Tim Berners-Lee on the Huge Sociotechnical Design Challenge (techcrunch.com)

In a speech discussing ethics and the Internet, the inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has tasked the technology industry and its coder army with paying continuous attention to the world their software is consuming as they go about connecting humanity through technology. From a report: Coding must mean consciously grappling with ethical choices in addition to architecting systems that respect core human rights like privacy, he suggested. "Ethics, like technology, is design," he told delegates at the 40th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners (ICDPPC) which is taking place in Brussels this week. "As we're designing the system, we're designing society. Ethical rules that we choose to put in that design [impact the society]... Nothing is self evident. Everything has to be put out there as something that we think we will be a good idea as a component of our society." If your tech philosophy is the equivalent of 'move fast and break things' it's a failure of both imagination and innovation to not also keep rethinking policies and terms of service -- "to a certain extent from scratch" -- to account for fresh social impacts, he argued in the speech.

He pointed to how Wikipedia had to rapidly adapt its policies after putting online the power for anyone to edit its encyclopedia, noting: "They introduced a whole lot of bureaucracy around it but that actually makes it work, and it ended up be coming very functional." He described today's digital platforms as "sociotechnical systems" -- meaning "it's not just about the technology when you click on the link it is about the motivation someone has to make such a great thing because then they are read and the excitement they get just knowing that other people are reading the things that they have written."

Comments

some people code to make money

[Anonymous Coward]

Most software programmers I know are coding to make money. Making humankind better is not on there agenda.

Re:some people code to make money

[AmiMoJo]

The software that runs MRI scanners makes humankind better. The software that lets us communicate securely or encrypt our personal data makes humankind better. The software that allows us to understand our own DNA makes humankind better. The software that took us to the moon made humankind better.

Wikipedia super bad example

[SuperKendall]

Wikipedia is in control of a cabal of zealots that you cannot get even a single word change in any page of significance without proving you "belong"

Think of any movie you have every seen where small groups have been isolated from civilization for thousands of years, that is what little fiefdoms of controlling Wikipedia editors are like at this point.

Missing the forest for the trees

[apoc.famine]

Coding must mean consciously grappling with ethical choices ...He pointed to how Wikipedia had to rapidly adapt its policies after putting online the power for anyone to edit its encyclopedia, noting: "They introduced a whole lot of bureaucracy around it but that actually makes it work, and it ended up be coming very functional."

Coding is nothing like editing Wikipedia.

You can't be "consciously grappling with ethical choices" while you're implementing a sort function. Maybe that sort function is going to determine which sick child gets priority treatment, or maybe that sort function will figure out which sick child costs too much, and another routine will try to get rid of the kid. If a coder is going too far down the rabbit hole trying to figure out how every last hunk of code will be used, they're no longer just a coder.

If the summary had quotes from TBL about software engineering, architecture, or design it would be a lot more insightful. But a whole lot of code is making function foo handle variable X correctly. There's nothing ethical or unethical in that. It just is.

Code is a tool. And like any tool, it can be used for good or ill. Placing the focus there rather than on the larger design and decision systems seems really dumb to me. Of course, the article might go into these things, but ain't nobody got time for that.