Technological innovation will always outpace any legislation that tries to constrain it; regulating technology tends not to work. So the ESA would need a different approach, perhaps an open online forum where anyone can post their concerns, and where every company receives an aggregated “ethics” score, based on their actions. Users could file objections, rally support behind those objections, and force the hand of companies to reform gratuitous policies by threatening boycotts of products.

From a young age, engineering students could be taught to speak up for what they believe. Too many engineers remain silent, leaving decisions to “management,” and simply writing code as their told. This is the same division of ethical accountability that allowed the Manhattan Project to happen. Scientists say, “Oh, but I was only doing science,” politicians say, “Oh, but I was only using what scientists made me,” and businesspeople say, “Oh, but I was only connecting supply and demand.” When people don’t see the big picture, or when they think they’re only responsible for the thing that’s right in front of them, it’s easy for many individuals to be complicit in the creation of damaging things.

We could ask our engineers to take a Hippocratic Oath, as medical students are required to do before we call them doctors. The basic tenets of an Engineering Oath could mirror the medical ones:

To recognize your power to improve or damage lives, and to pledge not to do the latter.
To study the lessons learned in the past, and to share the lessons you learn with those who follow after.
To understand there is an art, as well as a science, to engineering, and that a simple human encounter is often more helpful than a technological intervention.
To admit sometimes to ignorance concerning the effect a choice is likely to have, and in that case, to seek the wise counsel of colleagues.
To understand that users are not only data points, but also living human beings with friends, families, and communities, and that affecting one user also means affecting the other humans in that person’s life.
To remember you are not only an engineer but also a member of a society, with obligations to your fellow human beings.

Through the software they design and introduce to the world, these engineers transform the daily routines of hundreds of millions of people. Previously, this kind of mass transformation of human behavior was the sole domain of war, famine, disease, and religion, but now it happens more quietly, through the software we use every day, which affects how we spend our time, and what we do, think, and feel.

Through their inventions, they alter the behavior of millions of people, yet very few of them realize that this is what they are doing, and even fewer consider the ethical implications of that kind of power.

At Facebook, for example, they use a term called “Serotonin”, which refers to the bonding hormone released by the brain in moments of intimacy. In design reviews, Facebook designers are asked, “Where is the serotonin in this design?” meaning, “how will this new feature release bonding hormones in the brains of our users, to keep them coming back for more?”

from the page: "...Grass openly addresses the question in Peeling the Onion. “Enough excuses,” he writes about his membership in the Waffen SS.“And nevertheless, for decades I have refused to admit to myself the word and the double letter. That which I had accepted on the basis of the stupid pride of my young years I sought to conceal after the war due to my growing shame. But the burden remained, and nobody could lift it.“During my training as tank gunner, which I endured the autumn and winter-long, there was no word of the war crimes which later came to light, but claims of ignorance cannot conceal my insight of being involved in a system which had planned, organized and carried out the destruction of millions of people. Even if I am absolved of active responsibility, there are still up to today the threadbare remnants of what is all too easily called shared responsibility. And it is certain that this must be lived with for my remaining years.”

Cranking | 43 Folders (via Instapaper)

"There is no organizational structure keeping you from being in close proximity to the people who you’d help or be helped by most."

"Since Valve is flat, people don’t join projects because they’re told to. Instead, you’ll decide what to work on after asking yourself the right questions."

"What’s interesting? What’s rewarding? What leverages my individual strengths the most?"

"…our lack of a traditional structure comes with an important responsibility. It’s up to all of us to spend effort focusing on what we think the long-term goals of the company should be."

"Nobody expects you to devote time to every opportunity that comes your way. Instead, we want you to learn how to choose the most important work to do."

"We should hire people more capable than ourselves, not less."

"We value “T-shaped” people…who are both generalists (…the top of the T) and also experts (…the vertical leg of the T). This recipe is important for success at Valve."

Transcript: http://bit.ly/HxXgl1

'Considering a husband was answerable for his wife's behavior in public and any wrongs or crimes she might commit against others, forbidding him ANY means of holding her accountable to HIM would have been an egregious imbalance of power within the institution of marriage. The law equally afforded men the right to correct the behavior of any individual for whom he was held legally answerable – children and apprentices, for instance.

Instead of "marriage is an institution to oppress women for men's benefit" therefore "husbands have authority over their wives" therefore "men are answerable for their wives since they could order those wives to do bad things", I'm going to posit a different sequence of logic based on a different primary assumption. "Marriage was an institution designed to serve children and protect women" therefore "women were entitled to the protection of their husbands" therefore "men must stand as a shield between their wives and the violence of the rest of the world, including that of the law" therefore "men must have authority over their wives." That is, if a man must be answerable for his wife in order to protect her from the consequences of even her own actions, then she should at the very least be answerable to HIM.

So I think it's reasonable to assume that in the past, a man was expected to stand as a shield between his wife and the dangers of the world, even when those dangers were posed by the legal or criminal consequences of her own actions. Does ANYONE believe it would be remotely fair to hand a man the job of bodyguard and handler, to hold him accountable not only for the safety but the behavior of his charge, and then give him no means to enforce his judgment on that charge? To say to him, "If this person is harmed, you will be held accountable for it, and if they commit a crime, you will be punished for it, but oh, by the way, they don't have to do one damn thing you say"?

Back then, when a woman married there was only one legal entity to which a she was fully answerable – her husband. A woman who beat her husband was seen as a HUGE threat to the stability of the community. Here was a woman capable of defying the socially enforced and legally endorsed norm of husbandly authority, a breaker of social and legal taboos. If such a woman – one already predisposed to ignore the rules of society – got up to malicious or harmful behavior outside the home, there was no way for the community to hold her personally accountable for her actions. That was her husband's job, and clearly he couldn't be trusted with it.

If she committed a crime, her husband might even be sent to prison for it, and if that happened, what little external constraint there'd been on her behavior – her husband's authority – would be out of the picture entirely. She would, in effect, be free to wreak havoc in the community, a socially irresponsible woman who is answerable to none.

Forcing a man to ride the donkey backwards served a couple of purposes within the community. For one, it put other men on notice, reminding them how important it was to social cohesion for them to exercise authority within their households and control misbehaving wives. Any man watching or participating in such a spectacle would be reminded just what things would be like for him if he failed the community in the same way this poor chump did. And secondly, it essentially stripped the battered man of respect and social status within the community, which was a consequence his wife – who shared in the respect and social status of her husband – could not avoid. She could not be punished directly for her behavior, but she could be punished through the public humiliation of her husband, and the decrease in her own social status that accompanied it. If the contempt of the community extended to such things as, for instance, job loss, she'd be forced to live with that consequence as well.

We've been tricked into believing the job of a husband was to be a bully rather than a bodyguard, and that "male-dominated" societies are oppressive to women because hey, when men are in charge they will always act in ways that benefit men without ever considering the wellbeing of women. We've been fooled into thinking the extra rights and freedoms men had were cookies given to them "just because they were men" rather than because women were biologically vulnerable and dependent on men, and giving men those extra rights and freedoms enabled them to do the job society expected of them – to support and protect women.'

BSR.org. May 2008.
"Companies succeed in sustainable product design, at least in the short term, by developing a more integrated design process. Rather than just focusing on acquiring new skill sets, they create new cross-functional interactions in their organizations that enable them to design and commercialize breakthrough products. Using in-depth case studies, this report offers examples of the introspective process that organizations have gone through to develop the capacity to design products more sustainably. These real-world examples illustrate how an Assess-Bridge-Create-Diffuse framework builds sustainability intelligence and life-cycle awareness into the product design process."