Digital Ethics

We all tend to oversimplify complex things into two competing ideologies: generalist or specialist, objective or subjective, individual or team. This can be useful, but it can also make us think we should pick a side. It also becomes an issue when we try and solve them—calling these things ‘problems’ implies there is a correct answer somewhere. But there often isn’t, and it takes us too long to realise. What if we had a tool that facilitated good conversations about these complex topics upfront? Where the goal isn’t a decision, but recognition? The answer to a question like ‘Should we focus...

Google knows nearly everything about you, from how you commute to your relationship status. There have never been more opportunities for marketers to exploit that data.

We evolved to want variable rewards. What happens when smartphones give them to us?

Rotten to the core: 10 findings from psychology that reveal the bad news about human nature and show us how to do better

People often surrender their data privacy to their continuously listening voice assistants without understanding the implications.

As philosopher Susan Wolf argues, life is far more meaningful and rich if we do not aim at being morally perfect

A publication to explore how AI is changing politics, policy, and governance

This time last year I wrote(1,2) about a Swedish company called Emotra. Emotra make a device that is supposed to measure suicide risk in people with mental illness. The test is called EDOR® and according to Emotra’s website and materials, it has been shown to be highly effective. Last year, I explained why I disagree …

The tech industry’s obsession with “frictionless” design has been the source of innumerable problems.

How persona spectrums champion real user needs

An open letter to @Facebook, @Twitter, @Instagram and @Experian regarding algorithms and my son's birth: pic.twitter.com/o8SuLMuLNv— Gillian Brockell (@gbrockell) December 11, 2018

Washington State responds to a re-identification study of anonymized health records that it sells by removing fields sensitive to re-identification.

Watch Samantha Nutt on the Problems of Volunteer Tourism, a News video from NowThis.

Watch Why Reading the Terms Of Service Matters, a Future video from NowThis.

A trove of internal Facebook documents was released by a British parliamentary committee as part of an investigation into misinformation and user data.

We live in a time of both extreme politics and extreme economics. The political side is familiar, but the economic side may be less so. It is represented by new concentrations of personal wealth and…

Five ways to help people act on their values, no matter the context.

Giving Voice to Values (GVV) is an innovative approach to values-driven leadership development in business education and the workplace. Rather than a focus on ethical analysis, the Giving Voice to Values (GVV) curriculum focuses on ethical

New urban design aims to influence behaviour and has been criticised as an attempt to exclude poor peopleAnti-skateboarding architecture – in pictures

This week I had the great honour of being named by the RSA as the first Royal Designer for Industry for Service Design. My hope is to inspire the next generation of designers, just as the current R…

Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

The U.S. needs to stand against the surveillance state.

It can be easy to simply accept algorithms as indisputable mathematic truths. After all, who wants to spend their spare time deconstructing complex equations? But make no mistake: algorithms are limited tools for understanding the world, frequently as flawed and biased as the humans who create and interpret them. In this brief animation, which was adapted from a 2017 presentation at the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) in London, the US data scientist Cathy O’Neil, author of Weapons of Math Destruction (2016), argues that algorithms can be useful tools when thoughtfully deployed. However, their ...

Or, why a social scientist could be the most important person on your product team

As the tools for self-tracking have improved, and access to research publications and medical grade instrumentation has spread, QS…

1/ A couple of months ago, I discovered my health insurer was monitoring my sleep and using it to deny me benefits. So I told my colleague @marshall_allen…https://t.co/BYU1956k1a— Eric Umansky (@ericuman) November 21, 2018