Ged Carroll

Category: ethics | 倫理 | 윤리학

Ethics: moral principles that govern a person’s behavior or the conducting of an activity. I went to school with people who ended up on the wrong side of the law. I knew more of them when I used to DJ which was my hobby since before I went to college.

I probably still have some post-it notes around the place that I used as bookmarks from when I used to work at a call centre but that was about the extent of my ethical transgressions.

My business experience meant that I dealt with a lot of unpleasant unprofessional clients, but didn’t necessarily see anything unethical in nature. When I started writing this blog I was thinking about culture rather than ethics and the most part still do.

But business and work changed. Ethics became more important:

  • When I started in social and digital campaigns I didn’t think about ethics as a standalone thing. It was just part of doing a good job. It went without saying.
  • I don’t think any of us back then would have foreseen slut shaming, trolling, online bullying, dark patterns and misinformation

Now things are different. The lack of ethics is impacting all parts of business life.

  • How ad tech data is used
  • How content is created
  • How services are designed
  • How products are made

I think that much of the problems with ethics is cultural and generational in nature. The current generation of entrepreneurs have perverted knowledge in the quest of growth hacking and continual improvement and change for its own sake. Its a sickness at the centre of technology

  • Whole Earth Discipline

    One of the problems that I have with many environmental tracts is that they articulate their message as an anti-science based dogma rather than as a discussion where you can make your own mind up. That issue and Stewart Brand’s status as a nexus point between green issues, counterculture, technology, web communities and futurism made Whole Earth Discipline a must-read book book for me.

    The whole earth of the title is a nod to history: The story goes that Brand inspired by the use of acid started a campaign to get a photograph of the whole earth published. He sold badges with Why haven’t we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet? on them and found a grassroots movement around it. He rightly summised the image would be a powerful symbol. This was a key point in the history of the modern green movement.

    Stewart was responsible for publishing The Whole Earth Catalog and The WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link). The Whole Earth Catalog was a regularly published book of useful information not mediated by authority that sprang out of hippie culture – a kind of Wikipedia of its day. The WELL is the proto-social network which connected a diverse range of technocrats, artists and journalists who would go on to play an important part in the modern web and set the libertarian point-of-view of the digerati – its got some great content on there and I would recommend that anyone interested join – my user name is ged if you want to reach out to me there. The netizen mantra that information wants to be free was taken from a speech that Brand gave in 1984 at the first Hackers Conference.

    If you want to know more about Stewart I can recommend Fred Turner’s From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. Its a big book but a great read that I completed cover-to-cover one time on a flight to Hong Kong.

    Whole Earth Discipline breaks down into two distinct parts. The first part builds on the famous Environmental Heresies essay that Brand published in the MIT Technology Review five years ago. He brings this up to date by surveying the current knowledge on the planet and the solutions that we are likely to require such as widespread use of nuclear power, the use of solar energy as a personal household level and encouraging populations into cities, away from sprawling suburbs.

    The second part of the book is demystifying some of the current green dogmas like the evils of genetic modification with a critical eye and taking an unvarnished look at some of the most prominent campaigning organisations out there such as Greenpeace and Friends of The Earth.  According to Brand tens of thousands of people died of starvation in Zambia because of a lobbying campaign to the country’s leadership by environmentalists complaining about poison Frankenfoods.

    The book is a thoughtful, engaging, well-researched book on environmental issues that we all face together with ideas on how to address current and future challenges. It is also valuable for communications people working in difficult areas such as energy and biotechnology who are often faced with dogma-based campaigns by well-meaning but misguided organisations. More book reviews can be found here.

  • Nozoe Kuniaki & more news

    Nozoe Kuniaki

    Former CEO of Fujitsu Nozoe Kuniaki (野副州旦) – blackmail forced his resignation | Japan: Stippy – interesting story of boardroom intrigue. Nozoe Kuniaki was originally said to have resigned due to ill health. The FT reported that Nozoe Kuniaki was really forced to resign by Fujitsu. Apparently Nozoe Kuniaki was forced to resign over links to a company of “unfavourable reputation”. The FT hints the roots of this palace putsch: apparently Nozoe Kuniaki was opposed by colleagues due to his drive to refocus the group on IT services at the expense of unprofitable electronics divisions, including its hard disk drive business.

    China

    FT.com / China – China faces shortages of migrant workers – this is more about structural change than an economic problem, the demographic bomb hasn’t kicked in yet. Shenzhen and similar areas will go to higher value products and industry permeate deeper into the country FT.com / Asia-Pacific – Labour shortage hits China export recovery

    Consumer behaviour

    When Trying to Preserve the Planet Strains the Relationship – NYTimes.com – environmentalism causing maritial strife

    Culture

    Axe Cop – genius: a 5 year-old script writer and a 29 year-old illustrator create an awesome comic

    From Quantic Dream, a Child Killer and a Tormented Dad – NYTimes.com – interesting new direction in gaming. In some ways it reminds me of Myst and the vision that Philips had for the CD-i platform

    Economics

    Economists Urge Government to Stop War on Piracy | TorrentFreak – Digital Economy Bill-type measures don’t make economic sense according to Spanish economists

    Innovation

    Op-Ed Contributor – Microsoft’s Creative Destruction – NYTimes.com – “Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator. Its products are lampooned, often unfairly but sometimes with good reason. Its image has never recovered from the antitrust prosecution of the 1990s. Its marketing has been inept for years; remember the 2008 ad in which Bill Gates was somehow persuaded to literally wiggle his behind at the camera?” and “Microsoft’s huge profits — $6.7 billion for the past quarter — come almost entirely from Windows and Office programs first developed decades ago. Like G.M. with its trucks and S.U.V.’s, Microsoft can’t count on these venerable products to sustain it forever.”

    Chinese Premier Talks Up Internet of Things – NYTimes.com – interesting stuff here, however we need to move to IPv6 addresses fast in order to take advantage of it

    Ireland

    RTÉ News: ‘Guerrilla street’ hurling in US capital

    Japan

    Grads return to watches as job-hunter prop | The Japan Times Online – watches used to give the impression of being well-organised

    Tech Lawyers Say ‘Uh Oh’ as Microsoft Outsources Legal Work to India

    Google and antitrust: Searching questions | The Economist

    Slapdash Bill will damage Britain’s digital economy – The Irish Times – Fri, Nov 27, 2009 – external perspective on the forthcoming Digital Economy Bill

    Media

    Leaked UK record industry memo sets out plans for breaking UK copyright – Boing Boing – WTF. The BPI-authored changes the effect of which was that “the security services concerns were not being met” and then goes on to talk about the irony that the Open Rights Group and the Security Services being on the same side as if it validates his standpoint

    ivi.ru — смотрите фильмы и сериалы с комфортом! – Russian answer to Hulu and iPlayer. Really nicely designed.

    When using open source makes you an enemy of the state | Technology | guardian.co.uk – interesting evidence against MPAA and RIAA of trying to incite unilateral US government actions against Indonesia because it uses open source software

    Online

    U.K. Kids Start Social Networking Way Under the Age Limit | Fast Company

    Philippines

    Sinatra Song Often Strikes Deadly Chord – NYTimes.com – My Way correlates with karaoke-related killings in the Philippines. Fascinating bit of newspaper anthropology

    Retailing

    FT.com / Comment / Analysis – China: The jailed salesman – background on the Gome business

    Security

    China PLA officer urges new Internet control agency | Reuters – People’s Liberation Army Major General Huang Yongyin ‘For national security, the Internet has already become a new battlefield without gunpowder’

    Google Case Highlights Gaps in Computer Security – NYTimes.com – interesting take on security

    Software

    The best health apps for your iPhone | The Guardian

    Wireless

    FT.com / Telecoms – Students power BlackBerry growth – I can completely understand this, I miss a proper keyboard a la the Nokia Communicator

    Motorola’s First-Quarter Forecast Hurts Shares – NYTimes.com – Android failing to save Motorola’s bacon

  • Choice Blindness

    I’ve always wanted to understand how consumers don’t have a higher level of dissatisfaction when they go home with the supermarket’s own brand goods as a mistake instead of a branded product with the apparent answer being choice blindness. It was neatly captured in culture with Bruce Springsteen’s song 57 channels and nothin’ on. (This is the the reason why Tesco, ASDA et al will often have rows of branded goods in the middle of similar looking own brand products, the own-brand products have a higher profit margin for the supermarkets).

    New Scientist talks about the phenomena in Choice blindness: You don’t know what you want by Lars Hall and Petter Johansson (April 18,2009):

    …in an early study we showed our volunteers pairs of pictures of faces and asked them to choose the most attractive. In some trials, immediately after they made their choice, we asked people to explain the reasons behind their choices.

    Unknown to them, we sometimes used a double-card magic trick to covertly exchange one face for the other so they ended up with the face they did not choose. Common sense dictates that all of us would notice such a big change in the outcome of a choice. But the result showed that in 75 per cent of the trials our participants were blind to the mismatch, even offering “reasons” for their “choice”.

    We called this effect “choice blindness”, echoing change blindness, the phenomenon identified by psychologists where a remarkably large number of people fail to spot a major change in their environment.

    I find it facinating that people will even justify their ‘wrong’ decision. Is this just academic? No, it has a major commercial impact which is why many retailers have look a like brands to take advantage of choice blindness. This lead to a court case between ASDA and McViities biscuits over the look a like brand Puffin.

    It is at the centre of dark patterns for in-real-life retail. Search in e-tailing acts as a neat filter. But not every retail experience can be satisfactorily transferred online. Secondly promoted items on Amazon and eBay as examples can be as disruptive as retail tactics that take advantage of the phenomenon.

    There is a big question so far unanswered about how ethical is retailers use of choice blindness as a tactic. With carefully designed packaging are consumers being deceived? McVities might well believe so. The question of whether consumers are the injured party is more complex. If you ask a consumer that has bought a private label brand, they are likely to post rationalise their purchase rather than experience cognitive dissonance.

    So its not the same level of disappointment experienced when one is ‘bait-and-switched’ a real product for a counterfeit purchase. But does that somehow make it more honest?

    More consumer behaviour related content can be found here.

  • Underground

    Murakami is best known for his book Norwegian Wood, but I chose Underground: the Tokyo gas attack and the Japanese Psyche as my first Murakami book. It is his only non-fiction work to date (at least to my knowledge).

    Murakami fled Japan after the success of Norwegian Wood and was lacking context around the Sarin attack on the Tokyo underground in 1995. It was a fantastical and terrible event that sounds like it has been plucked from the pages of a Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum novel.

    You have a weapon of mass destruction cooked up by a cult that has echoes of the Mansion family about it.

    Underground was his way of making sense of it. He interviewed survivors and protagonists telling the stories in their own words.

    It is antithesis of Tom Wolfe’s new journalism: Murakami manages to let the people speak for themselves. Murakami removes himself completely from the work, which is the antithesis of the personal nature in a novel. Instead you get uncoloured reportage. If Wolf did new journalism, Murakami has done ‘Muji journalism’. Simple unadorned content which lets the story be the story.

    What comes out of their stories in Underground a strength, modesty and stoicism that shines through the horror of the experience that the people went through. I was reminded of that oft quoted Japanese saying ‘fall down seven times, stand up eight’.

    I was told that it was a dark book that is heavy going, but I didn’t find this to be the case at all. These people and their response to the Tokyo underground gas attack are an example to us all confronted with sudden adversity.

    The Tokyo gas attack was a shocking event and both systems and processes broke down, but what came out also was the heroism of the people involved in dealing with the tragedy and their deeply ingrained ethical system. More details of Underground here. More Japan related content here.

    Picture courtesy of NeilsPhotography

  • The cyber-lynching of David Motari

    David Motari is a US Marine who allegedly appeared in a video that was posted on YouTube. The clip showed a US serviceman throw a puppy over a cliff or gulley. I am not going to go into the rights and wrongs of this incident or whether the video is a fake. But I was fascinated and disturbed by the public reaction online.

    There was an online groundswell that condemned his actions. A quick Google search showed how many people then researched and published personal details about Motari. From there they looked at  his spouse, his friends and family. They listed two telephone numbers with different area codes for him and provided an address in Monroe, Washington State.

    Screen shots were taken of his Bebo profile that had a clear picture making him easy to identify. They researched his customised Honda Civic and listed the Hawaii registration number of his vehicle.

    They posted his wife’s social network details. This was followed by the social network details of his sister. These also included pictures. The online mob had spoken and they wanted punishment meted out to David Motari. This all happened before the military authorities had a chance to respond and investigate adequately.

    My efforts to get on to the two domains (marines.mil and usmc.mil) used by the US Marines to see how they were handling the online reputational aspect of this event was fruitless as the sites seemed to be overwhelmed with traffic (or taken down to prevent hacktivism).

    Thinking about the incident and the response, gave me some questions to mull on:

    • What happens if its not a puppy in the future but, instead say someone is accused of killing a child? For instance, the IHT recently had a report about an investigation of a marine who had been accused of raping a 14 year old girl on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa. These charges had since been withdrawn
    • How far will the online lynch mobs go?
    • Are the people publishing details like those of the Motari family inciting a third-party to commit an assault or worse?

    I get the sense that we (online users in western society) entered moral territory that we don’t understand the full impact of yet.

    We have yet to wrestle with the great individual and collective responsibility that comes with having access to the internet and all its services. At the moment too many people treat the web as a playground and it concerns me that stupid and senseless acts may happen before this lesson is widely learned.

    Some links to provide a bit of background on this story:

    • A sample blog posting in praise of the cyber mob – “But let this be a lesson – if you piss off nerds on the Internet, they not only won’t care if the infractions were legitimate or not, but they’ll make your life a bitch and half. Vigilante justice for the win!” This is just one of many reactions.
    • The link on Digg with over 3,500 comments at the time of writing
    • The 300 news stories that Google News found on the incident

    More online culture related content here.