Kingsley Davies and Cat Swetel at QCon London about Ethics and Requisite Variety

Show Notes

• 0:43 Introduction to Kingsley
• 0:53 Kingsley’s talk Effective Ethics for Busy People
• 1:15 The need to explore the tech for good and ethical technology space
• 1:49 Tech for Good – technology used for social impact in the charity sector
• 2:20 the impetus behind opening a coffee shop as a community space
• 2:45 Now is prime time for tech for good
• 2:54 Data is the new oil and it is frequently used in ways that are not in the best interest of society
• 3:27 The need to carefully evaluate the capabilities and uses of data analytics
• 4:03 Exploring the options open to an individual when they are unsure of the ethics of a course of action
• 4:29 The need for psychological safety as a prerequisite for ethical decision making
• 4:40 If you don’t feel safe in the environment you’re in then you should probably change your organisation
• 4:57 Ways to incorporate ethics into the decision-making stream – possibly as a discrete element in the continuous delivery pipeline
• 5:42 Other engineering professions have codes of conduct and ethical frameworks that are mandated as part of the education process, software engineering currently has very little
• 6:08 Examples of some activities happening in the space – such as the Stockholm Letter
• 6:29 There are a number of examples of codes of conduct and codes of ethics that are available, such as the ACM
• 6:51 The sad inevitability that it may well need some more incidents before the IT community and society as a whole demand ethical guidelines for software engineering
• 7:20 Ways to start getting involved
• 7:40 Referencing the ethical OS toolkit as a framework for evaluating the likely future use of technology being developed
• 8:15 The grassroots groundswell of developers who are getting engaged and interested in the area of ethics
• 8:50 Events and activities that are happening in the ethics and tech for good space
• 10:13 The way business strategies from Open Source and Crowd Funding are being adapted for social good and the charity sector
• 10:48 An example of tech for good - the application of AI to reduce the load on health services
• 11:29 Green tech and energy use as a social driver
• 12:00 the impact of bitcoin and blockchain – the amount of electricity used by bitcoin miners is the equivalent to the electricity consumption of the 38th largest country in the world
• 12:31 The need for green technology and the efficient use of power and the impact of technology on carbon emissions
• 13:11 Exploring the background of bitcoin and why it emerged through the global financial crisis in 2008
• 14:52 Work underway to reduce the power consumption of bitcoin validation, but it’s still experimental
• 16:08 Introducing Cat Swetel
• 17:12 Cat’s talk on Requisite Variety
• 17:32 Ashby’s law of requisite variety – the more options that are available to a system, the more resilient the system is
• 18:18 Aspects of variety in socio-technical systems
• 18:35 Examples of where variety makes sense and where it doesn’t
• 19:13 Sometimes the same relationship needs both high and low variety in different aspects
• 19:41 Recommendations as an example of variety
• 20:25 Socio-technical systems are implemented by people, for people
• 20:44 To build resilient organisations we need teams with a wide variety in background, experiences, culture, knowledge, beliefs and viewpoints
• 21:35 Become sensitized to opportunities to uncover more options
• 21:55 The difference between taking an account of a situation and accounting for a situation
• 22:28 Examples of the assumptions that limit our options and opportunities
• 22:44 An example of changing the thinking to take account of a situation
• 23:28 There is no simple answer to overcoming the inherent biases we have
• 23:33 Some examples of things Cat has found which help overcome the assumptions we hold
• 23:52 Imagine you are someone else and think about how they will view the situation
• 24:05 Use diverge-converge thinking to help belief differences
• 24:32 Using A3 thinking in a collaborative, deliberately provocative approach
• 25:10 The information technology industry is very young, and we are currently setting the tone for future generations
• 25:47 Each of us working in the industry today have a huge responsibility to future generations to consider the outcomes of our actions and the way we implement systems
• 26:38 Being mindful and thinking about what we’re building and the impact of what we do on the future – applying test-first thinking
• 27:22 Questioning strategy and direction – what would the impact have been if someone at Facebook had questioned the strategy of seeking engagement regardless of the type of engagement
• 28:05 We exist in the realm of ethics – we can’t just go to work and do what you’re told.  Everything we do is a choice
• 29:12 Where we need to look for moral guidance and transcendence and meaning
• 29:47 Listen to each other and value the testimony that we each bring to the table
• 30:17 We constantly make choices in the work that we do – we need to be more deliberate and mindful about the choices we make
• 30:42 Feeling empowered to say no and challenge unethical behaviour
• 30:54 Those of us in the position to say no have a responsibility to do so when it is needed

Mentioned:

• QCon London 2019
• GoodTechConf
• Meaning Conference
• ACM Code of Ethics & Professional Conduct
• The Ethical OS Toolkit
• Sam Warner blog post
• Beyond Tech conference
• Beam crowdfunding for social good
• Sustainable Servers by 2024 petition 
• Coffee Shop outside Brighton
• Kingsley on Twitter Kings13y
• Underscore Consultancy underscore.io
• Ticketmaster
• Ashby’s law of requisite variety
• Good Strategy, Bad Strategy
• Kent Beck – TCR
• Cat on Twitter