On the Importance of Framing

Forces have converged to produce stunning new technologies and the Information Age. As a result, we experience unanticipated consequences. Among the implications of this transition are a variety of ethical predicaments. This chapter introduces a process of conceptual framing. We classify this work as the inspection and consideration of our conceptual frameworks. We move from doubt about our current frameworks toward better ones. The way to make this transition is to render beliefs into ideas and then compare those ideas. Nevertheless, there is always an imperfect alignment of ideas with lived reality, so we must avoid dogmatic closure. The ethics predicaments we face are in actuality an ill-defined “mess” of multiple problems, the solutions to which affect one another. In response, we consider the processes of design for the future in the face of such ill-defined ethics problems.