Developers, Stay Away from Corporations that Want You to Lie for Them

Software developers and designers are social beings, shaping the world around us. Holding the power of creation in our hands and at our fingertips. The advertising model has bestowed both enormous wealth and enormous social ill. Creators are faced with the paradox of altruism and economic security. A creator's ethical responsibility is to think about these questions. The online culture creators have constructed reinforces the value judgment that I am only as good as what I create. The creative life may be exhausting, but never unfulfilling. The culture of creation-as-performance makes it hard to know where one's limits are because there are no limits to what we can create. What future do creators want?

This is an old problem that has persisted for centuries, spawning countless reactionary movements. The roots of the present social responsibility movement go back at least to 1906 with Upton Sinclair's novel "The Jungle". It was his intention in writing this book as a campaign against unsafe food processing practices; he described meat industry practices such as disgusting working conditions, unsanitary factory floors where animals were slaughtered on-site, and bacteria-laden equipment used throughout production lines. His work led directly to the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act which mandated federal inspections of processed foods intended for interstate commerce.

Behind this food processing plant are engineers, designers, creators. Each made decisions that produces the conditions to which this movement and political mandate were made to oppose and correct. Consider your own work. You're a designer or a developer, and engineer, a creator. Reflect on the things you've created and evaluate your creation and social effect without judgment— only enlightenment.

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