2/10 Lecture Thoughts

Our area of study this week is unfairness and social justice. This, in my mind, is an essential issue to address before we can make progress towards our overall goal of finding ways to benefit humanity through the steering of technology. Humanity is a big category that (obviously) includes all human beings. Some parts of that goal remain unclear though. Does humanity include those yet to be born or our future generations? Or (more in line with our reading this week), does this mean merely helping all humans equally, or helping those born less privileged to put everyone on "equal" footing? The question of fairness is one that we all see though our own ideology, and thus impossible to define with a single correct answer. We live in a society that answers questions of fairness in the most impartial way we can: our judicial system. The beginning of the lecture did a good job of introducing the topic with the James Baldwin quote: "ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemies justice can have". Justice systems are imperfect, and despite our attempts to preserve objectiveness throughout the process, some degree of bias still affects the outcome. The lecture also provided insight into how we can attempt to improve the justice system. When trying to determine the successful of the law, we need to ask those who need its protection most if it is working.

There are other questions, however, that cannot be answered in national or local courts. In my mind, consideration of the fundamental rights to essentials is the responsibility of every individual human. It is not a question that can be answered individually or through a small jury. Even the attempts of large organizations, such as the United Nations, have failed to produce an answer compelling enough to inspire global compliance. Our supplemental reading provided a small glimpse of the conditions endured in the poorer communities of India. There, the struggle is for regular access to clean water and sanitation. This is, no doubt, not unique to India, nor even the worst conditions humans experience daily on a global scale. Most would probably consider those two resources fundamental, and yet government efforts to address the problem are minimally effective. Even if a consensus could be reached, how could humanity manage the logistics of the problem we are facing? The book mentions the suggestion of a global tax that seeks to help better balance the allocation of resources toward the fundamentals. This is a interesting idea in theory, but I imagine that in reality there would be some serious obstacles associated with it. In my opinion, the challenge of distributing resources in one that needs to be addressed locally and individually. As we have read, we can't hope to understand the conditions and factors affecting every poor community, and an ignorant approach to addressing fundamental resources could produce more harm than good.

Distributing resources bring us back to the bigger question of fairness again. As many of us are taught in childhood: "the world isn't a fair place". In lecture we explored the relation between access to technological benefits and privilege. Privilege can come in the form of class, race, gender, class, sexual preference, and an extensive range of other forms. A key point that we touched on, however, its that most of these are granted completely randomly. Furthermore, this random "life lottery" almost directly dictates access to technology (which is a strong indicator of wealth). It is important to distinguish that in this context, technology can be as simple as clean water and sanitation or as complex as access to the latest computing systems. The Ability To Pay (ATP) method of technology distribution is what prevails in most of the world today. ATP has clear links to capitalism and simple economic theory, and tends to be the natural response of an economy in absence of special programs. At the same time, ATP privileges those who need it least, and restricts access to those who need it most. Undoubtedly, superior systems exist. A number of these were detailed in our reading and lecture. Unfortunately, many of these also rely on the ability to quantify and distinguish levels of need and wealth. This is a challenge in its own right, as is producing a system that can identify the least privileged without the influence of corruption or personal bias. From a technocratic perspective, perhaps this could be a place to steer the focus of future technology and scientific research. The power of  computational data analysis, often disliked for its intrusions into personal privacy, might be able to be put to good use helping us produce a better model for mapping communities where resources and technology are most needed.