Interrogating Ethics & Values in Technology Design & Engineering Practice

Abstract

Public discussions about innovation are teeming with calls for greater consideration of values and ethics in technology development and deployment. What might we learn through investigating and intervening in the work of engineers and designers, whose activity produce much of technology and technology culture? This panel brings together researchers who explore interruptions and regenerations that bring values and ethics to the forefront of technical engineering and design practice. Approaching this question from a range of research methods -- including interviews, ethnographic engagement, design workshops and research through design -- this panel provides insight insight into values such as security, privacy, care, and participation. Diffracted through this range of methods, the panel begins to interrogate what these values mean in techno-culture today and in the speculative future.

Individual Presentations

• Privacy by Design Imaginaries - Richmond Y Wong, University of California, Berkeley

• Ideas of Impact: Interrogating Innovation as a Value in Design - Samantha Shorey, University of Washington

• Engaging Care Ethics in Describing Invisible Labor in Hacker and Makerspaces - Austin Lewis Toombs, Purdue University

• The Social Life of Dowse: Ethics and Invisibility in IoT - Ester Fritsch, IT University of Copenhagen

Session Organizers

• Richmond Y Wong, University of California, Berkeley

• Nick Merrill, BioSENSE, UC Berkeley School of Information

• Colin Gray, Purdue University