A new social contract for technology

Abstract The tides of public sentiment in the United States have turned squarely against Silicon Valley's leading internet firms. Long‐running Congressional inquiries; employee‐led backlashes and news leaks; expert analyses that have uncovered deep‐rooted social concerns; and aggressive journalistic inquiry—these and other actions have pushed the executives of America's most successful technology firms under the public microscope. Around the world, there is clear nonpartisan concern about the unaccountable ways that technology companies have invaded personal privacy, threatened the viability of traditional forms of work and the economic welfare they provide to workers, and challenged the backbone of democracy and free press. There seems to be increasing consensus that the commercial internet has become a privately controlled public sphere in which citizens are exposed to a multitude of perspectives all on the same “playing field.” This paper's contribution is to argue for the need of a “social contract” for technology—a set of principles that technology corporations and states must adhere to so as to ensure that we overcome the zero‐sum path we are headed to today.