IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2021 - 44

Opinion
the pandemic " ; rather, it's individual rights, in the
context of a pandemic, with respect to the power of
a government. It's a complex task, requiring much
refinement and fine-tuning. But it is workable and
can be achieved.
JP: I agree with that entirely. There is an attitude
that complex problems can be reduced to simplistic
solutions, which becomes hugely problematic in the
messaging. This issue of balancing extends beyond
test and trace to what happens afterward. Vaccination
is one potential medium-term solution. However,
we already have a strong anti-vax movement,
and this is one of the biggest dangers, especially
given the lack of accountability and transparency.
The most damaging outcome will be if take-up is
limited to 70% or 80% of the population, leaving the
virus to spread among those not vaccinated and then
mutating and reinfecting those already vaccinated.
Here, we see the downside of failing to communicate
properly common knowledge and the public
good, and it becomes a matter of civic education
and civic dignity. Public health is necessarily about
balances and tradeoffs, and it must be understood
that vaccination in this pandemic is about an individual's
rights versus a public good, and it is imperative
to suppress your individual concern for the
public good and get vaccinated. Your right to swing
your fist stops at the point that my nose starts! This
is something philosophers and ethicists have discussed
for centuries. Alongside the development of
technology, there must be reliable civic education;
dealing with a pandemic is not just a technological
solution, but also an educational one.
SW: Picking up on that point concerning education,
the U.N. secretary general has pointed out that a
key cause of poverty and inequality is limited access to
digital technologies, with millions, perhaps hundreds
of millions, of vulnerable people being left behind as
our lives increasingly move online. What ways do you
see to expand digital access and to protect the most
vulnerable, both during and after this pandemic?
MT: There are a few ready answers to that
very deep question. There is a considerable need
to expand access to the hardware, and then to
improve the level of digital literacy to make use
of it. But, we shouldn't think that the responsibility
to overcome the digital divide rests only on
the government; there is a part for civic society
to play. Here in Oxford, as elsewhere, COVID-19
mutual aid groups have arisen, linking people who
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possess digital literacy and expertise to those without.
That's an approach worth leveraging because
it's one of the most immediate and direct in the
time of a crisis. Especially when using a digital
device is necessary not only for track and trace but
also for online grocery shopping, talking to friends
and family, paying your bills, communicating with
your doctor. These services are especially essential
for the weakest segments of the population.
JP: Again, I completely agree, and would only
qualify Mariarosaria's remarks by saying that you
don't only have to encourage civic responsibility,
you have to empower it as well. From a socio-political
standpoint, yes, you have to put government
online, but you have to put people online as well.
The trust flows both ways: the people need to trust
the government, but the government needs to trust
the people sufficiently to empower them to undertake
local organizing and community building, activities
that have been woefully neglected.
In engineering, there is a development methodology
called value sensitive design, and I think
this complements the ethics which we have been
exploring. The idea here is that you're not building a
system just because you want it to do some kind of
function, but there's also a qualitative human value
that you seek to promote, and the point of value sensitive
design is to put those values as primary design
requirements alongside the functional and non-functional
requirements normally specified. We really
need to encourage this approach to design, not least
for protecting vulnerable groups.
There are two things here to be concerned about.
First, the notion of the public interest. We need the
technology which is informed by value sensitive
design so that we can start building systems that
empower people to understand and take control of
matters of public interest. This means making it clear
to people what problems are trying to be solved,
how these affect them, why the technology is being
introduced, and why decisions are being made. This
pulls us back to accountability and transparency.
Second, I fear that a huge mental health crisis is
being stored up during this public health crisis. Technology
companies try to get people hooked on using
their products. There's this notion of addiction by
design in gambling, with designers examining what
techniques in digital systems incline people to continue
to gamble. Some of these techniques have been
picked up and applied in getting people to use their
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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2021

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