reflections
This seminar on design ethics was conducted by Ariel Guersenzvaig (
twitter account). The sessions we had were about “technology, design and ethics”.
I liked the reflection around technology and the idea that it is not neutral and reflects what we value as a society. It materializes, embodies our values and in that sense, influences the way we live.
Two opposite conceptions exist to analyze it: technological neutrality versus determinism. In one case, it would mean that technology is completely neutral and this is what we do with it that gives it a meaning (“Guns don’t kill people, humans do”) which is quite extreme as it negates the effects on the world of the artefacts we create. Whereas on the other side, tech determinism sees technology as an agent of social change molding society. Again this negates one part of the story which is human agency towards technology. We can thus consider the concept of “soft determinism” at the intersection of both views with the idea that technology is neither neutral nor fully determining us.
This topic resonated with me a lot as it is connected to my research around low tech, questioning technology, adapting tools, techniques, artefacts of the past to our context today to have a lifestyle more conscious and respectful of the environment. To develop this idea, we are creating a collective called Slow Lab. I find the history and questioning of technology quite fascinating and am currently reading Tools for Conviviality by Ivan Illich and Small is Beautiful, A Study of the World as if People Mattered by Schumacher which also has a chapter about this topic “Technology with a human face”.
The fact that technology influences the way we live and participates in our decisions, in that sense we can say that technology has a mediating role between humans and their environment. This brings up a question of ethics and I will try to analyze my current project on low tech/slow movement through an ethics/moral lens:
Do my project moralise implicitly or explicitly? How?
At this stage, we have been developing with Slow Lab (a collective we formed with Gerda, Paula and me) some low tech projects implying slow cooking, solar cooking, food preservation to find ways to use less energy when cooking.
We could argue that it moralises explicitly as we share every artefact or old technique we use on an IG account, explaining how it reduces the impact on the environment. However, we could also take a more implicit approach by making these tools attractive, taking them out of the context of “sustainable devices”, and working on the esthetics, the playfulness of it.
What values am I inscribing or I want to inscribe in the design?
The overall project of Slow Lab is to promote awareness and a more resilient lifestyle. We want to encourage people to slow down their pace of life, and value the idea of taking more time - which seems counter-intuitive, or not what most people want or can do.
Regarding technology, we want to invite people to understand what is behind it, feel that they have agency, question it beyond just pressing a button to get what we need. We also want to bring questions about our dependency to energy and fossil fuels in particular.
What are the value conflicts that emerge?
The objective behind this project is to fight for social and environmental wellbeing. However, proning “slow” as a virtue and a way, encouraging the use of cooking devices that use low or no energy but take three times the time needed today to cook for example, means we consider everyone has the time to do it. And having this much time is a privilege, not everybody can afford to take that much time to prepare food, at least in the way worklife is organized in today’s society. It would require a wider societal shift.
How are these values materialised into a design?
These values of slowness, autonomy, agency are materialized with simple, honest design. The way artefacts are built should be easily understandable, and we want to be open about the steps taken to build it so anyone could feel empowered to replicate it. Regarding the materials used, we reuse and repair the maximum amount of components and show that every part can be sourced locally or using components we already have at home.
Ethics considerations in relation to technology and design has been the subject of many different frameworks, manifestos, lists of questions to apply to one’s project. Some examples can be the tools from the Danish Design Council, or these questions in The Convivial Society that can also help (
The Questions Concerning Technology) to assess ethics of projects.
As part of my previous job in a collective dedicated to “Tech for good”, I worked with companies, startups, public institutions and we were constantly creating new frameworks to help organizations integrate social, societal, environmental, economical impact into their business models.
Ethical questions are not legal questions. We are referring to what we “should do”, what we think is right, is good and not what we “have to do”. So it could be a bit subjective. There is not one framework that works for every project, so I see these questions and frameworks as tools that can be an inspiration for me to build my own for my projects. This framework would be not only a way to raise ethical issues that can affect the project but it should allow me to find solutions to solve these issues and help me navigate and make decisions.