Technology and the Disassociation of Responsibility

One of the greatest gifts that the internet gives us is the power to impact people around the globe with minimal effort. Anyone can read this post and take this information and do with it what they please. This technology has given opportunities to many that simply weren't there before. We are living in the most prosperous period in human history despite what the skeptics and media may suggest otherwise. But with this ability to impact people more easily, we need recognize the ethical consequences of strangers and we can no longer view these people as invisible in relations to ourselves. The choices we make have a greater impact on everyone whether we like it or not, as our presence becomes more global through technology.

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Technology: A Weapon of Increasing Destruction

In 1903, two brothers from Dayton, Ohio successfully created one of the most devastating technologies in the entire world. This technology was the airplane. With airplanes, one can deliver goods and supplies across large distances in short periods of time. By the time the second world war approached, we had mastered creating vehicles that could travel over large bodies of water and deliver larger and heavier amounts of cargo. This included the two atomic bombs that were dropped over Japan that lead to the end of the war. But certainly Wilbur and Orville did not intend to use flight to kill thousands of innocent civilians. It was somebody else. Someone who found other uses for this technology.

But why drop these bombs. Well, we can thank cost-benefit analysis, the telephone, cars, strategy, and government for these decisions. All of these technologies certainly helped in dropping the bomb. The technology completed the objective. The United State achieved total surrender. But the United States was also responsible for the deaths of thousands of Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But these were simply costs that never exceeded the perceived benefits.

The United States invaded the country of Iraq in 2003 on the basis of finding weapons of mass destruction. It turns out that the intel had vastly overestimated the threat that Iraq posed. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are now dead. But a majority of US citizens felt the move was justified and so did Congress. 9/11 was still fresh in the minds of all and we the people were still very sensitive to any possible threats. But these people are responsible for the Iraq War. So is their government. But the average American adult could care less about the devastation they are responsible for, for they are several technological layers away.

You see, the only connection most US citizens have with their government comes every two to four years in a voting booth. This technology makes the process relatively harmless, but minimizes the actual impact of the decision that we are making. A voter has the power to start wars and destroy lives, but nowadays, they don't have to carry a gun to do it.

Disassociation of Responsibility: I Can't Hurt Anyone I Can't See

I can't imagine killing a person with my own hands. In that moment taking a human who was moving and breathing and transforming them into a lifeless corpse seems unfathomable. I'm responsible for the death of a human being. I'm responsible for the end of their existence. Direct interactions always make an impact on us because we have the full experience of them, and our actions are completely transparent. We perform the action, we see the consequence.

But let's move out a little further in the future. A cyberbully makes some comments on the internet. They might feel happy, the sense of power and authority with their social power play. They can't see the reaction of the person on the other end. They may get a response, but they can't see their victim's face and hear their victim's cries. This technology has created a disassociation of responsibility. An action without an immediate consequence. And often times any consequence down the road is softened or reduced, meaning that we can take more reckless actions and feel less of the consequence down the road.

Now back to voting. Democracy was created in ancient Greece. This technology allowed everyone a voice in their decisions. This gave people more responsibility as well as more power. People could now make choices that affected other people. This idea was modified into the Representative Democracy during the Enlightenment and implemented in America as well as other European countries to follow. People now chose people to make decisions. They still had indirect influence on the government, but still had a responsibility to pick people who could make the correct decisions. Today, people are responsible for what their government does for them, as much as they may disagree or argue against it. But the people aren't feeling the consequences of their decisions, as they have several layers of technology in the form of government and weaponry that disassociate them from their victims. In the many cases, these are people who are poor and have little means of defending themselves and are themselves not responsible for the position they are in. In the case of the Iraq War, these were the civilian Iraqis.

TLDR: Technology delays the consequence of actions as people no longer directly interact with their victims. Thus, the natural responsibility we may feel prior to taking those actions is reduced, because we never truly experience consequences.