- It feels like technology is a force
that just acts upon us.
And we want to show the many different ways
in which ordinary people,
as well as people who go to work within the tech industry,
public policy makers in civil society organizations,
how everyone has a role in shaping the technological future
that we want.
(gentle music)
- The book is called "System Error
Where Big Tech Went Wrong And How We Can Reboot."
And the basic idea is understanding
what the technologies are,
how big tech created them and the way they impact our lives
and ultimately what we can do about it.
- The consequences of technology
that are unfolding around us,
whether the pollution of our information ecosystem,
the loss of privacy,
that concerns about job loss related to automation.
These are things that have happened to us
as a result of choices.
Choices made by people who design technologies
and choices made by politicians
who have created an environment
in which technologies have these effects
without them being mitigated by policy or regulation.
- When you're shopping at the grocery store
and you go and buy something,
the people around you in that grocery store
can see what you bought, it's basically public information,
and you don't really think that much
about trying to protect that basket of stuff you bought.
But now, if someone can say,
take that information and aggregate it
over everything you've bought in your lifetime,
suddenly you feel as though your privacy might be violated.
Code makes a difference,
it might seem like we're just engineering a few lines,
but those lines at a planetary scale make huge differences.
- There's a role to play
in building a technological future that we want,
that involves the actions of engineers
who design technologies,
that involves the actions of corporate leaders
and investors who think not only,
about the bottom line profit of the companies
that they invest in,
but also the societal consequences
of the tools that they build.
- We don't want ethics to be outsourced
as a kind of legal compliance function
at the tail end of the process,
rather, it's something that all people are thinking about
from the very beginning of the product development cycle.
- It involves the politicians and our elected leaders
who have to look at what's happening with technology
and think about some of the social and economic consequences
of these technologies and design policies
to mitigate the potential harms
and perhaps most importantly,
it involves all of us as citizens
who have a stake in the outcomes
that we experience in society
and because we live in a democracy, we also have a voice.
And the question is how we use that voice.
(gentle music)