Ethics For Hackers
This is the home of Ethics For Hackers, a book by Andy Farnell. Here
is the resource website and creative staging area for essays, ideas
and candidate chapters. Proofreaders please read this.
About the book
Ethics for Hackers is a book for developers, entrepreneurial business founders, activists and media commentators. It will be published by Routledge CRC in the UK and USA.
It is a more academic and focused treatment following from an earlier book, Digital Vegan published by Applied Scientific Press in the UK 1.
The book’s aims are to help us all make sense of the puzzling ways digital technologies can go bad and how to stop that happening through humane, ethical technology and policies.
Among it’s many themes are;
Trajectory
Technologies which should have had an immensely positive effect on human affairs have instead lead to profoundly negative outcomes. This is not inevitable. And it is reversible. But why does it happen?
Values
Technology is not “neutral”. There are good and bad technologies which inherit, embody and propagate memetic values of their creators. Who trains creators and what are their credentials in ethics? Why do computer science and cybersecurity hacking courses not actually address ethics?
Fallacies
We tell ourselves all sorts of devious, self-defeating tales about things like “progress” and “convenience”. Rationalisations and apologetics abound. Is our technology as much a mythology as a tangible reality? How do we spot and rise above common fallacies? How do we stop self-fulfilling prophecies?
Determinism
Ultimately, responsibility lies with us. The age-old struggles for the good life and social harmony remains rooted in classical politics and human psychology, which technology amplifies.
Understanding
A holistic understanding of philosophy and technology is needed. Our narrow, parochial western thought models of growth and conquest through “STEM” has become a dangerous form of religious extremism. How do we return to a more balanced, fair and sustainable kind of technology?
Topics
Topics the book attempts to tackle are;
Harms
An overview of harms to individuals, businesses, communities and whole societies by badly designed or malicious digital technology.
Motives
Psychological examination of the reasons people place hope or fear in, rely upon or abuse digital technologies.
Philosophy
A dive into the theory of ethics as it applied to design, deployment and use of digital technology.
Critique
A modern tech critique and review of historical theories of technology.
Remedies
Suggestions for healthy and positive ways to obtain technological benefits without the dystopian down-sides, plus counter-measures against technologically mediated abuse and domination.
Cases
Studies referencing real-world cases, each with motivational, root-cause, harm and mitigation analysis.