The Hunterian Museum of Surgical History in London has a plaque near the entrance which reads, “The museum contains thousands of specimens of human remains, gathered before modern standards of consent were established. We recognize the debt owed to those people - named and unnamed - who in life and death have helped to advance medical knowledge.”
In future years, will people working in the digital industries look back at the ethical deficit of their forebears with the same discomfort? Our naive understanding of privacy, our ambivalence about the safety of vulnerable users, our contempt for those excluded from society by their own lack of technical savvy?
