Ethics in Silicon Valley
Signe Agerskov,
Data Ethics,
Feb 24, 2020
Signe Agerskov summarizes Owning Ethics: Corporate Logics, Silicon Valley, and the Institutionalization of Ethics by Jacob Metcalf, Emanuel Moss and Danah Boyd (14 page PDF). This paper, which is quite good and well worth reading in its own right, argues that the technology industry views ethics as a technological problem. As Agerskov summarizes. "ethics is seen by many tech workers as something that arises from imperfect products and is not understood in a social context as something that structures social life. For tech people the apparent solution to ethical problems is therefore technology in the form of improved products, not changes of fundamental structures in the organization or industry." This is not the first time this has happened; as the authors argue, business ethics is designed the same way. "Business ethics literatures typically index normative concerns to the need for coordination between individual behavior and organizational goals."
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