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There seems to be two camps for technology broadly now: "Humans should control technology" and "Technology should control humans." There are some middle camps

There seems to be two camps for technology broadly now: "Humans should control technology" and "Technology should control humans." There are some middle camps like Humans should control technology that should control humans like China, but roughly thats still nets out to "technology should control humans". I'm starting to see designers, whether systems, UX or Eng flavored, as the last defense against the "Technology should control humans" camp, but ironically, they have the most to gain from that camp as well in the middle term, a la China. I applaud the IEEE for tackling such a high level topic like this and framing it so clearly. As a designer myself, I'm fully in the camp that Humans should control technology, its a tool that should be clear and discrete. This in itself is a key part of "well-being" as I believe the other half results in things such as addiction, abuse, and unwilling control. However, when it comes to corporate environments, its becoming harder and harder to define humans as the control point, since there are so many corp benefits to putting technology in control. How have you seen this yourselves? Have you come up with defensive tactics or evangelized human well-being? I'd love to know how.

kbenson 8y ago
> There are some middle camps like Humans should control technology that should control humans like China, but roughly thats still nets out to "technology should control humans". > However, when it comes to corporate environments, its becoming harder and harder to define humans as the control point, since there are so many corp benefits to putting technology in control. If you're a bit lenient on how you define "technology" so that it includes policy and process, then that group of humans controlling technology controlling humans gets much larger, as it starts to define most medium to large businesses. Put in that context, it might be more accurate to think of it not in terms of technology, but systems. Humans have been using systems to control humans for millennia, and the arguments are just as old, and the system controlling the people is not a new trope either (e.g. Orwell's classic 1984). I suspect researching and regurgitating those discussions will yield interesting perspectives.
- tsunamifury 8y ago
  1984 specifically has not aged well to the point of its predictions becoming both trite and easily dismissible in a corporate setting. Its sort of exaggerated misery and book burning was so on-the-nose that society of course knee-jerk rejects anything associated with it. I think the lesser understood brother, A Brave New World, better illustrated how we arrived at these forms of control because we prefer them in the pursuit of happiness. Its this difficult trade-off which is inherently post-capitalistic, convenience for control, that we seem to not have a clear way to have a dialog around.

kbenson 8y ago

> There are some middle camps like Humans should control technology that should control humans like China, but roughly thats still nets out to "technology should control humans". > However, when it comes to corporate environments, its becoming harder and harder to define humans as the control point, since there are so many corp benefits to putting technology in control. If you're a bit lenient on how you define "technology" so that it includes policy and process, then that group of humans controlling technology controlling humans gets much larger, as it starts to define most medium to large businesses. Put in that context, it might be more accurate to think of it not in terms of technology, but systems. Humans have been using systems to control humans for millennia, and the arguments are just as old, and the system controlling the people is not a new trope either (e.g. Orwell's classic 1984). I suspect researching and regurgitating those discussions will yield interesting perspectives.

tsunamifury 8y ago
1984 specifically has not aged well to the point of its predictions becoming both trite and easily dismissible in a corporate setting. Its sort of exaggerated misery and book burning was so on-the-nose that society of course knee-jerk rejects anything associated with it. I think the lesser understood brother, A Brave New World, better illustrated how we arrived at these forms of control because we prefer them in the pursuit of happiness. Its this difficult trade-off which is inherently post-capitalistic, convenience for control, that we seem to not have a clear way to have a dialog around.