Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Revenge of the Techno Bugs
I recently read this article for my computer ethics class. It got me thinking. Technology is taking something and refining it. If something is improved in the correct way then it will not produce undesirable results. We call these results 'bugs'. With the increase of newer and improved technology, less 'ethical bugs' will occur. A good engineer will elimate such bugs within a computer program with time and patience, the same will occur with the 'bugs' of technology. However, I have wondered: is it ethically correct to use things that we don't understand? We tell our children to not use the stove and not operate heavy machinary under the influence of cold medicine because there is a chance that they can ignorantly hurt themselves. How are we any better by using technologies that we don't understand? We should have a complete knowledge of an idea and its effects before we use it.
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Just because we do not understand every detail of the workings of our technology, that does not mean that we are incompetent in it's usage. That realization is foundational to being able to manage large-scale complexity and create advanced and highly specialized technologies. There is a wide gap between "I do not know precisely how this works" and "My misunderstanding is so severe that my attempts at usage pose a danger." If we treat those different states as equal, and make ethical judgments on that basis, most of us would find ourselves unjustified in using any technology more complicated than a flint-tipped spear.
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