On ethical technology and generative design

We call Little Owl an ethical tech design and venture studio. So of course, we are sometimes asked what that means; and we also ask ourselves.

It’s not a simple question, but it’s worth answering. As designers and technologists we have the power to reshape the world by changing how products, services and systems work, and by manifesting new ideas. That is a serious responsibility.

For us it comes down to one principle: we choose to be generative, not extractive.

That is: we could choose to work in an extractive way, to gather up value from one place or one group of people and deliver it to another place or group. It is possible for extraction to be done without great harm, or for the harm of extraction to be offset; but it is difficult. In this mode it is far simpler (and generally more profitable) to seek riches and damn the externalities. Business as usual, the entire modern capitalist system, has been long based on deploying any methods of extraction including enslavement and genocide. Blood diamonds. Fossil fuels. Adtech and surveillance capitalism. Each of these business models exploits a human weakness to the cost of society, and survives only because they find loopholes to avoid paying those costs themselves.

Or we can work in a generative way. Make art and music. Build new worker-owned cooperatives. Bring together partnerships to collaborate on just solutions to the climate emergency. Create new products and services that bring joy into the world and replace wasteful and exploitative incumbents, generating an awareness and consciousness of the impact of our actions on the planet and others. Design and advocate for and with under-served communities, to give people the tools to invent their own futures.

And we can do all of this while empowering ourselves, the people we work with, and the communities around us; generating new value and recognising our externalities, including the stolen resources of the unceded lands on which we work. That’s our aim, and it’s what we mean by ethical technology and generative design.