Your selected entity benefits a discernible population, or, a social group (which could be represented in our language of social configurations — social order, technosocial routines and their technology, and defining conditions). In other words, your selected entity will not simply offer a good product into a general market … since in this case the consumers may bear no relation to one another beyond having also bought the product. In order to examine the values infrastructure that connects the social enterprise to those benefiting, and to comment on the ethical qualities, the entity that is benefited needs to be a discernible social group.
[2] Describe the technology and how it is deployed into practice (i.e.,what it does, and how it enters into relevant technosocial routines). Also describe any effects on the social configuration that benefits from the technology, such as changes in influence or power among some actors (i.e., change in the social order).
[3] Analyze the underlying values infrastructure – values of the selected enterprise or NGO, and of the receiving entity. Your goal is to show how the values of these two relate to (fit with) one another. To do this, show how the technology as it is employed is responsible for some new conditions in the world. These conditions serve values you name of the social enterprise, and the conditions also serve values you name of the entity that is benefited. At times to achieve this integration of values it will be necessary to employ the technology in a particular way — i.e., the conditions that create shared value require more than just the typical use of the technology. If this is the case you should explain this.
[4] Which of the values of the social enterprise would you say are “built into” the technology? Here, you are making a link between something your benefiting entity cares about, and specific features of the technology, or, necessary aspects of the use of the technology. At the least it may be that the benefiting entity sees something as a problem, and the technology (used properly) addresses the problem. Or, there may be a stronger influence on design — as when there are multiple design alternatives, and the actual ‘shape’ of the technology reflects that a particular value of the social enterprise legislated which of the alternatives would be taken.
[5] Evaluate the overall system ethically – contrast the benefited entity’s conditions pre- versus post-technology insertion, and show how at least one of the 12 ethical qualities (Vallor’s “technomoral virtues” that we discussed in class and that are found in the Vallor reading) is manifest in (is a feature of) the change that has been made.
[6] How do you imagine these ideas – values infrastructure, value-laden technology, and ethics – will inform your future career?