Moving Beyond Value Sensitive Design (VSD)

from the recognition that technological innovation should focus more than just on its functionality, and that technologies are not morally neutral but rather have political and moral impacts on their users as well as the environment they are used in. I also discussed the methodology of VSD, which is tripartite in its setting, with conceptual, empirical and technical investigations to be carried out. While VSD gives important insights and establishes the need for a proactive approach to ethical design of technologies, I argue that it is not a suitable approach for design of a complex network like the Internet. The reasons for its unsuitability have much to do with the discussions provided in sections 5.1-5.4 of this chapter. I will discuss them in more detail in this section as well as set out the implications for design given this unsuitability of VSD.

The first challenge in using VSD for a network like Internet comes in the identification of stakeholders and their views on the technology, which is an important part of the

conceptual investigations within VSD methodology (Friedman et al, 2013). As argued in section 5.2, stakeholders can emerge years after the design of a network like Internet, particularly as innovations on the network lead to new uses. One example of such a case, already discussed above is the creation of Voice over IP (VOIP) technology, which brought in the telephone operators as a stakeholder set to lose out from this technology. Similarly, new uses may also lead stakeholders to change their views of the technology. For example, the early users of the technology felt no particular need for security on Internet, while new uses such as banking as well as the proliferation of computer worms, have led to many users to be concerned about security of their end devices (Zittrain, 2008). These reasons not only suggest that it is difficult to identify stakeholders during the design process but also point to the threat in defining stakeholders during the design process, as the design that follows after such an identification may not allow new stakeholders to join in, and be partial to initially identified stakeholders who may also create hindrances in innovation on the network.

Internet comes through the very concept of ‘values’ as defined within VSD, which is central to it. Friedman et al (2013) state that VSD prescribes an interactional view of values, that is, values are neither seen as inscribed within the technology nor simply transmitted by social forces. Rather, they state, values, within VSD, are seen to come about in the use of technology. This interactional position is supported by the argument that technologies can often have multiple uses as well as the fact they can change

considerably over time. For example, a screwdriver is not just used for turning screws but also as a cutting device, a tool for extracting weeds or as a poker (Friedman et al, 2013: 86). In this sense, the values to be conceptualized for a technology should consider the use contexts. However, this is particularly hard to do for a network like Internet. As we have seen from Internet’s history, it has gone from a technology meant for

communication within the US defense department to one being used globally for a very diverse set of reasons ranging from shopping to banking to sharing one’s voice globally. In such a scenario, it becomes very difficult for a designer to identify which values are necessary for Internet’s overall design. Indeed, even values like privacy, which are much debated upon within Internet scholarship, are not universally important over the Internet.

Manders-Huits (2011) has given a similar critique of VSD and the concept of values within it, particularly stating the definitions of values remain abstract and therefore, do not offer a practical guidance for their implementation, particularly in cases where different stakeholders may interpret these abstract definitions differently. This is

particularly relevant for the case of a global network like the Internet, which is embedded into a wide range of societies with many cultural and social differences. Manders-Huits (2011) also gives examples of how values and their definitions are relative and may even mean opposite, if not different things. For example, while the concept of human dignity may be found in many societies, its definition often changes with regards to other concepts such as the relative positions of different genders and races. As we have seen through human history, not all members within the society may be granted equal rights to their dignity. This also leads back to the discussion presented in section 5.4 and the need for a global and complex like the Internet to allow for heterogeneity in its design.

come in identifying universal values as well as stakeholders, which as the above discussion points out, is extremely difficult, if not impossible. However, the absence of universal values and a stable set of stakeholders can in itself be seen as an overarching value, of designing for an open and diverse world, to be incorporated in a complex and global like the Internet. The importance of this value is represented by the arguments given in sections 5.1-5.4. For a future Internet, therefore, it is critically important it not only functions as an information network but also that it caters to the uncertainty and diversity of the world, in an ‘intelligent’ way (see section 5.3). This leads us to four different meta-requirements for the Future Internet architecture, presented in the next section.