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Chan Anthropocene Technology
Chan Anthropocene Technology
Chan Anthropocene Technology
Ethics is integral to design in many ways. But design ethics has remained under-
developed despite an increasing relevance in the Anthropocene, when many novel
ethical issues and problems are anticipated to emerge from man-made artifacts
and systems. The aim of this article is to revitalize the discourse of design ethics.
Firstly, I define ‘design ethics’ in relation to the distinction between ‘ethics’ and
‘morality’. Secondly and through the perspective of ethics, I draw out new issues
and questions by examining three commonly encountered categories in design,
namely, ‘technology’, ‘sustainability’ and ‘responsibility’. Finally, I conclude by
suggesting that it is important not to relinquish the formative potential of ethics
for design despite its complexity, or its ostensible intractability.
Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
D
esign is quintessentially an ethical process (Devon & Van de Poel,
2004, p. 461). Which problems designers choose to solvedand
whydand who to include or exclude as beneficiaries of this design
not only presume choice preferences but also more fundamentally, value po-
sitions on the good or worthwhile life. And in radical design with few guide-
lines in place, designers also confront value conflicts: which value to prioritize
and how to make an acceptable trade-off between two equally valued goodsd
for instance between safety and sustainabilitydare intrinsically, ethical ques-
tions (Van Gorp & Van de Poel, 2008). Despite this recognition that ethics is
integral to design in many ways, design ethics remains ‘massively underdevel-
oped and even in its crudest forms remains marginal within design education’
(Fry, 2009, p. 3). This knowledge gap in design ethics has become especially
urgent in the Anthropocene because the world we inhabit is, increasingly, also
the world we have made (Aicher, 1994; Purdy, 2015, p. 3).
Importantly, this article argues that design ethics has become paramount in
the Anthropocene. Admittedly, the Anthropocene is not yet officially estab-
lished; it has also gained a reputation for being a ‘trending’, academic buzz-
word (Stromberg, 2013). Yet the use of the Anthropocene here is deliberate
for two key reasons. Firstly and despite its ‘unofficial’ status, the Anthropo-
cene has become something of an empirical consensus. Presently, the Anthro-
pocene has developed into a nascent but growing discourse observable in many
conferences, published articles and even books. Within this nascent discourse,
it has been recognized that the state of the Earth system now no longer pro-
vides the same kind of functional stability assumed in the Holocene (that is,
the geological epoch before the newly proposed Anthropocene), and this
emerging turn towards greater uncertainty and volatility implicates the very
notion of conventional ethics, which tended to presume environmental stabil-
ity (Schmidt, Brown, & Orr, 2016, p. 193). For instance, the ability presumed
by consequentialist ethics to reliably estimate consequences or predict the full
ramifications of actions in non-linear systems has become very limited in the
Anthropocene (Schmidt et al., 2016, p. 193). What this portends for the ethics
of designing large-scale environmental systems, or artifacts that aggregate into
large-scale impacts, is perplexing. Secondly, the Anthropocene, as the age of
humans implies, that many ethical issues and problems are likely to be either
In natural language today, ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’ (or ‘morals’) are often used
synonymously or interchangeably. However, this form of usage precludes the
significant possibility that ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’ can conflict. Bauman (1993:
p. 4) once defined the great issues of ethics, among many others, as issues of
human rights, social justice, or the balance between altruism and self-
interest. All these issues attempt to discover, and then specify, the relations
we ought to have with other people in their moral status as human beings
(Margalit, 2009: p. 2e3). To this list, I will only add a few more that appears
to pertain directly to design: ecological restoration (Katz, 2012); weapons of
mass destruction (Jaspers, 1961), or weapons design (Cummings, 2006); and
designer babies and enhancement drugs (Sandel, 2007).
In all these issues and more, compliance to rules or social norms can often
imply a conflict with certain ethical ideals. Or in other words, morality, con-
cerned with obligatory action, can often conflict with ethics, which is con-
cerned with a good or a worthwhile life (Taylor, 2011, p. 4)dand vice versa.
On this, Murdoch (2014: p. 87) provides an example of a scientist who thought
that he should give up a certain branch of study after realizing that his discov-
eries would be used wickedly. While social norms appear to support the moral
neutrality of his inquiry, and while the institutions he served might have even
encouraged it, this scientist knew better. In light of the good or worthwhile life
that would likely be lost had he chosen to continue with his inquiry, this
But conversely, there is no guarantee that ethicsdor the ideal goals and no-
tions of the good lifedcan remain unchanged before fluid social norms and
contexts (Bauman, 1993). The notions of the good life at the cusp of the Indus-
trial Revolution might have been material abundance, or the full and complete
subjugation of the Earth. But today, and despite pluralism, the perpetuation of
the human species for as long as possible within a livable environment has
become one common and paramount goal of ethics (see Jonas, 1984). This
said, the nature of ethicsdmostly predicated on the ends of human well-
being and flourishingdneither changes as frequently, nor as rapidly, relative
to morality, which is arguably more closely tied to the vicissitudes of changing
social norms and contexts.
And because of this distinctiondand the conflicts that this distinction can
bring aboutdwhat ethics as a lens can do for design has become vastly wider
and richer. At one level, this distinction enables a form of applied ethics: to
determine the virtuousness, or responsibility, of a designer’s compliance to
some accepted social norms and standards, even when there exist strong incen-
tives to do otherwise (Barnard, 1968, p. 269). In the same way but conversely,
this distinction can also inform judgment under uncertainty: to find out just how
justifiable it is for the designer to comply to existing norms and standards, even
when this compliance would likely result in harmful consequences (Naoe,
2008). If the former is at least important for evaluating the responsibility of
designersdespecially in the context of design teams or organizationsdthen
the latter is critical for assessing design accountability in conditions of uncer-
tainty. And at another level, this distinction can reveal moral dilemmas key to
catalysing the moral imagination of designers, which in turn may likely
prompt design innovations. The spork is hardly the product of a moral
dilemma but that of bisociation (Koestler, 1964); but it is nonetheless, an arti-
factual compromise between a spoon and a fork. Similarly, the impasse of
moral dilemmas can often impel designers to invent anew in the form of
new options, or ‘creative compromises’ (Van de Poel, 2015, p. 94), that can
integrate once intractable differences. In sum, this distinction, which is reflec-
tive of a ‘wider focus’ (Taylor, 2011, p. 4) underway in moral philosophy, then
permits a profound richness and complexity on moral matters otherwise
Now that design ethics has been defined, and also established as the term of
reference, what does it entail? Referring to Parsons (2016) again, design ethics
can be used to refer to at least the following three categories of relation be-
tween design and ethics: (i) the ethical issues or conflicts that can emerge
when designers handle rules and norms as they apply to the objects they are
designing; (ii) questioning the very choice of what designers are creating or
designing; (iii) and considering how design can come to modify, or change,
our existing notions of ethics.
While the first category has been covered earlier in this discussion, it is the sec-
ond and third categories that are less explored. This article will therefore un-
pack these two relations through the categories of ‘technology’, ‘sustainability’
and ‘responsibility’ commonly encountered in design studies. Importantly, my
analysis will demonstrate how ethics, through the realities presented by each of
these categories, can bring about new perspectives that simultaneously extend,
yet confound, our present understanding of design.
But this nihilism never quite materialized. What emerged instead was the
triumphalism of means, where means became their own absolute ends. For
instance, where is that fastest car in the world going? What are the reasons
for building the tallest building? And why is a watch that answers our phone
calls even necessary? Rittel calls this phenomenon the ‘curse of feasibility’
(Protzen & Harris, 2010, p. 223): ‘I do because I can’. In parallel, C.W.
Churchman suggests that the most startling feature of the 20th century is
that mankind has developed such elaborate ways of doing things while simul-
taneously developed no way of justifying any one of them (Churchman, 1961,
p. 1). Indeed, the more pronounced and articulated technology becomes, the
more humanity is exposed to the unanticipated side effects and risks of har-
nessing technology (Wolin, 2001). And attempting to address these side effects
and risks with more technology only perpetuates the cycle of unanticipated
and undesirable side and after effects (Beck, 1992; Findeli, 1994). The power,
as the willingness, to harness technology has far exceeded the capacity to know
its actual consequences, and this in turn creates a class of new problems that
behoves a new ethic, hence the ethic of responsibility (Jonas, 1984).
Even so, the arguments mounted by Jonas and others on technology and ethics
are often ‘defined in reference to large choices’ (Manzini, 1992, p. 5). Manzini
(1992) suggests there are few hints in these arguments for constructing a sys-
tem of valuesdan ethics of designdfor everyday design decisions. To the
extent that Manzini is correct, little insight has been transferred from the
macro-ethics of technology to everyday design practices. And to the extent
Jonas’s arguments remain valid, the triumphalism of means persists. Often,
there is little substantive justification for why many technologies and products
exist except for reasons of frivolity and increasingly, because of reckless greed.
Like in Jonas’s milieu, the future of this present age remains at riskdand in
part due to design (Fry, 2009). Presently, design facilitates the ceaseless cycles
of new product development, which in turn legitimize design. In this context,
design and design ethics can be self-critical but they cannot do so without also
being threatened by self-negation. Therefore, there is little design ethics can do
in this paradigm of technology beyond tinkling warning bells (see Beck &
Willms, 2004, p. 204).
Admittedly, there is still little consensus on the mediation paradigm (see Chan,
2015). On this, Parsons (2016: p. 145) suggests that the mediation paradigm
makes it harder to focus ethical analysis on where it is ultimately needed,
which is on human decisions and actionsdnot on artifacts or a kind of moral-
ity predicated on materialism. Even so, the mediation paradigm of technology
appears at least useful to design in two different ways (Verbeek, 2008). Firstly,
this paradigm is able to develop a moral assessment of technologies in terms of
their likely mediating roles. For example, to what extent are choice architec-
tures, designed to ‘nudge’ users in certain ways over others (Thaler &
Sunstein, 2008), justifiable? And secondly because of this paradigm, ethics is
able to shift from the domain of language to the medium of materiality. In
the context of design ethics, I suggest that it is the latter suggestion that ought
to invite further reflection. To the extent that ethics can be materialized, ethics
might have to be designed. A recent thought experiment carried out at the Uni-
versity of Alabama (Birmingham) asks if self-driving carsdor autonomous ve-
hiclesdshould be programmed to ‘murder’ its occupants, rather than to kill
the pedestrians in the event of the classic Trolley problem (Windsor, 2015).
There are varying forms of the Trolley problem; but all of them are character-
ized by the problem of moral justification (Rakowski, 2016, p. 2), and are
described by a central moral dilemma between invoking a deliberate harm,
or rejecting that intent in favour of some unpalatable consequences, and
vice versa (e.g., between intentionally killing an innocent bystander to save
more people on the trolley, or to do nothing and to accept a greater casualty
From one perspective, Fry (2012) suggests that market growth constantly ne-
gates the impact reduction gains of sustainable products. Sustainable design,
which by one formulation is at least to reduce the impact of design on the envi-
ronment, is nullified when the scale of its realization in material and energy
consumption exceeds its aggregate impact reductions. The Jevons’ Paradox
and the Rebound Effect are two well-studied phenomena that point to the par-
adoxical possibility when widespread adoption of sustainable design can turn
out to undermine the original aims for sustainability. From another critical
perspective, sustainable design is perceived to have been hijacked and appro-
priated by agendas wholly unfamiliar, and perhaps even inimical, to its orig-
inal meaning for its morally approbative cover. The highly engineered ‘eco-
cities’ are indeed forms of sustainable development in terms of environmental
performance; but incurring the various costs associated to building new cities
when existing ones still offer ample opportunities for efficient re-adaptation is
not sustainable. Harvey (2010) suggests that (new) urbanization is but a chan-
nel to absorb excess capital to better stabilize capitalism. These two perspec-
tives do not nullify the need for sustainable design. But they do demand
closer scrutiny of what sustainability and sustainable design appear to
promise.
On this point, design ethics today has little to say. The hegemony of sustain-
able design has endorsed the belief that design is needed to create a more sus-
tainable world. But at the same time, this same belief also conceals the damage
Justly, Fry (2004) argues that the delimited sense of professional ethic as ‘re-
sponsibility to’ is inadequate for evaluating the deeper premises of design pro-
jects and the broader impacts of the designed artefact. After all, a
‘responsibility to’ rules, norms and superiors makes one unwilling to stand
up against dominant institutions or question them even when moral judgment
To bypass this obstacle, it has been suggested that design education offers a
venue for teaching responsible creativity (Maldonado, 1965). Along this line
of thinking, being responsible is less about knowing a priori definitions of
what responsibility entails, but more about the a posteri task of cultivating
a morally responsible designer. A person can know what is good, yet refuses
to do it (Aristotle, 2005). But a good person by definition, does what is
good and proper. Even so, there is some tentativeness in relying on education
to cultivate moral character (Findeli, 2001). This tentativeness is not without
reasons: for in the context of a pluralistic and liberal society, it is not only diffi-
cult to decide what kind of moral character one should cultivate, but also that
character education implies the questionable inculcation of desirable traits and
virtues (Doris, 2003)dbut whose desirable traits and virtues, one asks? More
troublingly, Doris (2003) also discovers that moral behaviour is extraordi-
narily sensitive to variation in circumstance. Drawing on evidence from
moral psychology, Doris questions if there is even such a thing as a ‘moral
character’dan attribute that all practices of character education must first
presume.
But counter-arguments are no less compelling: not only are the methods and
choice of subjects of many experiments in moral psychology questionable,
but also importantly, they rely on fictional moral scenarios to draw conclu-
sions of actual moral realities (Damon & Colby, 2015). Damon and Colby
argue that even if one accepts the moderating influence of circumstances on
moral behaviour, one cannot deny the evidence of a sustained dedication to
a moral cause in cases they have studied, which they further suggest as evi-
dence of moral character. Because philosophical horns remain locked on
this debate, and because there is also well-justified opposition to character ed-
ucation in liberal societies, it is uncertaindinsofar as the science and evidence
goesdif design education can hope to teach anything more than basic moral
reasoning skills and theories in training the responsible designer.
Even so, this approach is not without its own set of problems. Empirically, de-
signers work in systems that are inherited, and formed by, prior design at-
tempts. Considering Meadows’s specific example, one could argue that it is
very rare for a designer to have complete discretion over a complete design sys-
tem. But more importantly, design ethics again questions if designers ought to
be given this discretiondeven if it were possibledto design responsibility. In
contrast to Latour’s (1992) version on moral artefactsdfor example automatic
door-closers and automated seatbelts, which ‘clean up after us (i.e., the irre-
sponsible ‘us’)’dMeadows’s approach alters something deeper and more sys-
temic in the constitution of our lifeworlds. On the surface it appears to
naturalize the volition for responsibility. But in substance, this volition is
merely obliged by the starker realities of self-preservation.
In this article, I have defined design ethics by building on the work of other
practitioners and researchers. Following this, I have specified this ethics by us-
ing the conceptual vehicles of three categories commonly encountered in de-
signdnamely, ‘technology’, ‘sustainability’, and ‘responsibility’dto draw
further insights on ethics for design. If my arguments have been sound, then
not only have they demonstrated that ethics is integral to design in many
ways, but also that design, in the respective front presented by each of these
three categories, has advanced to a point where ethics can no longer be ignored
at our common peril.
At different junctures in this article however, it is also clear that ethics has re-
vealed more frustrating puzzles than concrete answers for design. This is espe-
cially salient on the question of responsibility to determinedor to designdthe
ethical valuations in autonomous technologies, and on the contention if
‘responsible systems’ ought to be designed even if designers have the capacity
to do so. Parsons (2016: p. 149) rightly thinks that the designer is in no position
to either foist her values on any of the users, and is no more entitled to legislate
these values than any other citizen on someone else through design. The dam-
age and dangers posed by those who pretended to be ‘philosopher-kings’, espe-
cially through large-scale system designs, should never be underestimated (see
Popper, 1971). In light of the complexity but also danger, designers may want
to consider allowing a distinct specialist to handle the ethical issues encoun-
tered in design (Parsons, 2016, p. 151).
This is one way forward for design ethics, where designers return to the tech-
nical, aesthetic or other professional matters that concern them, while making
room for an ethicistdwho presumably is interested in designdto do the neces-
sary ethical analysis and draw the ethical conclusion. There is no denying that
this division of moral labour has an intuitive appeal; there is also no denying
that ethics is complex, and designers are generally not well-equipped to tackle
this complexity head-on. But undeniably, ethics is also formative to the moral
development and growth of the design disciplines especially in the Anthropo-
cene, when new ethical issues and problems are anticipated to emerge from
man-made artifacts and systems. To ‘sub-contract’ ethics in design to ethicists
in this context thendparallel to practices found in certain hospitals where eth-
icists accompany doctors managing complex medical casesdneither elimi-
nates any genuine ethical problem that would be encountered, nor permits
the formative moral growth of designers.
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