As the Mask Drops, It's Time to Face the Politics of Tech

"Is it really?" She gestured at my hoodie and the bold text across my chest reading "Code is Political."

"Profoundly so," I answered. "When designers and developers build the apps and services, they decide what capabilities and agency other people get to have. Technology is political because it shapes how people act, what people know, and what futures we build."

I designed the hoodie to spark conversations like this. When I wear it at tech conferences, people often approach me—sometimes amused or confused, sometimes annoyed—saying, "Stop trying to make everything political! Software is neutral; it has nothing to do with politics." I respond to them as I did to my friend, adding:

"The apps and services we build shape how people find information, who they talk to, where they work, play, and relax. We measure the success of technology by how much it influences our behaviour. In just a few decades, our work has transformed society, so much so it's now impacting the outcomes of elections!"

At this point, one of three things happen: some people realize they’re not ready for this conversation and change the subject, others walk away, and many respond like my friend did: “Wow. I never thought of it that way. That’s a lot of power—and responsibility!”

"Life is political,?not because the world cares about?how you feel,?but because the world reacts to?what you do." —Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny

Technology happens when someone sees the world, has a vision of how to make it better, and builds that future through augmenting the capabilities of other people. The more successful the technology is, the more closely the future aligns with that original vision.

This begs three vital questions:

1. Whose visions shape our future?
2. Do their visions include all of us?
3. Are their values in line with our own?

If the last few days (and years, and decade) have taught us anything, it's that technology and the online spaces it creates directly influence us—as individuals, communities, nations, and a global society. The mask of value neutrality, worn by tech workers and billionaires as a shield against critique, is now off, leaving us to face the truth:

Technology is a political project, and we need to start treating it as such.

Social media, podcasting, ad tech, health apps, facial recognition, deepfakes, AI—all of these technologies profoundly impact our lives. Yet unlike other industries that chose to self-regulate as their influence grew, the tech industry has resisted any meaningful regulation, claiming neutrality while in the same breath warning that regulation would result in competitive disadvantage (and usually pointing at China as the most imminent threat).

It's time we do what doctors and machinists and lawyers and engineers and psychologists and every other profession that impacts the lives of people have done: Set ethical standards and practices for our work and urge our peers to join us.

If I don't clearcut this forest, someone else will.

The stories we tell shape our shared intersubjective realities. Today, those stories are broadcast on platforms controlled by billionaire oligarchs with political ambitions, on podcasts by men with ideologies that actively promote the stripping away of rights and dignity for entire groups of people, and in chat-based echo chambers where only aligned voices are heard.

Technology reflects the values and vision of its creators, and many of the technologies we rely on today manifest futures that serve those closest in power and appearance to their creators, at the cost of everyone else.

It’s easy to feel that technology is inevitable. It’s not.

Technology is a choice.

Today, those of us who work in tech have a choice to make: Do we keep perpetuating the mask of value neutrality, or do we step into our power as the means of production and take responsibility as designers of our collective future?

I choose the latter, and I urge you to join me. Here's how we get started:

1. Build and use tech that align with your values. Invest your time and work in building futures you believe in, and protect your values as you do so.
2. Make Privacy by Design the standard. Privacy is a fundamental right and an essential protection against personal, corporate, and government overreach.
3. Work under a Veil of Ignorance. Tech workers the privileged one percenters of technology. To anchor your work in the real world of your users, assume you may become the one most disadvantaged by your own work, the one whose data will be used against them by a corporate or authoritarian government. Design and build solutions that protect everyone's rights and dignity.?
4. Listen to people when they tell you their truth. When your work creates conflict, harm, or injustice, your users will feel it before you do. So talk to them, and inform your empathy by listening and learning and accepting their truth.
5. Approach your power with humility. In the words of philosopher Michael J. Sandel, meritocratic hubris is "the tendency of winners to inhale too deeply of their own success, to forget the luck and good fortune that helped them on their way."

As you do these things, understand them as steps to making ethics part of your practice. To make this more explicit, challenge your work using these four frames:

• Utility - Ask: Who benefits? Who is disadvantaged? Who profits? Who pays? Who is left out? And for every decision, follow Shoshana Zuboff's call to question who knows, who decides, and who decides who decides?)
• Responsibility - Reflect on Tony Benn's Five Questions for Democracy: What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you use it? To whom are you accountable? How do we get rid of you?
• Values - Define your own values and virtues, and make sure the values of your company and tools you use align with them.
• Capabilities - Build technologies to give people the functionings and capabilities to do and be what they have reason to value.

The Privilege of Action

Embracing the politics of technology starts with speaking up: naming your concerns, highlighting threats and possible harms, and proposing better solutions. We’ve seen what technology can do, and many leaders are now ready to listen when we raise issues.

But remember: Ought does not imply can no matter how much it should.

For many of us, speaking out or stepping away from harmful projects is not an option. Our social safety nets have been systematically unraveled, and speaking up can mean career setbacks, safety concerns, even job loss and loss of access to essential services like healthcare. Being able to speak up is a privilege, and the burden of action falls on those who have that privilege. So as you push ahead against the forces of unregulated utopian techno-solutionism, grant yourself the same empathy, compassion, and grace you extend to those you love. Hold yourself accountable to your own values, keep true to what you believe is right, and forgive yourself when you’ve done what you can and that wasn’t enough.?

We are social creatures. We shape the world by building community and society and telling stories where everyone is included. We owe it to ourselves to use hope as a catalyst as we work toward a future where everyone is valued and every person’s dignity is upheld.

Be the enemy of oppression. Keep your candle burning.

Some of the work that inspired, got quoted or referenced in this article:

• Race After Technology by Ruha Benjamin
• Unmasking AI by Dr. Joy Buolamwini
• Understanding Privacy by ?? Heather Burns
• Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez
• Doppelganger by Naomi Klein
• Your Face Belongs to Us by Kashmir Hill
• Nexus by Yuval Noah Harari
• You Deserve a Tech Union by Ethan Marcotte
• Ruined by Design by Mike Monteiro
• Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil
• How to Be Perfect by Michael Schur
• On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder
• The Conscious Creative by Kelly Small MDes, RGD
• The Tyranny of Merit by Michael J. Sandel
• Technology and the Virtues by Shannon Vallor
• The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff

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Cross-posted to mor10.com