Meeting 1 Notes

Co-ordinator = Pete Barnsley

PARTICIPANTS

• The Diagram below is trying to say that the people have values and also develop values. These values may emerge in the context of the use and invention of technologies. A person, therefore, may be involved in value and technology cycles. Certain values may affect the invention of new technologies and the use of new technologies may enable the emergence of new values. There is a circular relationship here.
• These three aspects implied by the diagram below: processes, technology and values are mediated by people. Desirability is the context by which people add value within technology operating in a process.

Figure 1
Technology, Values and Processes

• If you have a core value of protecting privacy, there comes the role of ICTs. Values of sharing and openness of privacy is part of a driving process by which we select technologies.
• This diagram could not only be used as a social explanatory device but also as a designing device. In a sense, if we would like to modify or alter a particular value of a community it is possible to think of the introduction of a particular technology that could be used to promote this change. This is connected to the point of desirability. Can we promote a change in values through ICT?
• Notice that criteria to establish desirability of ICTs are dependent upon values. Are values such as sharing, openness and privacy part of how we shape goals for ICT?
• Do we need a theory of values to make any progress in our topic of discussion? Is it enough the understanding provided by common sense?
• In the picture there are three elements, and it is showed how they relate to the priority systems or values regarding technology. But how do we relate these (technologies, values and processes) to each other? How do technologies, values and processes relate to each other in terms of priorities? How do they relate in terms of stability?
• The stability of values (the 'lock' provided by value systems) may determine their strength/priority.
• When we move from individual's values to the values of a collection of people we always will have a mix, therefore tradeoffs are inevitable and mostly we may have a shift of dominance from some values to others.
• Values emerge from the way we relate to each other and that relationship may be mediated by technology.
• Notice that our values, when we are child, have nothing to do with technology but with the early social conversation process we recurrently engage on and our parents (or closed relatives) have a strong influence in those early (formative) years. Nowadays, child is influenced from early years by using Internet. In this sense technology may put at risk these early (core) values. Early values like fairness and privacy, along with their relative importance, will be determined by our nurturing.
• Can we separate values from technology? What about the values implied by the content and context of videos, movies, games and other pieces of technology so closely related to our lives now?

CRITICS

• It seems that you need to decide what values are and whether values can change or not. Notice that while some values are context-dependent others are less context-dependent and, therefore, the question of whether they can change depend on that sensitivity to context.
• You need also to consider stability and change because whereas some values can take a long time to change some others may change much more rapidly. 
• You could discuss the naturalist view of "democracy as a handcraft". Here there are some essential values that appears from the mother-child relationship; the values derived from a maternity-type relationship.
• Other point is related to the media. Multinationals, for instance, by advertising their products through mass media have a great impact in the development of some social values.
• Internet and its anonymity may also have an impact on the development of values. 
• Regarding desirability you should ask if stability is always desirable.

PARTICIPANTS

• So far we have been talking about individual and social values but what about corporate values? For a long-term survival, companies need to achieve a sort of stability that implies the development of certain values. On the other hand, what companies do may have a tremendous impact on societal values. So this has to be an issue for our discussion. 
• Stability means that the three or four domains implied by the diagram above are comfortable with each other. However, it is quite common to have a problem of conflicting stabilities within society that arises from conflicting values. That could be a sort of a trap, people could get locked in their own values and they may become a blind spot for them. Is in that cases stability desirable?
• We may have different stabilities co-existing at the same time, in other words, different organisations that are viable by themselves but holding conflicting values. For example the drug dealers conform very viable organisations in their operation, but of course their values are in conflict with those of the society they exist and benefits from. How can we address this issue? Perhaps we need something at the Meta level to resolve this clash of values.
• It seems that we need to study values and define a hierarchy of values. One metaphor we could use is that of empty containers that are filled out through our lives. The question here could be how ICT make it possible to fill them and so to define the values.
• I think that benefits from ICTs won't occur unless values are clearly understood and people's motivations are tapped.
• Purpose is always based upon implicit values; do we really need to define them?
• ICT can enable people to reflect on and change their values.
• Do we need to have a theory of values for the design and launch of ICTs? Are they an entity in the designing process?
• Notice that values come up whenever there is a selection or choice to be made. I think we have to distinguish between espoused values and values in use. The latter are apparent whenever we do a choice in a particular situation. Very often there is a tremendous divergence between these two stances of values. But can we recognise stability in the choices that we make? Who optimises these choices?