I’m currently developing a piece of web technology that will hopefully save the lives of abuse victims using the internet. Whilst I can’t talk about it in-depth, for obvious reasons, the process has brought up a lot of philosophical questions and thoughts about the ethics of the technology we build, the data we have access to and who we serve when we build these tools.
Technology, by its very nature, is created in order to make things easier for us. From the earliest invention of the wheel to the space we find ourselves in with generative AI, the initial question we find ourselves asking is “How do I make this easier?”, but how often do we look and ask “How do we make things better?”?
It’s the word “better” that contains the root of the issue here. Are we simply making things “better” in terms of efficiency? Less time and effort, less man-hours therefore less cost. Is this where we aim when we shoot for better? Or do we seek an improvement in the human experience? I’ve written previously about how we can approach web and digital development in a way that includes disabled users, rather than factoring them in as an afterthought and this is further along that train of consciousness.
Can we create technology that seeks PRIMARILY to improve the human experience, literally change and perhaps even SAVE LIVES? Technology, even in its most basic form, has the ability and potential to do exactly that. And when we pour ourselves into that, and by extension, pour ourselves into the greater good, we can advance our fields, and push innovation, whilst all those commercial benefits that we all need in the world we live in are still there to be attained.
Technology doesn’t mean putting people on the backburner. It’s about bringing them to the forefront.