[Paper Review] Peril v. Promise: IoT and the Ethical Imaginaries

Funda Ustek‐Spilda, Alison Powell+2 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|Jun 25, 2019

Ethics and Social Impacts of AI9 references4 citations

TL;DR

This paper examines the ethical challenges faced by IoT developers in Europe through ethnographic fieldwork in London, Amsterdam, Barcelona, and Belgrade. It argues that top-down ethical frameworks and solutionist approaches fail to address the situated realities of developers, advocating instead for context-sensitive, practice-based ethical imaginaries that move beyond the peril-vs.-promise dichotomy in IoT design and deployment.

ABSTRACT

The future scenarios often associated with Internet of Things (IoT) oscillate between the peril of IoT for the future of humanity and the promises for an ever-connected and efficient future. Such a dichotomous positioning creates problems not only for expanding the field of application of the technology, but also ensuring ethical and responsible design and production. As part of VirtEU (Values and Ethics in Innovation for Responsible Technology in Europe) (EU Horizon 2020 FP7), we have conducted ethnographic research into the main hubs of IoT in Europe, such as London, Amsterdam, Barcelona and Belgrade, with developers and designers of IoT to identify the challenges they face in their day-to-day work. In this paper, we focus on the IoT and the ethical imaginaries explore the practical challenges IoT developers face when they are designing, producing and marketing IoT technologies. We argue that top-down ethical frameworks that overlook the situated capabilities of developers or the solutionist approaches that treat ethical issues as technical problems are unlikely to provide an alternative to the dichotomous imaginary for the future.

Motivation & Objective

• To investigate how IoT developers and designers in major European tech hubs navigate ethical challenges in their daily work.
• To challenge the dominant dichotomy between 'peril' and 'promise' in IoT discourse, which oversimplifies complex ethical trade-offs.
• To critique top-down ethical frameworks that ignore the situated, practical realities of developers' work environments.
• To propose an alternative approach to ethical design that emerges from the lived experiences and situated capabilities of developers.
• To contribute to responsible innovation by grounding ethics in the actual practices of IoT development rather than abstract principles.

Proposed method

• Conducted ethnographic fieldwork in four European IoT innovation hubs: London, Amsterdam, Barcelona, and Belgrade.
• Engaged with developers and designers through in-depth interviews and observations of their daily design and production processes.
• Analyzed narratives and practices to identify how ethical concerns are understood, negotiated, and acted upon in real-world development contexts.
• Explored the tension between grand visions of IoT as either utopian or dystopian and the pragmatic, situated ethics emerging in practice.
• Used critical discourse analysis to deconstruct the 'peril vs. promise' binary and reveal its limitations in guiding ethical innovation.
• Proposed a shift from prescriptive ethical frameworks to an ethics grounded in the situated, embodied, and collaborative practices of developers.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 How do IoT developers in Europe understand and negotiate ethical issues in their day-to-day design and production processes?
• RQ2 In what ways does the dominant 'peril vs. promise' narrative constrain ethical decision-making in IoT development?
• RQ3 Why do top-down ethical frameworks fail to support responsible innovation in the context of real-world IoT development?
• RQ4 What kind of ethical imaginaries emerge from the situated practices of IoT developers, and how do they differ from institutionalized ethical models?
• RQ5 How can ethical design in IoT be reimagined to reflect the practical, collaborative, and context-sensitive realities of developers?

Key findings

• Developers frequently encounter ethical dilemmas related to privacy, surveillance, and data governance, but these are rarely framed in abstract terms.
• The 'peril vs. promise' narrative dominates public and policy discourse, but it does not reflect the nuanced, pragmatic ethics developers enact daily.
• Top-down ethical frameworks are perceived as disconnected from the realities of development work, leading to disengagement or token compliance.
• Ethical decisions are often made through informal, collaborative, and context-specific practices rather than adherence to formal codes.
• Developers develop localized ethical imaginaries through team dynamics, project constraints, and stakeholder interactions, which are overlooked by institutional models.
• There is a clear need for ethical frameworks that emerge from and support the situated, collaborative, and iterative nature of IoT development.