As of late, modern tech has been making a bad habit of letting people down.
Twitter has been used as a platform for Nazis, Facebook has been embroiled in controversy with Cambridge Analytica, and Instagram is reportedly having damaging effects on young people’s mental health.
“It feels as though we’re in a period of time, for the last decade or so, where we haven’t really been considering the unintended consequences of what we’ve been building,” says Martha Lane Fox, Baroness of Soho, founder and executive chair of the think tank doteveryone.
Fox is a self-described “dot com dinosaur”, famed both for co-founding lastminute.com during the UK internet boom of the late 1990s and for becoming the youngest female member of the House of Lords in 2013. She currently sits on multiple boards – including Twitter’s – and previously served on the board of Channel 4.
Speaking at Unbound London 2018, Fox said: “I think you have to put responsibility at the core of what you’re doing. That means a different relationship with your user – more transparency, more openness about the business model, and more diversity.”
Doteveryone explores how technology is changing society and, according to Fox, is “trying to make responsible technology the new normal.”
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Asked whether she thought that would require regulation, Fox answered with a definitive “yes”.
“I think it needs a system change – and you need all three pieces of the puzzle,” she said.
“We as individuals need to feel wiser about technology, not overpowered by it, and that’s about teaching people about those transactions and being transparent.
“The companies themselves need to understand the consequences of their technology. Is it okay that a person at the other end of the phone doesn’t know if they’re talking to a machine? That matters to me as a human being.
“But I also do think we need regulation. I don’t think any huge industry should go unfettered.”
Fox’s comments may ruffle feathers; in the past both the technology and advertising industries have argued for self-regulation, most recently regarding government plans to halve childhood obesity by implementing further restrictions on junk food and drink advertising.
Startups in particular may suffer from stringent regulatory changes – but Fox doesn’t think that’s a good enough reason not to regulate.
“Good regulations should enable innovation”, she argues, and though she admits that effective legislation is made much more difficult by some legislators lacking understanding about technology, Fox hopes doteveryone can help raise the bar at the highest level.
