Hello, dear reader.
Welcome to Technomoral, a substack that explores how technology shapes human social interaction and vice versa, as well as the design of new technologies or systems that enable — or hold us back from — building good societies and living well.
Some topics I’ll explore include: why some sociotechnical systems fail while others succeed, how algorithms are perceived to work and how they actually work; and how sociotechnical systems enable both incredibly prosocial and occasionally terrifying behavior; among others.
Why are you creating a substack?
Because everyone has one. Because sometimes, I have an idea that I want to get out into the world faster than the 12-24 month academic publishing cycle. I also want my research — as well as others’ — to be accessible to a wider audience.
Wait, hold up, why “technomoral”?
In Technology and the Virtues, Shannon Vallor suggests that we need new technomoral virtues because our technologies provide new, “better-or-worse ways of interacting with, using, and designing them” and that it is nearly impossible to separate technology and morality from each other in an interconnected, datafied world.
A technomoral perspective asserts that technology is not neutral, and can never be. Humans build technologies for particular reasons, not arbitrarily. We thus inject our values into the processes that create and shape technologies. Technologies change how we relate to and interact with one another, making certain actions easier and others more difficult in ways both foreseeable and not.
In other words, technologies have values baked into them from conception, but they also take on new values as they interact with us in our social environment, and additionally reshape our existing values. Take for example our values around privacy and sharing — before Facebook and LinkedIn, you could look up anyone’s phone number and address in the phonebook. Today, most people would balk at thought of having these personal details readily accessible online.
New technologies thus radically transform our individual and collective habits and values, and can greatly improve or diminish our ability to live well together as a society. Until we begin to understand the mutually dependent relationship between technology and society, we won’t be able to solve the problems that we face today.
To be human is to err, to be a human today is to tech.
So how can we tech well? This substack will focus on the social and ethical aspects of technology, with an eye towards how we can better design, build, and study sociotechnical systems.
How frequently can I expect you to publish here?
No promises — for now. Stay tuned, folks!