At Tethix, we’re dedicated to helping people (re)imagine and create technology that enables collective human flourishing. Based on decades of first-hand experience in product teams, we’ve specifically become passionate about bridging the ethical intent to action gap. We’ve all seen it in practice: an organisation or team has good intentions, but the incentives in tech make it increasingly hard to act on that good intent.
The usual attempts to bridge this gap lead to compliance rather than actual change: top-down mandates and abstract principles for responsible innovation that don’t translate well into practice, or regulation that tries to play whack-a-mole with an industry built on the ethos of moving fast and breaking things. We’re seeing how these unaligned actions lead to unethical behaviours, which are not only bad for business, but also lead to consumer distrust, workers’ disillusionment, and other harms.
It’s clear that a different approach is needed to cultivate a responsible tech practice. An approach to ethics that is embodied, contextual, and a living system within the organisation. With that in mind, we started envisioning ETHOS, the Ethical Tension and Health Operating System, as a tool to help organisations close the ethical intent to action gap.
Clearly, this is an ambitious goal that we will not be able to reach alone – nor would we want to do this alone without engaging in codesign with various stakeholders. But we have to start somewhere and follow our Codesign Principle to “think big and build tiny”.
So even though we have a big vision for what ETHOS needs to grow into, we are a small team with limited resources. Which means that we had to figure out how to build the tiny bit that can start the right conversations and take the first step towards our big vision. We decided to start by focusing on the embodied part of the equation and helping practitioners cultivate a daily reflective practice. The ETHOS seedling app is the beginning of this journey and is now available for you to explore at ethos.tethix.co.
To learn more, you can watch the introductory video on YouTube or keep reading for a brief outline of how we see ETHOS evolving from its current humble seedling form to a thriving tech ethics forest and ethical operating system.
ETHOS: From Seedling to a Thriving Tech Ethics Forest
As a seedling app, ETHOS now supports the creation of your ETHOS profile and collection of ETHOS intents. It is also an invitation to start nurturing your daily ETHOS practice through the My ETHOS dashboard. A place where you can reflect on your current intent, pin your people, places, practice, and ETHOS commitments, and get inspired by intents stored in your exploration backpack.
Soon, the actions you take in the ETHOS app will start transforming your ETHOS experience in subtle ways, encouraging you to develop all Elemental Ethics skills: collaboration, research, practice, and reflection.
In the next phase, you will be able to connect ETHOS to tools you use every day, such as Slack, Jira or Figma, and keep track of how your intents turn into actions. You’ll be able to plant seeds of good intentions in team ETHOS gardens. And nurture them by trying to build more responsible tech together.
Over time, ETHOS will help you bridge the ethical intent to action gap through a playful, immersive experience that trains your moral imagination. Our vision is for ETHOS to become a network of decentralized ecosystems that can scale its positive impact to different contexts.
ETHOS: An Invitation to Explore and Imagine
To grow Tethix ETHOS from its current seedling form into a thriving tech ethics forest – an embodied, contextual, living system – we’ll need your help. We invite you to explore the initial seedling app, start nurturing your daily reflective ETHOS practice, and join us in pathfinding ways forward.
And if you would like to help find the nutrients the ETHOS seedling desperately needs to grow and thrive, please get in touch and help us bring a bit of calm, mindfulness, and better intents to the tech we build.
