Does Money Mesh with a Moral Operating System?
June 3, 2011
Does high tech need a moral compass? Google director of engineering and in-house philosopher Damon Horowitz’s presentation at TEDx Silicon Valley is detailed in VentureBeat’s “Google’s In-House Philosopher: Technologists Need a ‘Moral Operating System.’”
Instead of addressing questions that philosophers like John Stuart Mill and Emmanuel Kant have wrestled with for centuries, technology makers don’t “think about the morality of their products — they just build stuff and let other people worry about the ethics.”
Being on the wrong side of ethical issues is nothing new for high tech companies. Recently, Cisco, which claims that “A strong commitment to ethics is critical to our long-term success as a company,” was sued for allegedly supplying the Chinese government with computer-networking equipment used to spy on and persecute members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. Facebook’s privacy issues are well-documented. IBM is so committed to the idea that it created a strict code of ethics that is monitored by the IBM Professional Practices Committee.
I submitted a column to Information Today about Google’s shift from search to knowledge. That’s a pretty philosophically-charged move. I am not sure when that write up will appear in print. Publications seem to cut issues and revamp with a nimbleness that reminds me of my slow but sure ossification.
The problem with a giant company getting into the philosophy business is that it is mostly PR. The objective of a commercial enterprise is to make money, generate a profit, and survive. Morality? I find the notion of morality somewhat interesting but not much of a factor when competitors threaten, a core revenue stream experiences low blood pressure, and lawyers circle, flap, and drop paper like rain on a mid April afternoon in the Ohio Valley.
So, when it comes to an American enterprise’s moral operating system, I just ignore the pitch. Irrelevant but invigorating to the alphabet generations.
Stephen E Arnold, June 3, 2011
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, the resource for enterprise search information and current news about data fusion
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
