EAGER - Values in Design for Future Internet Architecture - Next Phase

New York University, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

An EAGER grant for the Values In Design analysis for Future Internet Architectures--Next Phase (VID4FIA-NP) project supports experimentation with a new model for interdisciplinary collaboration, using the Future Internet Architecture projects as an exciting testbed, and integrating social, ethical, legal, and economic issues with the technical work of the FIA-NP project teams. VID4FIA-NP will build a network of VID experts and find common ground with the challenges faced by the FIA projects, using the VID methodologies for analyzing and designing technology that recommends social values that can serve as design requirements alongside more traditional technical constraints. These activities will produce events that connect VID approaches with the prototyping and testing process, and working papers, possible joint publications and other documents formalizing our findings and methods. Intellectual Merit: Within the extensive community of researchers and scholars there are diverse, hotly contested views on what it means to say that technology is or is not value free. There are smaller demonstrations of the claim that features of technology can actively be adjusted to yield morally and socially relevant outcomes. VID4FIA-NP will make significant, convincing contributions to this debate by providing opportunities for social scientists, humanists, economists, legal and policy experts, and technical experts to collaborate on gritty design features that are socially and ethically important. Beyond potential contributions to the general understanding of social dimensions of technology, the project could yield insights into how to operationalize abstract concepts such as security, privacy, etc. and how to implement them in architecture, protocol, mechanism, etc. Not only could these contributions directly affect the FIA-NP projects, they could have significance for IT design generally, and even beyond, to other technologies. Broader Impacts: Living with the consequences of technology, it is inevitable that we applaud some and bemoan others. Such evaluation can be retrospective, but for approaches in the VID network, there is commitment to pro-action, making adjustments in material elements of systems and devices systematically can affect socially relevant outcomes. Aware of the pitfalls of naive technological determinism, the payout measured in terms of systems and artifacts that promote--or do not subvert--attainment of societal values, is potentially great. The opportunity to test out these ideas in a research context as ambitious as the FIA-NP projects holds promise for better technology and deeper understanding of the mutual shaping influence of material design on the one hand and values on the other.