Now, we all know about the Unabomber Manifesto. In short, one of his messages was the increasing complexity of problems that come with each technological endeavor. This piece is controversial, but I find that this message resonates with what I’ve observed. He states that technology is only forward moving and depends on the the progress of all fields of sciences that are interdepedent with each other. Each technological step forward produces more and more unforeseen problems. He slightly talks about genetic engineering as an example of the myriad of ethical issues that were produced when its concept was first conceived and practiced till today. We can apply that to almost everything we see as “good” and “bad” technology depend on each other. Facebook requires users, computers, network engineering, and so much more to function. Everything is a combination of things that were created by things that we had created. Each little piece brought forth problems that created more problems as we progressed. What I’m trying to say is, ethical issues will continually persist with each new innovation that appears. The author, Ted, thinks this is an upfront against humanity as it is the thing that will eventually lead to our freedom to diminish through continual compromises that take small bites of us at every step of technological progress in the name of society.
Honestly, please don’t send this to the FBI. Jokes aside, I’m just a young adult with very little experience. However, I do look at what I observe in the present and then look at history as my guide. I sort of lean towards the Manifesto in its view that ethical issues and other problems will continually occur. It’s a very radical and extreme manifesto calling for revolution, but he does make valid points. Looking through history with the birth of civilization, it is basically a tale of progress and control. Autonomous Cars scare me. Facebook and other data mining tools scare me. Who can we trust? Can I even trust our own history? Honestly, I have to also agree that technological progress has made it easier to monitor and control people. Egypt at the time of the Ptolemaic Dyansty was a totalitarian state, and there are countless other examples of civilization trying to exert control for the good of the collective. Now, I’m not saying it is wrong, but we will have to decide for ourselves what is more important to us: Security or Freedom? North Koreans who defect choose freedom while those who live in China as party members prefer security.
Whoa, we just went a little off topic, but I feel that it relates closely to ethics that engineers should face. “Whatever I engineer or create will have implications and possible problems in the future.” And it is very important to ask ourselves what ethical and future problems we are going to bring into the world. I feel that our past two decades have been the explosion of technological progress that was never really reflected on prior to being released. Maybe we can only talk in hindsight, however, I feel that this rapidity of progress was never really reflected on and it has created this surge of problems only surfacing now. People never really thought that technological and economic progress would also drastically change the cultural values of societies. We are now facing this consequence of our action such as GamerGate. (Read #50 of the Unabomber Manifesto)
I have to admit it. I disagree with people who push for liberal values and ideals because it is naively too optimistic and ignores history. I disagree with people who push for conservatism of values because it ignores the fact that radical changes occured in history. I wanted to deviate from the topics stated in the ethics module because I feel that it would be more effective to state that this is an issue of progress that when unchecked and not dutifully reflected on, can cause these example problems stated in the module. It is great that we are even discussing ethics as it is a sign of reflection.
These are my opinions and I felt that this essay topic would resound more with this issue.