Assessing the Morality of Technology
The issue is the neutrality of technology. Can technology have intrinsic bad-faith nature or does it always remit to the intentions of the use technology is given? The solution isn't readily revealed through quotidian reflection but k-step thinking provides some answers.
Good and Bad-Faith Uses
Technological forms afford good-faith and bad-faith use: A knife can be used to cut tomatoes or stab a victim. GPS can be used to navigate as you drive or to track a victim. Gasoline can be used to power a vehicle or arson.
A technology can be given a number of good- and bad-faith uses. Every use leads to a variety of outcomes. It is through the consideration of the outcomes that the good- or bad-faith nature of a technology can become apparent.
Consider the issue of firearms. Good- and bad-faith uses of firearms produce the same outcomes: Death and Injury. The outcomes being death and injury already speak of the nature of the technology. We find further color by asking: These outcomes, do they cooperate more with good-faith or bad-faith uses? In this case, death and injury are characteristically not fates sought by good-faith behavior, better known to cooperate with bad-faith intentions. The answer we're looking for lies in this contrast. It is not to say the technology is ill-meaning, but rather that it cooperates well with bad-faith use by way of design, nature, and affordance. The outcomes produced invite bad-faith use.
Fates and Outcomes
In the English language, technical context often invokes the notion of space to refer to a collection of possibilities. Deal-space refers to the space of viable deals in negotiation practice. In technical practice, solution-space refers to the space of possible technical solutions or "concepts" expected to deliver adequate relief. Practitioners of systems engineering may call it a trade-space, in acknowledgement that aiming for different solutions involves making trade-offs.
When it comes to the outcomes produced by a technology, a similar construct can be utilized; we can call fate-space the space of possible outcomes or fates brought about by a technology. An outcome is a fate brought about by the technology and its use... the technology lets the fate happen. Public rollout of a technology precipitates the becoming of the technology's fate-space into tangible realities.
Fate-space Exploration
A deeper study can be made of the fate-space enabled by a technology by exploring the outcomes tied to expected good- and bad-faith uses. In the case of firearms, good-faith uses of firearms are self-defense, hunting, and target practice. Bad-faith uses are murder, robbery, and intimidation. We can study the outcomes of these uses:
- Self-defense: Deterrence, Injury, Death
- Hunting: Sportsmanship
- Target practice: Sportsmanship
- Murder: Death
- Robbery: Injury, Death, Material Loss
- Intimidation: Violation of Will
Except for sportsmanship and deterrence, the outcomes revealed in the fate-space are predominantly hurtful. In other words, making firearm technology available to the population precipitates the becoming of predominantly hurtful outcomes, regardless of good- or bad-faith use. Arguing to save the legitimate good-faith use of firearms without reasonable limitations to their use amounts to letting death, injury, material loss, and intimidation happen in order to let sportsmanship happen.
Arms Deterrence in Self Defense
To enable the outcome of good-faith deterrence of a bad-faith attack, it is not enough to have a weapon available to you, you need to brandish it. This is the logic behind military exercises performed by States like China, the US, and Russia. No attacker was ever deterred by an invisible, hypothetical gun, meaning you'd need to convince people to carry weapons openly to deter potential attackers. You need to go all the way if you want it to work, otherwise firearms availability is asymmetrically advantageous for bad-faith users.
Inadequate Assessment of Technological Futures
We society aren't doing enough to evaluate the fates produced by the technologies we develop and unleash onto the world. In most cases we find out only until too late, or until technology is already too entrenched in life to reverse.
It's as if we were guilty of omission, a lack of conscientiousness that betrays societal immaturity or adolescence in the ways we conceive, develop, commercialize, and otherwise use technology to our advantage.
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