Why we need Technology Justice

From the Stone Age to the Steam Age; from the invention of the printing press to the age of the internet, human development has gone hand-in-hand with technological change. Advances in technology enable people to achieve well-being with less effort, or at lower cost and with fewer resources. Innovation is essential for people to make more effective use of resources and to respond to social, economic and environmental changes.

Technology for whom?

Many of the technologies we need to achieve for what we consider today to be a basic standard of living have been around for a long time. The Romans had piped water supplies whilst Edison introduced the incandescent light bulb 135 years ago. So it’s somewhat strange that today, 1.2 billion people are still in the dark, with no access to electricity and 1 billion still lack a safe water supply. Clearly we have a problem ensuring well-established technologies are made available to all.

Looked at from this angle, the world’s efforts at technology innovation seem misplaced too. A Global Health Forum report[1], for example, estimates that only about 5 per cent of the world’s resources for health research are applied to the health problems of low and middle income countries. Certainly, the bulk of global investment in technology research and development does not go into feeding nearly one billion malnourished people, or on how to bring energy and water services to those who still have to do without them. As Bill Gates once said, it’s a strange world that spends more on developing a cure for male baldness than on finding a vaccine for malaria.

In short, today’s world exists in a state of technological injustice as innovation overwhelmingly favours what rich and powerful consumers in the developed world want over the needs of the poor in the developing world. As the impacts of climate change are starting to show, it also overwhelmingly favours the desires of the current population over future generations.

Technology Justice

Humanity now faces a huge challenge. We have to rethink the way we develop and use technology so that it complies with the principle of "technological justice" — namely, the right of people to have access to technologies that assist them in leading the kind of life they value so long as that does not compromise the ability of others now and in the future to do the same.
 
The concept of technological justice requires a change in the way we support technological innovation, both in the developed and in the developing world, to ensure it delivers social value and is environmentally sustainable. To bring it about we need to see:

·  more involvement of all people (but especially those who are most marginalised) in national debates around science and technology policy

·  different approaches to setting national science and technology policies

·  new state research funding budgets, tax regimes and international trade agreements and regulations.

·  collaboration and open-source approaches to research and development

·  prioritisation of open-source information over processes based on competition and the capture of intellectual property rights, particularly where it is clear the former will provide greater social and environmental benefits.

It is only by doing this that we will be able to harness the power of existing indigenous knowledge, including that which cannot be commoditized and is undervalued by the current system.

Equally, it is only by doing this that we will develop systems of innovation that can deliver new and powerful science-based technology solutions to some of the major problems the world now faces.

[1] www.globalforumhealth.org/about/1090-gap/