Users have needs where technology has goals. Technology is good at what it is designed for, and we who design technology should be familiar with the role that technology plays. If this is not the case, a designer may stumble upon the idea that “technology is the solution” or “technology is positive”, when in reality this is not true. We need to make it positive and try to circumvent the technology and hopefully prevent it from being used for the worse. If we design for people (yes, police are people), then we could end up with solutions that have less technology compared to more and allow for very different solutions than, say, a surveillance camera system. Kranzberg`s laws of technology describe nothing. Personal security cameras as a technology are of course an option, and technology has passed an inflection point where implementing body cameras is cheap and reliable enough to scale from department to department. The reality is that as technology becomes cheaper and faster, it becomes harder and harder not to see it as a solution. I believe there are many solutions that could improve the work of a police officer, but as long as technology is considered “neutral”, these possibilities are very likely to be left out. The tool even if it is not used in non-neutral. A tool is operated by a human and the role they play together gives that tool a purpose.

Physical technical aids such as a screwdriver, camera or weapon can be used or misused as intended. Like in an episode of “Murder She Wrote”, in which a screwdriver is trained as a weapon. Unfortunately, people abuse tools more often than the intended designer. Like screwdrivers used as crime weapons or police cameras used to obstruct justice, the technology is not neutral because human operators are not neutral. Therefore, today we need to look at the potential impact of upcoming technologies such as facial recognition and machine learning in the same way. The same technology that can be used to track a pandemic can also be used by the state to increase surveillance of its citizens. Melvin Kranzberg was a professor of technology history at the Georgia Institute of Technology and founding editor of Technology and Culture. In 1985, he delivered the president`s speech at the annual meeting of the Gesellschaft für Technikgeschichte, in which he explained what were already known as Kranzberg`s laws – “a series of truisms,” according to Kranzberg, “resulting from many years of immersion in the study of the development of technology and its interactions with sociocultural change.” Melvin Kranzberg (November 22, 191†7 – December 6, 1995) was an American historian and professor of history at Case Western Reserve University from 1952 to 1971. From 1972 to 1988, he was the Callaway Professor of History of Technology at Georgia Tech. Now, we can only hope that police systems and designers who implement technology heed my warning, because I don`t want to experience an Orwellian dystopia, or any other designer who has the power to swim against the tide of technology, or those who believe we can treat technology as a neutral force. According to Melvin Kranzberg and his laws of technology, the first states its fundamental point is that the frequent effects of technology go far beyond its original purpose. In addition, the question of what impact the technology will have differs depending on the context in which it is introduced.

Many negative consequences arise when seemingly harmless technologies are used on a large scale. Technology acts as a catalyst and if the police as an institution is transformed into a nanny state, how do you think that will affect the way they treat their citizens? Based on novels like George Orwell`s 1984 novel, the results are not so rosy. This makes me think that those involved in making the multi-billion dollar body camera systems should re-read this novel, or at least not believe that a body camera is neutral because, as we discussed, the technology is NOT neutral! Fourth Law: While technology can be a major element in many public affairs, non-technical factors take precedence over technology policy decisions.