that's not sustainable, not clean, not fair in the consequences it will bring into the world...but who are "we"? Certainly Jon Katz and I can agree not to dabble in things that will harm our neighbors or make the world less hospitable for our descendents, but will everyone else? When "we" say "The consequences of Technology X are not acceptable," how do we prevent "not-we" from having, and acting upon, a different opinion?
Lots of third world nations find it awfully suspicious that the major industrial powers are trying to limit CO2 emissions just when industrialization is starting to benefit the little guy. Sure, we know things now about the effects of CO2 on the environment that we didn't before, but how much comfort is that knowledge to the starving peasant who could have benefited from manufactured goods, but whose government has been bullied into signing an agreement not to use technologies damaging to the environment? How do "we" weigh a .001% greater chance of skin cancer for everyone in the world against the quality of life of a few million? How do we make amends for decisions of this nature that we've already made, and that we continue to make to this day?
No, we cannot slow the world down. (Score:3)
However, you fail to realize that there are indeed a great many people just as happy to be left behind as those who must be on the cutting edge.
Can we protect, standardize, legitamize, or organize everything or mostly everything.
NO.
Should we.
NO.
Fact is, most of people in this group who want to insulate, protect, coddle, smother, suffocate, and control are for the most part clotting egomaniacs who don't think anyone can think for themselves. Your own text tells me you are part of this elitist crowd which believes it must think for the poor underprivledge people.
There are cases where help is generally needed, but a lot of the world would cease having a reason to progress, let alone live, if someone was constantly speaking in their head "don't step on the grass", "thats not your money", "tell the policeman everything", "those thoughts are evil"
too hell with your world Jon, I prefer to have a chance to fuck up my own life as well as a chance to make it work.
Progress isn't predictable (Score:5)
In the early stages of the automobile, there were hundreds of manufacturers in the US, and lots of unsafe cars. Now there are the Big Three and cars are much safer, but do you think that during the early stages of the industry anyone could possibly have predicted what the automobile would become? In the early stages of any new technology, it's really rather impossible to predict future uses or outcomes.
Dynamite was supposed to render wars a thing of the past, due to its vast destructive power. I'll bet if you polled leading "experts" and concerned citizens at the time of its creation, most would have agreed with that prognosis.
My point is that it would be wonderful if we could truly understand the impact of new technologies before their introduction into society, but there are so many variables (human behavior, economic trends, interaction with other technologies, invaders from Mars...) that it's just not feasible to come to any real conclusions about the impact of a technology, other than the really obvious, immediate effects.
You seem to be saying that we should innovate in accordance within the framework of a vast plan, which is contrary to how innovation works best.
Biggest Contribution of Free Software Movement (Score:3)
If you think about it, this is the reverse of the problem that Jon started his article with. Lots of r&d is being done not because it's the right thing, but because there may be a great market for it (some researchers, I know, do things for the cool factor w/o thinking of impacts. Ah, well). I think that if we can export the ethics of Free Software to people, this will do the job.
The concept of "Zion" shows up in a few places other than the Matrix
A Storyteller in Zion, Orson Scott Card
Approaching Zion, Hugh Nibley (especially the chapter entitled "Work We Must But The Lunch Is Free")
(And, yes, there are plenty of differences between the Mormon and Free Software communities. But that doesn't mean something can't be learned by looking around).
But you CANNOT predict the uses perfectly. (Score:3)
How about the Laser? Katz's Inquision bans it because it's a death ray. Who at the time of the Laser's invention realised it would end up in every home as an integral part of the CD player? No-one. You simply can't guess the implications of an invention 100% accurately.
Analysis of Technologies... (Score:3)
Re:Declare it separate? (Score:3)
The best we can hope is that it will become more and more obvious just how artificial those real world national boundaries are, and that rather than regroup along ethnic or ideological splinter lines that all humans will understand their commonalities and work to abolish those sorts of constraints. Once that happens maybe we can talk about independence or freedom as personal liberties and what exactly that will mean for us all as citizens of Earth. Not just on the internet, but in all of life, which is the only way the internet or information will ever be truly free.
We tried it. It didn't work. (Score:3)
What happened? The researchers moved abroad and carried on as normal.
No matter how 'unethical' any kind of research is, there is always going to be some jurisdiction willing to reap the possible financial rewards.
As soon as there is a big financial reward to all the opiate chemistry research going on in South America, or all that germ warfare research in going on in Iraq, or the skin colour specific toxin research that was rumoured to be going on under the old South African regieme, let's see how quickly we throw away our moral stance and cash in.
Am I scaremongering? No. I'm living in a city that was trashed by Nazi V2 bombs in the second world war. Where did all the bomb researchers go after the war? They set up a little thing called NASA.
See my point?
Does the ethics police weigh up the peaceful results of the space programme (microchips, for example) and decide the deaths in London were worth it?
In the long, sad, history of bad ideas... (Score:5)
...this one takes the cake...
Perhaps we should require that before new technologies are licensed, deployed or sold, we need a technological impact statement. Like the environmental statements designed to make people aware that their surroundings could be affected by construction or research projects, a TIS would mean that before projects like the gene map are sold and distributed, ordinary people are aware of the technology and its possible impact on their lives and those of their children.
The fact is, we can never predict where technology will take us with any degree of accuracy. Could the Wright Bros have said, "well, in fifty years, our little POS contraption will develop into hypersonic spy planes that could observe the Soviet Union, so maybe we should keep this secret as to not upset the balance of power."
Could Tim Berners-Lee have said "gee, this little Web thing could be used to distribute pornography, so maybe I should keep it secret for a while longer."
Could Rob Malda have predicted that Slashdot would end up overloading web servers world-wide?
The answer to all is "no." To mandate some kind of TIS would not only be impossible, but it would be dangerous. We can't predict the course of technology, we can only adapt to it. Even without technology, life adapts, otherwise it wouldn't currently be around. Let me put it succinctly:
The greatest risk is not taking one at all.
Jon Katz as Tech Planning Bureaucrat (Score:3)
Yuck.
Missing the point (Score:3)
I'm not declaring that I get the point, but I seem to have a different response to this article.
It seems to me that Katz' point isn't so much to declare we should regulate and control new technologies. Instead, Katz' understated point is that given the wide-range of information exchange available on the internet, can we have more civic debate on these issues based on better mutual understanding?
New Jerusalem, indeed.
I like the ideal of the internet as a distributed version of the public square where ideas are exchanged. In many ways, it should be the ideal forum for discussion and consensus building on just such issues as Katz raises here. One might hope that a tech guy could talk to a farmer and each get some clue about how policies and technologies effect each other's lives, just to grab a random thought-example.
But that isn't what happens on the net, and it isn't usually what happens in a public square. People of like mind tend to band together and reinforce their own opinions. We ghetto-ize ourselves on line (even without push technology) in similar fashions.
Yes, there will always be the "should we, just because we can?" argument, just as there will always be the Darwinian response. The thing is -- and I think this thought lies behind much of Katz' writing -- how much we may be (culturally and materially) sacrificing our long-term survival for short-term gains?
Re:In the long, sad, history of bad ideas... (Score:3)
Re:Realization of the reality of the internet. (Score:3)
Re:In the long, sad, history of bad ideas... (Score:3)