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Technology, Ethics and Trust

The question is not "Can we do it? but rather, "Should we do it?"

There is a fear that technology may be outpacing our personal and organizational ethics. People have lost their trust in all forms of institutions. It is not just government that is having a crisis of trust.

Add into this mix the advent of technologies that make people wonder how those technologies might be used — not to help them, but do something that will be used against them.

See this article on facial recognition and how there is significant pushback already on the technology being used by police in combination with body cams: California Could Ban Facial Recognition in Police Body Cams.

This is a similar situation to medical ethics in that technology is going to allow us to do many things medically, but then — ethically — do we want to have things like "designer babies?"

Eric Holdeman is a contributing writer for Emergency Management magazine and is the former director of the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management.