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21. Dilemmas of the Information Age

John Dwyer

- Teich, Ch. 22-24 -

‘In the Age of the Smart Machine’ by Shoshana Zuboff

Zuboff discovers a paradox in the new technology and demands the social vision and managerial leadership to solve it. On the one hand, new technologies are often about automation. While the power and efficiency of the new machines are indisputable, such automation can easily be regarded in terms of its negative effects on human society. These negative effects might include:

  1. The replacement of human intelligence with machine intelligence at the “expense of the human capacity for critical judgement.”
  2. The routinization of work and increased dependence, docility and alienation of the workforce.
  3. A more general “disorientation and loss of meaning” asa the “sentient body loses its salience as a source of knowledge.”
  4. Increasing control over the workplace by managers, who themselves need to assert authority and maintain their role over workers.
  5. The need to radically alter the social structure to come to grips with a reorganization of changed “infrastructure of our material world.”

At the same time, Zuboff suggests that we have choices about new technology that are very positive if we can imagine the alternative. If we look at the new technologies as an extension of the mechanization of the past (i.e. increased automation in the form of smart machines, robots and what not) we miss the potential for a different and more human future. The difference between the new machines, and the machines of the past, is that they don’t simply perform tasks but they generate data. Computer programs not only allow things to be done more precisely than humans could but they register data “about those automated activities, thus generating new streams of information.” Information technology “reflects back on its activities and on the system of activities to which it is related.”

This characteristic Zuboff calls the capacity to informate as well as to automate. While automation has a “vast potential to displace the human presence” an information society “sets in motion a series of dynamics that will ultimately reconfigure the nature of work and the social relationships that organize productive capacity.” Once one realizes the true character of an information society, a number of positive new choices are available says Zuboff. These might include:

  1. A new conception and empowerment of human beings and workers as symbolic or data analysts.
  2. More flexible relationships in the workplace. More joint goal setting between symbolic workers and managers.
  3. Opportunities for new organizational reforms.
  4. A complete revisioning of work and power relations

None of this will occur, Zuboff suggests, if managers or those in power in society continue to hold to outdated patterns of control, or who lack the courage to explore new choices. Thus, she focuses on the need for a new kind of leadership that will “recognize the historical moment and the choices it presents. Those are the people who will “mobilize their organization’s production’; those are the kind of leaders who will allow their organizations to compete in the highly competitive global market.

There are some problems with Zuboff’s analysis. In the first place, it is highly managerial. Despite the fact that Zuboff identifies the desire for control on the part of managers as part of the problem, she doesn’t ever critically analyze their desire for ever increasing control and/or surveillance of workers. It appears somewhat naïve, to say the least, to suggest that this kind of behaviour simply implies a lack of understanding about the nature of informing technologies. Second, Zuboff’s description of informing technologies is so thin and sketchy as to be unusable. She appears to be making the same kind of argument that the advocates of symbolic analysts or knowledge workers make about the information society. But there’s not enough here to sink your teeth into, just some vague references to information providing us with greater choice. Finally, Zuboff’s call for more flexibility and choice in working relationships and society in general ignores the fact that technology and the social relations that stem from technology are largely controlled by corporations who have their own agenda with respect to labour. In other words, it is not sufficient to say that new technologies provide opportunities for a better society without looking at who controls those technologies and how.

‘Computer Ethics’ by Tom Forester and Perry Morrison

Forester and Morrison discuss our growing dependence on computers and the new kinds of problems that they produce for human society. They divide these problems into 7 different categories:

i. computer crime

New technologies tend to bring new opportunities for crime. With respect to computers,t these include electronic fraud, money laundering, and cable theft.

ii. software theft

This amounts to $12 billion per year as individuals and companies make their own copies of expensive software. This theft means that innovation is not being rewarded to the extent that it should.

iii. hacking and viruses

Viruses are a huge problem. One Internet work infected 6,000 systems in 1988 alone.

iv. buggy software and unreliable computers

These have even led to huge amounts of damage and loss of life as large and expensive computer networks fail.

v. invasions of privacy

Computers store information that unscrupulous people can store and share. Europeans are much more troubled by these invasions than Americans.

vi. expert systems and artificial intelligence

These give rise to ethical and legal questions as computers are relied upon to make more and more important ‘human’ decisions.

vii. the computerization of the workplace

Computerization in the workplace affects peoples’ lives, often tragically. It can result in layoffs; it affects the quality of working life.

These problems give rise to ethical dilemmas. For example:

  1. How important is privacy and how do we draw a line between the public and the private domain?
  2. To what extent is computerization, and particularly artificial intelligence, depersonalizing human relationships and taking away our personal responsibility for our actions?
  3. Is computer crime less serious because it appears to have no ‘victims’?
  4. To what extent is the copying of computer software immoral if “everybody does it”? Given the high cost of software, and the fact that corporations can afford it, is it really so bad for individuals to make private copies?
  5. Is all computer ‘hacking’ a serious offence, or is it harmless fun? Isn’t some hacking socially beneficial because it highlights the security and privacy problems associated with computer systems?
  6. Who is to blame when a computer system malfunctions - programmers, designers, technicians etc?

Ethical theories that can be applied to these issues include:

  1. consequentialism
  2. deontology
  3. virtue ethics

In order to ensure that ethics are integrated into computing, computer professionals need to develop their own ethical codes, that will deal with typical ethical dilemmas in everyday life. The ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) code is a good example. Unfortunately, ethical codes are usually window dressing with the primary aim of improving the image/credibility of the profession. When this is the case, they are “widely disregarded by members of professions”.

More important, therefore, than codes, is the ethical education of future computing professionals. The purpose of this education would be to “sensitize” students as to the kinds of moral dilemmas that they may face and to provide them with the ethical tools for making their own judgments.

‘Electronic Privacy in the Twenty-First Century’ by Fred H. Cate

Cate’s article explores the constant tension between privacy and other social values in the era of digitization and computerization. What makes Cate’s article interesting is the way that he shows how different kinds of societies will have different approaches to determining the correct “balance” between privacy. In Europe, for example, the state considers it a government duty to protect the rights of citizens. In the United States, the pressure is on the individual to take due care to protect his/her rights. As an American, Cate believes that:

  1. Individuals need to shoulder responsibility, and to restructure their activities, if they want to protect their privacy in the information age. Thus, individuals can always ask to be removed from databases should they choose.
  2. If individuals are given an opportunity to opt out of data collection, or anything that might be considered an invasion of privacy, that is all that is required. “Just say no” involves taking individual responsibility.
  3. A contractual, rather than an imposed, approach to privacy issues is to be preferred to a unilateral decision.
  4. In the United States, it would not be considered appropriate for the government to legislate with respect to privacy. Self-regulatory and self-help models are preferred by Americans.
  5. While private action is to be preferred to unilateral government imposition, some legal protection of privacy is required. This requires a more consistent and integrated approach than is typical in the United States, where a diversity of laws, agencies, industries, and issues complicates the privacy issue.
  6. One example of a rule that could be applied in America is that of providing individuals with “notice” whenever information is being collected on them. This needs to include an “opt out” option, but need not require an “opt in” to obtain the data. Tacit consent rather than explicit consent would be sufficient.
  7. Another component of a consistent and integrated approach involves accountability on the part of information users. Cate suggests that breaches of accountability should not be issues for government regulation but that civil liability should be sufficient as a mechanism for dealing with any problems.

In summary, Cate argues that privacy is more of an issue of personal responsibility and a “shifting constitutional right” in the United States, whereas it is considered a “fundamental human right” in Europe. In the former, the law is simply a “gap filler, facilitating individual action” in situations where the market does not protect the individual sufficiently.

The notes presented here are for the AK NATS 1760.06 “Science, Technology and Society” course offered in the Fall/Winter Semester of 2001/2002 by the Atkinson College of York University, Toronto, Canada and taught by John Dwyer. The lectures are based on the following texts:

  1. Martin Bridgstock et al, Science, Technology and Society: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 1998), ISBN 0-521-58735-2
  2. Kevin Robbins and Frank Webster, Times of the Technoculture: From the Information Society to the Virtual Life (New York, Routledge, 1999), ISBN 0-415-16115-0
  3. Albert H. Teich, Technology and the Future (New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2000), ISBN 0-312-01885-1

For more about John Dwyer, visit: http://www.sayitagain.com/ivorytower/