<nettime> The Copenhagen Letter

[nettime's avid pamphleteer <nettime@kein.org>]

To everyone who shapes technology today

http://copenhagenletter.org/

We live in a world where technology is consuming society, ethics, and
our core existence.

It is time to take responsibility for the world we are creating. Time to
put humans before business. Time to replace the empty rhetoric of
“building a better world” with a commitment to real action. It is time
to organize, and to hold each other accountable.

Tech is not above us. It should be governed by all of us, by our
democratic institutions. It should play by the rules of our societies.
It should serve our needs, both individual and collective, as much as
our wants.

Progress is more than innovation. We are builders at heart. Let us
create a new Renaissance. We will open and nourish honest public
conversation about the power of technology. We are ready to serve our
societies. We will apply the means at our disposal to move our societies
and their institutions forward.

Let us build from trust. Let us build for true transparency. We need
digital citizens, not mere consumers. We all depend on transparency to
understand how technology shapes us, which data we share, and who has
access to it. Treating each other as commodities from which to extract
maximum economic value is bad, not only for society as a complex,
interconnected whole but for each and every one of us.

Design open to scrutiny. We must encourage a continuous, public, and
critical reflection on our definition of success as it defines how we
build and design for others. We must seek to design with those for whom
we are designing. We will not tolerate design for addiction, deception,
or control. We must design tools that we would love our loved ones to
use. We must question our intent and listen to our hearts.

Let us move from human-centered design to humanity-centered design.
We are a community that exerts great influence. We must protect and
nurture the potential to do good with it. We must do this with attention
to inequality, with humility, and with love. In the end, our reward will
be to know that we have done everything in our power to leave our garden
patch a little greener than we found it.

We who have signed this letter will hold ourselves and each other
accountable for putting these ideas into practice. That is our commitment.

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