Responsible Technology Design: Conversations for Success

Abstract

Digital humanism calls for new technologies that enhance human dignity and autonomy by educating, controlling, or otherwise holding developers responsible. However, this approach to responsible technology design paradoxically depends on the premise that technology is a path to overcoming human limitations while assuming that developers are themselves capable of super-human feats of prognostication. Recognizing developers as subject to human limitations themselves means that responsible technology design cannot be merely a matter of expecting developers to create technology that leads to certain desirable outcomes. Rather, responsible design involves expecting the technologies to be designed in ways that provide for active, meaningful, ongoing conversations between the developer and the technology, between the user and the technology, and between the user and the developer-and expecting that designers and users will commit to engaging in those conversations.