IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2017 - 69

making it impossible to analyze and evaluate its inner
workings [9].

Technology-Magnified Pathologies
Perversely, even technologies intended to help in
addressing societal pathologies can actually reinforce
and magnify those pathologies:
■ Impact of technological complexity and private
ownership: introducing third-party technology to
replace traditional democratic processes (e.g., e-voting replacing paper voting) may increase opacity and
threaten privacy [26], especially when embedding
(undisclosed) AI and self-* capabilities [9]. This may,
in turn, also cause a lack of trust in democratic processes, a diminished perception of action efficiency,
and a reduction of individual engagement.
■ Impact of biased access to unfiltered unreliable
information: while access to information can help
exposure to opinion diversity and enhance the
knowledge necessary for responsible decisions,
unfiltered (and unchecked) information flooding can
be overwhelming, encourage superficial "browsing",
alter thinking, and possibly remove the opportunity
for reasoning, e.g., [27]. Focusing on a biased section of the information, favored by online searching
and recommendation services, can exacerbate misinformed mono-opinionated decisions and societal
fragmentation [12].
■ Impact of informal illegitimate technological power:
while powerful online services, like search engines,
social networking, profiling, and recommending,
can support large-scale participation in the management of democratic institutions, their ownership by
a small number self-interested parties risks to minimize diversity and introduce illegitimate controls in
such societal processes. This can dramatically
impact knowledge production and access, critical
thinking, and the impact of actions. Ironically, the
institutional lag (caused by technology) prevents the
creation of checks and balances for addressing
these issues. Moreover, increasing reliance on technology makes it a likely target of (cyber-)attacks, further interfering with societal processes.
■ Impact of formalizing human values: technology
may be made aware of human values, in order to
address similar problems and to better integrate
them into society; yet doing so implies formalization
suitable for technical systems, which can in turn (in
an un/intentionally biased way) simplify and consequently deform these concepts. This can cause a
breakdown of traditional values, such as trust, justice, and fairness.
Overall, a vicious cycle has been seemingly forming via
the uncritical adoption of non-humanistic technology
SEPTEMBER 2017

∕

[8], one that requires limited cognition (e.g., via multiple-choice profiles and actions, event flooding entailing
fast reactions, and lack of platform diversity) and that
demands private data-sharing while not disclosing its
use (e.g., via lisence agreements and intellectual property protections). By massively employing such technologies, individuals and society overall may undergo a
process of diminishing cognitive diversity, lowering
understanding of the socio-technical system, and dropping of responsibility and engagement into the system's
governance. This allows illegitimate power to accumulate towards technology owners while increasingly disempowering users (who remain essential, since they
must buy gadgets and produce the data). Thus, users
become more constrained to adopt further similar technologies and more unaware of the consequences -
hence entering a vicious cycle of disempowerment and
diminishing responsible engagement. The impact of
such societal transformation on the maintainability of
effective democratic institutions can be dramatic; since
a system can only be as democratic as its citizens
demand it to be.

Socio-technical systems need
some defenses against technologyinduced and technology-magnified
pathologies.

Towards Pro-Social Socio-Technical Systems
Socio-technical systems need some defenses against
technology-induced and technology-magnified pathologies. Considering the development, over previous
decades, of the vicious cycle of dehumanizing and disempowering technologies (discussed above), within a
complex socio-technical context, it is difficult (or
impossible) to prescribe silver-bullet solutions that can
predictably fix this problem at once. Any viable course
of action should take incremental steps that can deviate society from the vicious cycle, and guide it instead
towards a more virtuous cycle - where more humanistic technology encourages (and perhaps even remunerates) creative engagement, cognitive diversity, and
symmetric transparency, hence setting better bases
for economic viability and increasing individual awareness of the importance of such technological features.
This, in turn, would motivate the adoption of similar
humanistic technology and reinforce the virtuous

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

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