Ethics and the Design of Technology*

Embedded within every human fabricated object is the outcome of a series of choices, intentions, and evaluations that acknowledge a variety of needs, desires, and expectations. What we refer to as technology is a rich and varied set of material conditions within complex social and physical systems that are composed of objects, people, and their environments. Design encompasses the theories and processes of intentional–purposeful–intervention into these previously given material conditions and socio-environmental arrangements. The obvious fact that design impacts the world in which we live requires us to acknowledge that designs have both motivations and consequences, and that different designs have different motivations and consequences.  Accordingly, there are ethical dimensions to how we approach design.  The values that guide design processes become embedded in the artifacts we produce and, thus, in the practices that are structured by their use. This course will provide an overview of ways to approach thinking critically about the motivations and consequences of the design of technology.  We will be guided by four crucial considerations in the ethics and design of technological artifacts, namely:

1) Objects

2) Users

3) Society

4) Contexts/Environments.


Our objective for this course is to learn how to read and discuss the values embedded in the design of the world around us. We will achieve this by discussing theories of design, ethics and values of design, and how to observe and take notes on designs and how they are used.

*The bulk of this course, and of the above description, was designed by Erich W. Schiencke, Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Penn State, and is being used here with his permission.