Without diversity in technology a dystopian future is inevitable
Over the past few years my love/hate relationship with technology has become more accentuated than ever. I’m a digital native, I‘ve made my career thanks to technology, I adopt new software continuously to improve my life, but at at the same time I hate how intrusive technology has become, how giant capitalist companies are exploiting it to make sickening amounts of money and most of all how lacking in diversity the world of technology is.
A whopping 92% of developers are male (the majority of which are between 20 and 35 years old), 90% of contributers to wikipedia are male, over half of the world’s population still don’t have access to the internet, the leading smartphone manufacturer has a leadership team made up almost entirely of white men, and the number of black employees at three top tech companies could all fit on a single plane. This sounds like the perfect backdrop for a dystopian sci-fi novel, except instead of robots taking over the world it’s actually those behind building them that do.
No wonder so many fear technology. It’s right that we should fear what our future interactions with machines might entail. But not because we should be scared of machines themselves but instead we should be scared of the small slither of people that technology is created by and for. Over the past few years we have begun to see how biased the technology we use on a daily basis has become. From Apple’s expansive health app which omitted women’s menstrual cycles, to Google photos tagging black people as ‘gorillas’; these examples are easily rectified now, and it is argued that they are examples of accidental not purposeful discrimination. But what about when automated killing drones become a reality? Or what if Saudi Arabia adopts self-driving cars which are built to outright refuse to let women in the car alone? Or perhaps once we finally have fully digital integrated health or employment records it won’t feel like a giant leap to integrate this with everyone’s online shopping experience to monitor and control what each individual is allowed to buy and consume?
The lack of diversity in technology right now is causing inadvertent discrimination. But as technology becomes integrated into every part of our lives there is a fair chance that it will be used by one group of humans to control and exert power over all of the rest. And unless we start fighting for wider representation and diversity in the world of technology now, the governance of our entire lives will be decided by just a few.
At the same time it is also important to note that discrimination through technology is not just down to the lack of diversity in the people that create it, but also due to the lack of diversity in people that use it. Much like our politicians courting the silver voters because that’s who will secure their seat in parliament, technology companies are courting the young and affluent because that’s who will secure them profits. Technology is fast becoming the platform for governing our society, we must recognise this even if the State does not, and be on the front foot in tackling digital exclusion and inequalities.
We are on the brink of the fourth industrial revolution, a bunch of middle-aged white men have remarked at the World Economic Forum, and we all have an opportunity to shape technology to help create a society we want to live in. But we must grasp that opportunity now before it is too late. Now is our chance to make sure that we use technology to strive for a utopian future; where discrimination is non-existent, where our shared economy is indeed shared, and where our world is governed democratically and fairly.
