Shannon Vallor

“The ethical implications of these phenomena are significant on individual, local, and global scales. Our desires and consumption habits reflect the physical and emotional health of our persons and our societies. They shape the activities that bind our family and community lives; the kinds and amounts of natural resources that are extracted, used, priced, and distributed; and the type and amount of environmental waste that is produced by those activities. Not only material goods but increasingly, virtual goods, relationships, and experiences fill the ever-expanding catalog of things we are invited to desire and pursue. Online app and game developers encourage us to spend collective billions of human hours growing virtual crops in Farmville, massacring pigs with Angry Birds, or solving new puzzles in the Candy Kingdom. Advanced techniques of software design psychology magnify the addictive (the preferred software nomenclature is ‘sticky’) qualities of apps, driving users to make more and more in-app purchases, share our monetizable information or contacts, or just keep playing into the wee hours of the night to reach whatever surprises await us on the next game level.”
― Shannon Vallor, Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting

“The challenge we face today is not a moral dilemma; it is rather a moral imperative, long overdue in recognition, to collectively cultivate the technomoral virtues needed to confront… emerging technosocial challenges wisely and well.”
― Shannon Vallor, Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting