Thesis 70

It will not be sufficient simply to say, "First, do no harm."

We've agreed that, in order to protect the interests of everyone involved, it would be wise for us to establish some general principles guiding the ethical design and deployment of ubiquitous technology.

The most essential principle is, of course, first, do no harm. If everyone contemplating the development of everyware could be relied upon to take this simple idea to heart, thoughtfully and with compassion, there would be very little need to enunciate any of the following.

There are difficulties with such a laissez-faire approach, though. For one thing, it leaves entirely too much unspoken as to what constitutes harm, as to who is at risk, as to what the likely consequences of failure would be. It assumes that everyone developing everyware will do so in complete good faith and will always esteem the abstract-seeming needs of users more highly than market share, the profit motive, or the prerogatives of total information awareness. And, even where developers can be relied upon to act in good faith, it's simply not specific enough to constitute practically useful guidance.

The next best thing, then, is to develop a strategy for ethical development that does take these factors into accountsomething that spells out the issues in sufficient detail to be of use to developers, that strikes a balance between their needs and those of users, and that incentivizes compliance rather than punish noncompliance.

How might we go about designing such a strategy? Let's consider the fundamental nature of the challenge before us one last time, and with that fresh in mind, articulate a framework that should help us develop wiser, more useful, and more humane instantiations of everyware.