Motivated by essential and critical problems, my research is inter-disciplinary and has spanned many disciplines, including computer science, cognitive science, education, anthropology, philosophy, sociology and religious studies. Some emerging approaches to solutions are intimated below through a question and answer format.
Q&A (slightly expanded)
The pandemic has exacerbated mental health problems and social media appears to be causing even greater divisions. What’s your approach to tackle this?
We start with pure research into the application of normative ethics, especially Buddhist ethics, which establishes a clear link between the practice of moral virtue — through actions in body, speech and mind — and human flourishing. Together with broader interdisciplinary approaches we may determine well-founded theories for long-term well-being.
Can we pinpoint the nature of mental health issues? What techniques can be used to address them that effectively apply an ethical perspective?
The quality of attention has continued to dwindle; people’s senses, especially the mind, are overwhelmed and left numbed or restless, unable to focus well, let alone find stillness and inner peace. They struggle to process the stream of inputs, even to discern at a basic level right from wrong. Therefore it is precisely that stream that we target, the way it affects and especially debilitates the mind, then how to reverse such effects and develop clarity of mind. Drawing on educational practice, we introduce cognitive interventions in systems design across the lifecycle of digital usage, to improve the quality of attention with particular attention to the cultivation of ethical behaviour.
With so much division in society, what about human relationships?
The dilution of the notion of ‘friend’ in social media sparked my exploration of new architectures for online social networking to promote deeper friendship. It has since expanded to consider human safety, locally supported, in such a way as to lessen the need for expensive and arguable counter-productive legislation.
Isn’t there already work applying ethical systems to the design of technology?
Yes, but there remains a chasm between the experts in subjects such as virtue ethics and those who have practical experience of creating the technology. Attempts have been made to gain understanding of, for example, software developer communities, but with only limited appreciation of their own ethical codes of conduct that already exist — a classic example of the insider/outsider problem. I have immersed myself in theoretical work ranging from computer science to anthropology, whilst having implemented and administered quite a lot of software; being mixed race makes the interdisciplinarity completely natural to me.
Theory is all very well, but what about the code? And the developer community?
I’m keen on the development of open source software tools, not least for affirming human agency and autonomy. This site will include links to GitHub projects for software I’ve created or contributed to. The licensing will be liberal (i.e. it will not place infective restrictions on software in which it is incorporated, nor stipulate restrictions on commercial usage).
My focus is principally on the mind’s internal response to the external world, what are referred to by scholars as ‘cognitive’ aspects. My work aims to protect the quality of one’s awareness and to foster deepening reflections. Much of the wider impact on society follows from that (and is why I believe that environmental issues won’t be properly solved until we know how to take care of the inner environment of our own minds). Generally, I seek to adopt holistic and inter-disciplinary approaches to gaining knowledge and developing wisdom.
The main application area concerns the design of social networking sites, which is the focus of the Sigala Project, in which I propose a systems architecture based on the teachings of the Buddha, as expressed in a paper given at the 3rd World Conference on Buddhism and Science.
Social networking is situated in many contexts. One, in which I have been quite heavily involved, concerns personalised learning, where I am particularly interest is in the processes of personal reflection and social engagement around decision-making. I was for a while part of the KEPLAIR core team, contributing to the requirements for a general recommender system.
Many of my investigations are experimental in nature, so the resources on this site may appear eclectic!
This page was published on 9 April 2016 and last updated on April 16, 2024<!-- by Paul-->.