Technology is a means to enhance human ideals and aspirations. If designed and developed responsibly, technology could help promote justice and enhance the culture and values of a community. It is necessary for the developer and the user of a technology to examine the purpose and the forces driving the development and adoption of that technology.
How can technology be used to promote justice?
“The purpose of justice is the appearance of unity among men.”
Justice is a capacity which enables one to understand the reality through their own knowledge, and not blindly following others. Justice equips us to conduct ourselves towards others with fairness and compassion.
As a user or developer of a technology (or provider and receiver of a service), we are given an opportunity to heighten our sense of justice when creating or utilizing a technology with the awareness that our products and actions make a positive impact.
Imagine a robotic company which is given the opportunity to design robotic arms that would help the individuals with disability to facilitate their daily activities. How can such a company practice justice to make their technology accessible and affordable to all who are in need? When we are developing or using a technology, there are some questions we must try to find answers to: Who does the technology benefit? Does every member of the community benefit from the fruits of the human mind including access to technological innovations and the knowledge generated through it?
How can every technology support and enhance human values?
Technological innovations are tools designed and developed to improve and facilitate our everyday lives. But just like any other tool, technology can be utilized in a constructive or destructive manner.
When a technology is developed and introduced to the society without considering human values and true aspirations, such a technology will prove to be disastrous and ultimately it can destroy the culture and the local values of the community.
The building blocks of society are based on human connection and cooperation. However, most of the developed technologies such as social media, despite the connotation that it is a vehicle for socialization, far from it, it’s now a technology that is reducing human interactions and giving the users an illusion of connection while consuming their time, causing addiction and leaving the user drained and disconnected.
Therefore, as a developer or user of a technology, one should ask how the technology is supporting and enhancing community’s values and ideals?
Do the adopted technologies answer the needs of the community?
Technologies are designed and developed to answer a specific need or solve a problem in society. Therefore, the crucial step before designing and developing a technology is to identify the needs of the community accurately and this is achieved through consultation and close collaboration with the population.
Take for example all the technologies developed to engineer and modify crops, as well as their food and pesticides, although in some cases helpful to improve the crops varieties, farmers particularly in the developing communities face more fundamental needs such as access to reliable irrigation, power systems and other technological tools that would increase their yield and are affordable and accessible.
And so, before a technology is adopted, the community is entitled to ask themselves whether the technology answers their essential social needs and is prioritized correctly.
What forces drive our community to utilize these technologies?
Ideally, technologies are developed and utilized to build capacity in a community to reach their ideals and aspirations individually and collectively.
Before adopting a technology, the community must examine the driving forces impelling them to utilize this technology. Are the forces organically emerging from within the community or are they external forces? Raising such awareness within the community will work as a control mechanism over the driving forces.
For example, in today’s world consumerism is one of the main driving forces behind developing and utilizing different technologies which has created a false idea of what development looks like. There is this image generally held that development means having the latest and sophisticated technologies without considering the spiritual and ethical implications of such developmental approaches.
As a developer or user of a technology one should examine and analyze the driving forces behind the technological developments in order to ensure that the aim of the technology is to empower the community to reach their ideals and aspirations.
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