On Die Puny Humans, a selection of folks have created statements for 2004. I was pleasantly surprised to read Cory Doctorow’s call to the toolmakers of 2004:
Stop making tools that magnify and multilply awkward social situations (“A total stranger asserts that he is your friend: click here to tell a reassuring lie; click here to break his heart!”) (“Someone you don’t know very well has invited you to a party: click here to advertise whether or not you’ll be there!”) (“A ‘friend’ has exposed your location, down to the meter, on a map of people in his social network, using this keen new location-description protocol — on the same day that you announced that you were leaving town for a week!”). I don’t need more “tools” like that, thank you very much.
Now, i don’t know much about science fiction, but i read it once in a while to understand the models that technologists are trying to mimic. When i asked Cory about the relationship between scifi and technology, he told me that scifi is not supposed to be prescriptive. Scifi is modeled after what exists today and is not a representation of the future. Quite often, very little in the way of technology is fully fleshed out. In this regard, he’s quite accurate. Even his own Whuffie (which i hear about in way too many meetings on reputation) is barely detailed in “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.” Still, while scifi shouldn’t be prescriptive, many technologists interpolate the ideas presented and flesh it out to be beyond problematic. Often, they have the nerve to refer to the fiction books as their model for why it is a good idea.
Given his role as a science fiction writer, i’m quite pleased to see him call out to technologists. All too often, the omniscient technologies that appear in the science fiction novels are not representations of good things, but embedded in a discussion of the pros/cons of changing social interaction through technology. Take Cory’s Whuffie and his examples of people scorning others because they are not worthy enough of interaction. C’mon now. All of us geeks have experienced a form of that, being chastised for not being cool enough, good looking enough, whatever enough. Why on earth would we want to develop a technology that encourages that? Oh, right, because if _we_ build it, we can be the ones in power, right? Hrmfpt. Seriously now, such a creation creates a whole new level of social awkwardness, new hierarchies that constrain us. Just because it’s an idea for a novel does not make it an idea for life.
So, in fleshing out Cory’s call to technologists, i’d ask all technologists to consider not only what problems a technology solves, but what new ones could emerge. Start thinking like a writer or an abuser of technology. Imagine how people could misuse a technology to hurt others. Consider who gains and loses power from such technology. It’s a fascinating exercise and far more fulfilling than just thinking about who benefits from something. And besides, then you won’t always be thinking “but the users shouldn’t do THAT with this technology.”
