Some precedents for the mediating role of technology

The first systematic works in this field date back, at least, to the eighties (Kling, 1980). In his “Declaration of Empowerment”

address to users in human-computer interaction, Shneiderman proposed (Shneiderman, 1990) to elaborate on the Social Impact Statement “[...] at the start of every human-computer interaction project”.

The framework proposed by Bologna (Bologna, 1991) focuses on some areas of ethical and legal concern, mainly from an

instru-mental approach to computers (software applications, hardware, infrastructures...). In this sense his study goes very deep, but also the dynamic relationship between human beings, environment, and technology is missed.

Huff and Martin (Huff and Martin, 1995) presented the Project ImpactCS “[...] for integrating social impact and ethics into the computer science curriculum”. This project recognizes that from the perspective of computer science, every ethical issue about a technology is located at a particular level of social analysis. The framework provided the sort of comprehensive, conceptual overview that the field of computer science had been lacking until then. This framework considers nine ethical issues present in seven levels of social analysis (individuals, groups, organizations, cultures, institutions, nations and global). It takes into account the fact that the analysis of any ethical issue needs to go in parallel with both social and technical analysis. The frame-work distinguishes two kinds of responsibilities: professional responsibility and individual responsibility. In some situations, it is quite easy to make such a distinction, but this is not always the case. In fact, which responsibility is paramount when complex ethical dilemmas arise in the engineering practice? What should be decided when contradictions appear? For this reason, in our proposal there is no clear-cut separation between a person as individual and the same person as a professional.

Currently, the context of the professional responsibility is full of uncertainty and dilemmas affecting, directly, the relation-ship with the customer, stakeholders and colleagues, teamwork, the quality of the performance at work, and, most importantly, the engineer as a person and the rebound onto society and the environment. It means, historically, professional responsibility has been concerned almost exclusively with a good technical praxis and professional harmony, tainted by recommendations and jurisprudence. Even so, the new changes and needs of the ICT society demand to taking a new turn, from the formal to the

essential, from an ethics worried about how to exercise the engi-neering profession to an ethics concerned mainly with the ends and professional goals with regard to the people and environ-ment. So, the engineer, as part of a professional collective, needs to be held by the ties of a similar responsibility based on a set of values shared by all in order to give a responsible answer to the society from two dimensions, the technical and the moral, when exercising their profession. Additionally, this public, juridical and social responsibility of the engineer’s professional activity gov-erns their conduct in reporting to the customers, stakeholders, colleagues, society and environment for their actions and their consequences. The warder of this public responsibility is the state and its law, based on, substantially, democracy, the personal conscience of its members and a common, civil and compulsory ethics through watching over social cohabitation and move for-ward through the ages. In this last concept we find what is called the minimalist ethics (Walzer, 2008). This ethics gives the duties that every one of us have with regard to the rest of the society.

Furthermore, minimalist ethics is the ethics shared by every engineer and, as a result, professional ethics has to head in the direction of a common area for everyone, the individual and the professional.

In this light, the professional praxis and the social responsibil-ity of the engineering profession should aspire not only to com-ply with the regulations currently in force, but it should aspire to be the guide for the professional ethos finding inspiration in excellence, pursuing the job well done, beyond the legal mini-mum, future contracts and goals in the short and medium term.

Thus, our main task as educators within engineering degrees is to promote among the students a sense of responsibility, regaining the view of teamwork with the same purpose and will. At this point, it is important to highlight the service that an engineer has to provide to society in order to come up with his recognition for the work done and the quality reached. In other words, the

workplace of the engineering professional demands involvement with and commitment to the rest of their colleagues because their combined efforts will benefit the quality of the service addressed to the most important customer, society.

Gotterbarn and Rogerson (Gotterbarn and Rogerson, 2005) presented a Software Development Impact Statement that “[...]

improves and expands risk perception” and “[...] should reduce the dangers of a narrow focus on quantitative risks” in software development. This work considers that “[...] any software project goes through three distinct phases: an initial phase where the feasibility of the project is examined; a requirements phase that lays out the overall structure and function of the project; and a detailed phase that lays out the plans for building the software.

Each of these phases has its peculiar risks.” It is necessary to include in the evaluation “[...] social, professional, and ethical risks that lead to software failure and extends the range of stake-holders considered in risk analysis”. They argue that in a process of software development, it is necessary to make an actors’ list identifying all the stakeholders implied in the project because limiting the consideration of them to developers and clients can be a cause of failure. Another type of failure arises when devel-opers limit the scope of software risk analysis to technical and economical issues. Therefore, a complete software development process requires the identification of all relevant stakeholders and their roles and enlarging risk analysis to include social, political, and ethical issues.

Another interesting and daring example is the work Eternally Yours (van Hinte, 1997; Verbeek, 2006) focused on developing ways to create product longevity in order to attach the users to the product (in our case it could be applied to technology) invit-ing people to use them as long as possible. Eternally Yours is look-ing for what product features are able to provoke a bond with their users, in others words, seeking an appropriate design. Again, we encounter a good example of anticipating mediation by

imagi-nation. For Eternally Yours the products’ psychological life span is a very important element, that is why the design process is the main concern and the key to the problem is “How can the psy-chological lifetime of products be prolonged?”, in order to keep the engagement alive between users and products. According to this work “It is an engaging product that asks for attention and involvement in its functioning, much like a campfire”. The functioning of a product is dependant on people’s involvement and in this way they are mediating the behavior of the users.

Additionally, the products of Eternally Yours have a consistent component, environmental ethics, “They seduce their users to cherish them rather than throwing them away prematurely”.

Lastly, another way to enhance the mediating role of technolo-gy-in-design is the Constructive Technology Assessment method (CTA; Schot, 1992; Rip, Misa and Schot, 1995). In this work CTA establishes a link between the context of use and the context of design in a practical way involving all relevant stakeholders (users, managers, suppliers, etc.) in the design process of technologies.

The assessment of a technology is made during its development and not after it has been developed, allowing the modification of the original design if it does not work as expected. For this rea-son, “Participants in the CTA process should be invited not only to integrate assessments of users in product specifications but also to anticipate possible mediating roles of the technology-in-design”. It is a way of mitigating possible human damage because the method is constantly trying to anticipate the user’s actions and, consequently, possible adverse effects.