At a fundamental level, technology is an extension of us. It is human, it is nature. It doesn't make sense to have binaries between what is natural and what is… well, binary. Recent innovations in computing make the lines between biological and digital feel even more fuzzy. We're surrounded with neural networks, language models that can emulate our way of communicating, generative images that feel both natural and otherworldly, and quantum computing, which even re-thinks the binary itself.
At the same time, technology is neither inherently neutral nor good. I am not sure "good" can be employed without eventually becoming weaponized, and neutrality has never been real. Even time is relative.
Most of digital technology's trajectory is interconnected with money, another human invention that isn't inherently constructive or destructive. The very beginnings of written language were about accounting, and digital technology has been largely centred on the database, something that emerged from accounting that has many assumptions baked in from its very model. (Discrete objects, for example). Biology does not work in a database framework.
Instead of trying to evaluate good or bad, or right or wrong, or even truth or lies, we might get more benefit from thinking in a model of right relation.
As our ancestors tended their land and one another with tools imbued with lore and shared meaning, we might imagine our relationship with the digital tools we build in a similar way. Know that this concept could easily be taken in directions that are probably very far from where I am trying to go (especially if settlers like myself pretend that we have embodied understandings of indigenous practice), but if you'll humour me, I would like to explore a little bit of what being in right relation as a technology builder might look like.
Right relation as a PM
If I wish to be in right relation, I need to take responsibility for how my actions affect my family, my community, and the land. So I might ask these questions:
How does my work come from listening? How much of my time do I spend listening? Listening to other people, to my environment, and to whatever shows up when I begin to get quiet enough to hear?
We overindex on ideas and execution in tech, and underindex on listening and on taking the kinds of breaks our brains need for creativity to emerge. Even just listening to the other people we work with is a start Even just pausing to listen to what is alive in ourselves can help to make what we produce more humane.
How am I incorporating regular input from people with other perspectives than mine, especially those who may be affected by the product I am making?
In addition to listening, being in right relation has to do with collaboration. We can imagine ourselves in collaboration with people who use our products, with the resources necessary to make our products, and with the people affected by what we're building. How can we learn what matters to all the stakeholders in the ecosystem our product is a part of? How can we think of design not as a way for individual visions to be fulfilled, but as a way of understanding what context our products will live in and how they might support the needs of people?
What resources are necessary for my product to exist? How does my relationship with those resources affect other beings and the environment? What resources am I using that I regard as free but come at a cost to others? How might I account for my resource usage?
If we truly want to be in right relation, we have to think about how many things we are doing that have invisible costs that we may not bear ourselves. Corporate approaches typically depend on offloading as much responsibility as possible. Being in right relation means accepting our responsibility, for what we use and for what we leave in our wake.
How is an appropriate value exchange established? How can we use money as a collaboration? How are people involved in an economic relationship in alignment with our common goals?
Money is much more than numbers in a bank account or revenue to break out into various startup metrics. We use money to ensure our team has enough to meet their needs, to work with investors in ways that are beneficial to the company's health in the long term, to collaborate with funders so we're not inadvertantly perpetuating grift or using the idea of doing good in service of behaviours or effects that are fundamentally enmeshed with the very problems we're trying to solve. We are not taking actions that lead to asymmetrical value for one set of people.
If we are working at a nonprofit or social impact company, we don't leave the people who use our products and services without skin in the game, where we're paternalistically providing without any obligation to work with our clients and communities for our own survival. We're not in right relation if we're "serving" or "helping" rather than seeing our mutual gain as a goal that requires agreement with our partners.
How do we grow sustainably so that we are not putting aside relational principles or seduced by extractive models?
Many founders or PMs do not set out to be exploitive, but there's a pressure to grow quickly because it will either lead to more investment or is demanded by existing investors. Some things do have the potential to become big and those things attract people who believe they can make money from them. To be in right relation, we have to watch out for situations in which making money supercedes creating value, and we can evaluate value creation not just for investors, but for the people we work with and the people who use our products and services- and even for our society.
How do we prioritise the tending and maintenance of our products?
Many startups and nonprofits are focused on the beginnings of things without considering the impact of their long term sustainability. When we create things that other people depend on, we can keep an eye on technical or UX debt and make sure we're allocating enough resources to address them. We can keep our products working well, and continue to care for people who use what we are providing.
How do we let go of and compost aspects of our product or process that are not providing value or are harmful?
When parts of what we have built no longer have value to our business or to the people who use our products, we can remove them. We can prune things that are not serving our collective good. Sometimes, we have to mourn the loss of things that worked for us in the past, but are no longer aligned.
How can we take ownership of the impacts of our products, including energy use, need for attention, taking people out of their own relational spaces, or potentially causing other kinds of harms indirectly?
Right relation is fundamentally about recognizing our interdependence. We might take advantage of people thinking we are justified or inculpable, but in the long run, we will feel the impacts of our profligacy. This is true when we abandon anyone in the process, customers, collaborators, and funders alike. It's also easy to ignore our impact when we don't pay the literal cost, but when what we do leads to negative consequences, we can take action to stop future harm and to restore what we've done as best we can.
Being in right relation, in other words, is not about putting other people above us. Nor is it about guilt or self-blame. It's about recognising that whatever we want for ourselves isn't 'right' unless we can want it for everyone, and it isn't 'right' if it relies on other people specifically not having what we want for ourselves in the process.
There are no solutions here, only questions. I am curious what asking them, individually and collectively, could help us uncover about our approach to technology as we negotiate the problems we face in the future.