Ethical Tech In The Time of Covid-19

By Deb Donig

In the Spring Quarter of 2020, I was scheduled to teach my first class in a field of inquiry I had proposed to call “Ethical Technology.” Two weeks before the start of the quarter, we learned that, in adherence with the new Shelter In Place orders aimed at stopping the transmission of Covid-19 and flattening the curve, the university would go online.

The vision of the course, and my thinking about the intersection of the human and the technological has shifted—necessarily and immediately—as we move into an environment where our fundamental human interactions now play out through technological innovations. That tech now mediates the bulk of our human activity intensifies, more than ever, the stakes of understanding and proceeding with technological use and innovation armed with an ethical skill set.

This moment is a pivotal one, and the decisions we make about how to build our tech will have major consequences as we move forward. The protocols and models established now will set the tone for how we move forward. It is critical that we take some time to reflect on this moment, and to hold in our minds the human values that we share so that the tech we develop will be created in the image of those shared human values.

As we began Fall Quarter, I asked my students to keep a journal of their thoughts and experiences, particularly as they relate to the content and ideas of the course. With their permission, I have published these reflections.

Journals are maps of the past. They provide us with a roadmap of our feelings, thoughts, and experiences. As with a map, one utility of a journal is that it traces the terrain of our lives and minds so that when we encounter that terrain again, we can assess, understand, and navigate the path when we meet it again.

The current moment we are, together, in is a place that is unfamiliar to us. There are no maps. This is both a terrifying and a deeply liberating thing:. Terrifying in that we do not know what to do because we’ve never encountered this before. Liberating in that lacking maps, we are newly free to throw out that which does not serve us. We do not have to recreate the past. We can build a better future, unshackled to the heavily paved roads that got us here.

I came across a poem recently that speaks to this very deeply, titled “Old Maps No Longer Work Here.” In it, the speaker asks:

how will I know where to go?
how will I find my way? no map!

She answers herself, speaking from a second voice from deep within:

“there was a time before maps
when pilgrims traveled by the stars.”

It is time for the pilgrim in me
to travel in the dark,
to learn to read the stars
that shine in my soul.

When the old maps are no longer available to us, when the busy-ness of our daily lives are put on pause without our consent, when the familiar is taken from us, our first impulse is to want it back, all of it. I think, however, that if we truly learned to read the stars that shine in our souls, we might find something guiding us toward something different. Writing, reading, and sharing the contents of our hearts and minds can, I truly believe, help us navigate now. Let’s allow the stars that shine within, our very human inner lights, to guide us now toward a world that more accurately captures and reflects the human values we carry within us, constellated by the stars that animate our human souls.

The word “technology” brings to our contemporary minds the idea of innovation that operates through mechanical, algorithmic, scientific, or mathematical principles. But at its core, the word “technology” comes from the Greek "Techne" (τέχνη), a term that means “art” or “craft” It is related to the word “text,” which derives from the same ideas, and means “to weave.”To that end, technology , which points toward the non-human world created to ease human labor or expand our abilities, also points us back to the very same concept that animates the humanities. So too are the basic building blocks of the humanities— art, craft, culture —technologies. Technological innovation, if we trace the concept back to its origins, has its roots in the humanities. It should represent our human values, and at its best, it does. At tech’s best, it bears a symbiotic relationship with the human and the values that make us human. I’d like to think that if we have a chance to rebuild the tech sphere from the ground up, we’d build it with this essential thought in mind.

Here are some thoughts and reflections by the next generation of technologists and humanists committed to joining together to do exactly that.

Read, share, and write back.