The Need for a Value-Sensitive Design of Communication Infrastructures

Abstract

In this chapter, we will discuss Value-Sensitive Design as a general approach to thinking about design in the TUC – Towards Ultrafast Communication – project from an ethical perspective. We begin with the historical context by describing developments both in information technology and ethics that preceded Value-Sensitive Design. Both ethics and computer science demonstrate a converging development towards interest in the relation between values and technical design, respectively coined by us as “The Value Turn” in (information) technology and “The Design Turn” in ethics. After a sketch of the development and history of Value-Sensitive Design we will discuss the methodology of both Value-Sensitive Design and a related approach called “Values at Play”. Their methodology consists of three modes of inquiry, respectively the conceptual, empirical, and technical mode and the discovery, translation, and verification phase. These three parts of the methodology are used to deal with concerns arising from moral theory with respect to the way technology affects moral practices in direct and indirect ways. Towards the end of the chapter we will discuss in general how Value-Sensitive Design applies to the TUC project.