Racist Navigators

I remember hearing this story on NPR when it first aired and I've been meaning to post it here since then... if you've followed this blog at all, it should come as no surprise that it has taken me over four months to comment on it. The story itself isn't particularly interesting to me, but I suppose that is why I feel the need to comment on it. As usual, don't expect any clear lines of thought or consistent argumentation... Anyway. To begin: 

Microsoft is under fire this week over a patent it was granted that's been dubbed the "avoid ghetto" feature for GPS devices. The new feature is meant to help pedestrians avoid unsafe neighborhoods, bad weather and difficult terrain by taking information from maps, weather reports, crime statistics and demographics, and creating directions that, according to the patent, take "the user through neighborhoods with violent crime statistics below a certain threshold."

The general uproar surrounding this application is saturated with charges of racism. But surely this is the kind of application we can expect since the general orientation of technology is to reduce friction, right?


Interestingly, there has been a lot written about the ethic of expediency within technical rhetoric (particularly concerning Nazi Germany - suffice it to say there are ethical ways to reduce friction with which Hitler was surprisingly unconcerned). The reason I mention this is because while I expect technology to serve a friction-reducing function, I am not advocating an unethical sprint down the slippery slope. That said...


Let's remember the technology we're talking about here. If any one gadget can be held aloft as a friction-reducing tool, it is a GPS. I can even decide what kind of friction I want to get rid of (e.g., traffic, tolls, highways, highly policed areas, distant/expensive gas stations, poorly reviewed restaurants, and so on). Microsoft is adding one more option to the ever-growing list of possible friction-causing phenomena (in this case the friction would be an increased risk of being harassed, robbed, or worse). Here is the fuller context of what the article quotes from the Microsoft patent:

The following is an illustrative example of operation of the system 100 according to an aspect of the subject specification. Historically, at 5 PM, a user can walk from his office to his home on weekdays; the gather component 102 can learn this history and obtain information related to the walk (e.g., paths previously taken by a user, available paths, user experiences upon the paths, etc.). For instance, the gather component 102 can extract information from a schedule that the user is to attend his daughter's recital in several hours, so it is likely he wants a quickest path. The generation component 104 can analyze the information and construct a direction set that allows the user to take paths that take him to his home in a quickest amount of time while keeping the user relatively safe (e.g., taking the user through neighborhoods with violent crime statistics below a certain threshold).

The NPR story mentions other controversial applications including ASBOrometer which measures anti-social behavior near your location (if you are in England or Wales). The answer to this apparently depressing and discriminatory application is the Awesometer which "uses a wide variety of open data sources to find the number of positive actions, institutions and events near the current location." 


The even-slightly-discerning reader will probably notice that these applications are functionally identical. By pointing out areas where positive actions or events happen, you are establishing borders around areas where those actions don't happen. The only difference is the rhetorical thrust of an applications primary function. Interestingly, though the coverage of the application is framing the discussion in terms of avoidance (thus constructing a negative primary function), the patent largely frames things positively (as you can see in the section of the patent quoted above). 


Remember who is writing this post. I'm a fan of friction generally. We need it. But I'm not sure that this particular advance deserves all the uproar it received... it seems a "natural" evolution in an omnipresent technology that already discriminates so much. My underlying point in this discussion is to suggest some level of hypocrisy among those who would take an overly optimistic view of technology (while remaining ignorant of its friction-reducing function and all that that implies), and then call foul when the orientation of technology is realized. This ignorance is highlighted by rhetorical shifts between positive and negative functions (as I mentioned above), and popular reactions to those framings. At the end of the day, I don't think Microsoft's problem was reinforced racism, but poorly constructed rhetoric. 






This is not to say that technology can't be racist....