Unit 3

Social and Value Dimensions in

Technology
 What is technology ?
• Technology is the making and using of ‘‘tools.’’
• Humans have often been called tool-making beings. So-called
primitive humans made arrowheads, instruments of war, and, later,
carts and other implements that we could call tools.
• Technology is the application of science to the solution of practical
problems.
• It is important to understand that this definition of technology
suggests that humans are firmly in control of technology.
• Tools do not use us; we use tools.
• The technology-as-tools suggest that technology is neutral from the
standpoint of social and value issues.
• Humans can create weapons, but weapons can be used not only to
commit aggression and promote tyrannical regimes but also to defend
against aggression and to defend democracies.
• Computers can be used to invade privacy and engage in identity theft,
but they can also facilitate communication, store vast amounts of
information, and accomplish many computing tasks that would not
otherwise be possible.
 TECHNOLOGICAL OPTIMISM: THE PROMISE
OF TECHNOLOGY
National Academy for Engineering identified the 20 greatest engineering achievements of the 20th century :

• Electrification ,Automobile • Highways,

• Airplane • Spacecraft, Internet, imaging
• Water supply and distribution (especially in medicine),
• Electronics (vacuum tubes, • Health technologies, Petroleum
transistors, etc.) and petroleum technologies
• Radio and television • Laser and fiber optics,
• Agricultural mechanization, • Nuclear technologies
computers, Telephone • High-performance materials
• Air conditioning and refrigeration,
• Technological optimism is the view that the effects of technology on
human well-being are almost altogether good.
• Technology enables us to provide for our basic needs and some
luxuries.
• Even if technology does have some negative effects, such as pollution
and harm to the environment, the overall effects of technology are
overwhelmingly on the positive side.
TECHNOLOGICAL PESSIMISM:
THE PERILS OF TECHNOLOGY
• Technological pessimism takes a more negative view of the effects of
technology on human life. Even though many technological pessimists
say they do not want to be considered as simply against technology,
they are much more likely to point out the undesirable aspects of
technological development.
Taking a critical attitude towards Technology

• Both positions have some merit.

• Technology is an enormously liberating force for human beings.
• We should be conscious of its important and enormously valuable
place in human society while being aware that its effects may not be
always and altogether good.
 COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY:
PRIVACY AND SOCIAL POLICY
 Privacy and Boundary Crossing

• Think of a ‘‘privacy fence’’

• The fence keeps neighbor from looking into my yard and me from
looking into his.
• Information Privacy : Computing technology can violate our
informational privacy by serving as the means for the construction of
databases about our income, purchasing habits.
• Perhaps even more intimate characteristics, such as
• political affiliations
• religious affiliations
• sexual orientation.
• Physical Privacy : the sending of unwanted cookies or spam is an
invasion of physical privacy.
• Decisional privacy is freedom from governmental or other outside
interference to make decisions about such issues as one’s political and
religious beliefs and practices or general lifestyle.
• The use of computers to monitor the activities of individuals can
sometimes be used to intimidate them, by the threat of being
exposed, into repressing their true beliefs.
• Proprietary privacy is the ability to control the use of one’s name,
likeness, or other aspects of one’s identity. Computers assist the
violation of proprietary privacy when they are used in ‘‘identity theft”
• Proprietary information can include secret formulas, processes, and
methods used in production.
• Matching - unrelated information from several different sources is put
in a single data bank.
• For example, a person’s credit record can be combined with his or her
employment record and criminal or traffic violation record, and perhaps with
various other records, to form a composite picture.
 Privacy versus Social Utility
• In the information age, knowledge of nearly everything is available for free,
including data on users. While this can be used to cater services to
consumers, it can also disturb the more privacy conscious.
• Computers can take control of information about us and give it to others, or
they can simply make information about us available to almost everyone
indiscriminately.
• Example : Advertisements within an app can collect data separate from what
the app itself collects. Developers’ willingness to sell out their users data to
the business world.
• To go a step further, collecting data without users’ permission is also wrong. 
• However, several utilitarian arguments that point to the values
involved in collecting information.
• Example :
• We can use credit cards because there are credit records that distinguish
good from bad credit risks.
• We can prevent the sale of handguns to convicts because computerized
criminal records are easily accessible.
• Databases allow targeted marketing, which not only is more efficient for
businesses but also keeps people from being subject to irrelevant advertising.
 Fair Information Practises
• The existence of data systems containing personal information should be public knowledge.
• Personal information should be collected for narrow, specific purposes and used only in
ways that are similar to and consistent with the primary purposes for its collection.
• 3. Personal information should be collected only with the informed consent of the persons
about whom the information is collected or their legal representatives.
• 4. Personal information should not be shared with third parties without notice or consent of
those about whom the information is collected.
• 5. To ensure accuracy, the time information can be stored should be limited, and individuals
should be permitted to review the information and correct errors.
• 6. Those who collect personal data should ensure the security and integrity of personal data
systems.
 Computer as the Object of Unethical Act
(a) Hacking: The software is stolen or information is accessed from other
computers. This may cause financial loss to the business or violation of privacy
rights of the individuals or business. In case of defense information being hacked,
this may endanger the security of the nation.
(b) Spreading virus: Through mail or otherwise, other computers are accessed and
the files are erased or contents changed altogether. ‘Trojan horses’ are implanted
to distort the messages and files beyond recovery. This again causes financial loss
or mental torture to the individuals. Some hackers feel that they have justified
their right of free information or they do it for fun. However, these acts are
certainly unethical.
(c) Health hazard: The computers pose threat during their use as well as during
disposal.
 Problems Related to the Autonomous Nature
of Computer
A. Security risk: A junior trader at the Tokyo Stock Exchange made a
seemingly casual mistake led to huge losses including that of
reputation. The order through the exchange’s trading system was to sell
one share for 600,000 Yen. Instead the trader keyed in a sale order for
600,000 shares at the rate of one Yen each.
The loss to the securities firm was said to be huge, running into several
hundred thousands. More important to note, such an obvious mistake
could not be corrected by some of the advanced technology available.
For advanced countries like Japan who have imbibed the latest
technology, this would be a new kind of learning experience
B. Loss of human lives: Risk and loss of human lives lost by computer, in
the operational control of military weapons. There is a dangerous
instability in automated defense system.
An unexpected error in the software or hardware or a conflict during
interfacing between the two, may trigger a serious attack and cause
irreparable human loss before the error is traced.
C. In flexible manufacturing systems, the autonomous computer is
beneficial in obtaining continuous monitoring and automatic control.
 Computers in Workplaces
• Elimination of routine and manual jobs. This leads to unemployment, but
the creation of skilled and IT-enabled service jobs are more advantageous
for the people. Initially this may require some upgradation of their skills
and knowledge, but a formal training will set this problem right.
• For example, in place of a typist, we have a programmer or an accountant.
• Health and safety: The ill-effects due to electromagnetic radiation,
especially on women and pregnant employees, mental stress, wrist
problem, and backpain due to poor ergonomic seating designs, and eye
strain due to poor lighting and flickers in the display and long exposure,
have been reported worldwide. Over a period of long exposure, these are
expected to affect the health and safety of the people.
• Computer failure: Failure in computers may be due to errors in the
hardware or software. Hardware errors are rare and they can be
solved easily and quickly. But software errors are very serious as they
can stop the entire network. Testing and quality systems for software
have gained relevance and importance in the recent past, to avoid or
minimize these errors.
 Computer Related Crimes
1. Physical Security
The computers are to be protected against theft, fire, and physical
damage. This can be achieved by proper insurance on the assets.
2. Logical security
The aspects related are
(a) the privacy of the individuals or organizations,
(b) confidentiality,
(c) integrity, to ensure that the modification of data or program are
done only by the authorized persons,
(d) uninterrupted service. This is achieved by installing appropriate
uninterrupted power supply or back-up provisions,
(e) protection against hacking that causes dislocation or distortion.
• Major weaknesses in this direction are:
(a) the difficulty in tracing the evidence involved and
(b) absence of stringent punishment against the crime.

The origin of a threat to the Central Government posted from an

obscure browsing center, remained unsolved for quite a long time.
Many times, such crimes have been traced, but there are no clear cyber
laws to punish and deter the criminals.
 DEMOCRATIC
DELIBERATION ON TECHNOLOGY POLICY

• There are many more issues in Technology Ethics than privacy and
ownership of software.
• Space Program worthwhile ? Supercollider ? Experiments ?
• Tuskegee experiment
• Impact on environment ?
• Democratic dilemma : In a democracy, debates about public
policy regarding science and technology encounter a
dilemma.

• One hand, the public has the prerogative of making the final
decisions
• On the other hand, this same public has difficulty in understanding
something as complex as science and technology
• The responsibilities of engineers with regard to the democratic
dilemma
• Alert
• Inform
• Advice
 Alert

• Engineers have a special responsibility to alert the public to issues

raised by technology.
• In particular, engineers have a special responsibility to alert to
potential dangers from technology.
• The public may not know the dangers of a new automobile design or
the hazards to the environment imposed by a new chemical process.
• Whistle blowing
 Inform

• Engineers also have a responsibility to inform the public of the issues on both
sides of a debate.
• New technology may pose dangers, but it may also have great potential benefits.
• Apart from tutoring by experts, the public has little chance of gaining even a
minimal insight into such issues.

Advice

• Engineers should in some instances offer advice and guidance on an issue,

especially when there is some degree of consensus in the engineering
community.
• There is reluctance of engineering societies to involve themselves in
public debates regarding technology.
• The members may be divided on the correct course of action.
• Some members may favor one policy and some members may favor
another.
• Also, members may be reluctant to support an organization that
advocates policies with which they disagree.
• Especially with regard to environmental issues.
• However, this objection does not apply to the obligation to inform the
public about the issues on both sides of a public debate.
• The public may be woefully ignorant of, or confused about, the issues,
and engineering societies are one of the best sources of information.
• Advantages of taking a more active role in informing and, in some
cases, advising the public is that it would raise the visibility of the
engineering profession.
• Engineering is in some ways the most invisible of the major
professions, primarily because ordinary citizens do not encounter
engineers in their daily lives.
• A more active and visible participation in public policy debates on
technology policy would be one way of overcoming this relative
invisibility.
THE SOCIAL EMBEDDEDNESS OF
TECHNOLOGY
• Two-way causal interaction between technology and society.
• Technology influences society and society also influences the
development of technology.
• The abolition of slavery created a demand for labor-saving agricultural
machinery that was not needed when there was an abundant supply
of cheap human labor.
• Research and development on human space flights has been slow or
fast, depending on changes in funding, which has in turn been
influenced by political considerations.
 Engineering Design Ethics

Engineering design ethics concerns issues that arise during the design
of technological products, processes, systems, and services. This
includes issues such as safety, sustainability, user autonomy, and
privacy.
 Steps in Designing
• Problem analysis and definition, including the formulation of design
requirements and the planning for the design and development of the
product, process, system, or service.
• Conceptual design, including the creation of alternative conceptual
solutions to the design problem, and possible reformulation of the problem.
• Embodiment design, in which a choice is made between different
conceptual solutions, and this solution is then worked out in structural
terms.
• Detail design, leading to description that can function as a guide to the
production process.
Problem analysis and definition
An important ethical question in this phase concerns what design
requirements to include in the problem definition. Usually design
requirements will be based on the intended use of the artifact.

The problem of designing an Internet search engine looks different

from the perspective of a potential user concerned about privacy than
from the perspective of a provider concerned about selling banner
advertisements.
The elderly or physically disabled will have different design
requirements than the young or healthy client or user.
Conceptual Design
The design of a storm surge barrier in the Eastern Scheldt estuary in the
Netherlands (Van de Poel and Disco 1996). In the 1950s, the government
decided to dam up the Eastern Scheldt for safety reasons after a huge
storm had flooded the Netherlands in 1953, killing more than 1,800
people. In the 1970s, the construction plan led to protests because of the
ecological value of the Eastern Scheldt estuary, which would be
destroyed. Many felt that the ecological value of the estuary should be
taken into account. Eventually, a group of engineering students devised a
creative solution that would meet both safety and ecological concerns: a
storm surge barrier that would be closed only in cases of storm floods.
Eventually this solution was accepted as a creative, although more
expensive, solution to the original design problem.
Embodiment Design
One issue is tradeoffs between various ethically relevant design
requirements. While some design requirements may be formulated in
such terms that they can be clearly met or not —for example, that an
electric apparatus should be compatible with 220V—others may be
formulated in terms of goals or values that can never be fully met.
Safety. An absolutely safe car does not exist; cars can only be more or
less safe. Such criteria as safety almost always conflict with other criteria
such as cost, sustainability, and comfort. This raises a question about
morally acceptable tradeoffs between these different design criteria. Is
there a minimum level of safety each automobile should meet, or is it
acceptable to design less safe cars if they are also cheaper?
Detail Design
During detail design, a design solution is further developed, including the
design of a production process.
Examples of ethical issues addressed at this phase are related to the choice
of materials: Different materials may have different environmental impacts
or impose different health risks on workers and users. Choices with respect
to maintainability, ability to be recycled, and the disposal of artifacts may
have important impacts on the environment, health, or safety. The design of
the production process may invoke ethical issues with respect to working
conditions or whether or not to produce the design, or parts of it, in low-
wage countries.
Thank You..!