It is a bold statement, but Balkan has a point: we already extend our biological capabilities through technology every single day, although this has yet to really impact how we see ourselves in relation to technology. Perhaps that needs to change. "What if we start seeing technology as an extension of ourselves?" he asks. If we start to consider our personal technology as part of our extended selves then we can start to change how we draw the boundaries of the self. "In this case, think about what spying on what we're doing becomes," says Balkan. "It becomes an intrusion of the self, an assault." Assault is a thing we already have laws to deal with, he adds. In order to prevent this, it becomes crucial that we as individuals own and control the means by which we extend ourselves.
"You hear about data being the new oil -- how horrible is that?" Balkan asks. Data is us, he adds, and that makes us the commodity. We are ultimately sold to make money for shareholders -- this is not a revelation, but in the context of our cyborg futures, it can be seen in a new light. "In the past and unfortunately in some places still today, we had the practise of selling people," says Balkan. "We call this slavery. We have to ask ourselves the uncomfortable question of what do we call selling everything else about you other than your body? This is the business model of Silicon Valley."
This sparks the question as to why data-harvesting companies aren't regulated, says Balkan, but in fact those who should be regulating these activities -- namely governments -- are often acting as cheerleaders for the companies themselves. They form public-private and multi-stakeholder partnerships with the companies. "The problem is the size of everyone's stake is not the same; some of the people you've invited to the table actually made the table."
This creates an "economy of influence", says Balkan, the real danger of which is institutional corruption. "What we're really seeing is the transfer of power from governmental institutions to corporate ones." Governments end up in a situation where they make trade deals that allow them to be sued by the companies if they make decisions that are in the interests of their citizens, but not in the interests of their corporate friends. "Once they become law we will have lost democracy," says Balkan. In its place, we have a corporatocracy. "It it war on the public sphere, a war on the commons, a war on human rights and individual freedoms."
This causes a seemingly huge problem, but Balkan insists that the problem isn't really difficult as it seems, and neither is the solution. "I'm a designer and as a designer my duty is to try and find the core problems that we can solve," he says. What he has discovered is that at their core, most things are very simple. If people tell you things are very complex -- too complex -- it is likely they have a vested interested in keeping it complex.
So what then is the simple solution? "We need to move beyond capitalism," says Balkan. "Capitalism today is monopoly -- we're talking about huge multinational corporations that cannot be touched." Technology is an important part of the solution, but for it to work, we also need to understand technology better, and this is where design comes into the picture.
"When I talk about design I don't mean aesthetics -- I'm talking about holistic design," says Balkan. He sees design in Silicon Valley as being all about what is awesome in the here and now. Google Maps, for example, is empowering when you need to get somewhere, but what is the cost? "Google gets to know where you're going and it adds them to all the other things it knows about you to make money. The cost is erosion to our civil liberties in the future."
The design of such products is what Balkan calls "design without ethics". "Design without ethics is not design, it is decoration. Decoration perpetuates the status quo, whereas design alters it."
Ethical design, on the other hand is about both now and the future. "These two things should not be dichotomies. At the very base we start with respecting human rights when designing," explains Balkan. This means making them private, secure, accessible and sustainable. The next layer of design is about making them functional, convenient, reliable. Finally, they must be delightful. "The quality of those experiences whether they are with people and with things is important." "It all comes downs to respect, respecting the human," says Balkan, but this is not how most mainstream technologies are built. "We fail at the very very beginning because we're not building products that respect human rights. You might say that is the new alphabet of our lives..." The audience laughs and Balkan grins. "Too soon?"
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
