Harms Of Technology Fixes - Pattern library of Humane Technology

[aschrijver]

The Humane Tech Community is about finding the positive way forward in a world of problems that come with our modern technology. While it is logical the CHT started to investigate harms of technology, and thus create The Ledger of Harms, it would be better if it focused on harms and their solutions.

The idea:

• Create the Harms of Technology Fixes project - a pattern library - also simply called Hotfix

Create a crowdsourced library of _Harm Mitigation Patterns_with the acronym 'HOTFIX' (which in IT terms means something that needed to be urgently fixed, and is thus quite appropriate).

The Hotfix Library of Humane Technology

Available as a website at hotfix.humanetech.community (part of the community website)

The idea of this library is very similar to Design Patterns used e.g. in programming, where the patterns form an integral Pattern Language and may also contain Anti-Patterns.

Each pattern in the library addresses an individual harm caused by technology and alleviated or solved by humane technology best-practices. The table of contents of the library is divided into sections representing the categories of humane technology, or focus areas, i.e. 'Mental health', 'Relationships', 'Democracy', etc.

The Hotfix Library can be:

• Published as a book
• Summarized as a brochure
• Represented as a website
• Maintained as a ledger

The information model of the library (indicative, requires careful thought):

• Table of Contents
  • Focus area [link]
    • Harm [pattern link]
    • Harm [pattern link]
  • Focus area [section link]
    • Harm [pattern link]

.

• Focus area
  • Intro
  • Pattern
  • Pattern
  • Mini-pattern
  • Anti-pattern
  • etcetera..

.

• Harm (mitigation pattern)
  • Summary
  • Description
  • Caused by
  • Affects
  • Impact
  • Symptoms
  • Related harms
  • Solutions
  • Elaboration
  • Evidence
  • Further reading

Implementation options

(technical stuff below)

This is how I would implement (but other options might be evaluated):

• The whole library project resides in two Github repositories:
  • One for all technical code, web application, publishing
  • One for only the content, targeted to non-technical users
• The technical repository uses:
  • A static site generator to automatically update the site when content changes
  • (optional) CMS facilities to render input forms for easy content editing
  • Code for the website that is invoked by the static site generator
• The content repository contains:
  • Content as simple Markdown documents placed in folder hierarchy representing site structure
  • README files and/or wiki detailing editing, review and maintenance of content for end-users
  • Pattern template in Markdown, excluding Evidence and Further reading sections
  • Separate template for submitting Evidence and Further reading entries

Technology-wise it uses:

• ReactJS for the website code
• GatsbyJS for the static site generator
• TravisCI for automated publishing
• Github Pages for hosting the generated html
• Typescript as the web programming language