In the early months of 2020, the deadly Covid-19 disease spread rapidly around the world. In response, national and regional governments implemented a range of emergency lockdown measures, curtailing citizens’ movements and greatly limiting economic activity. More recently, as restrictions begin to be loosened or lifted entirely, the use of so-called contact tracing apps has figured prominently in many jurisdictions’ plans to reopen society. Critics have questioned the utility of such technologies on a number of fronts, both practical and ethical. However, little has been said about the ways in which the normative design choices of app developers, and the products that result therefrom, might contribute to ethical reflection and wider political debate. Drawing from scholarship in critical design and human–computer interaction, this paper examines the development of a QR code-based tracking app called Zwaai (‘Wave’ in Dutch), where its designers explicitly positioned the app as an alternative to the predominant Bluetooth and GPS-based approaches. Through analyzing these designers’ choices, this paper argues that QR code infrastructures can work to surface a set of ethical–political seams, two of which are discussed here—responsibilization and networked (im)permanence—that more ‘seamless’ protocols like Bluetooth actively aim to bypass, and which may go otherwise unnoticed by existing ethical frameworks.

中文翻译：

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走向 Covid-19 接触者追踪应用程序的无缝伦理？

2020 年初，致命的 Covid-19 疾病在全球迅速蔓延。作为回应，国家和地区政府实施了一系列紧急封锁措施，限制了公民的流动并极大地限制了经济活动。最近，随着限制开始放宽或完全取消，所谓的接触者追踪应用程序的使用在许多司法管辖区重新开放社会的计划中占据了突出地位。批评者从实用和伦理两方面质疑此类技术的实用性。然而，关于应用程序开发人员的规范设计选择以及由此产生的产品可能有助于道德反思和更广泛的政治辩论的方式，鲜有提及。借鉴关键设计和人机交互方面的学术成果，本文研究了名为 Zwaai（荷兰语中的“Wave”）的基于 QR 码的跟踪应用程序的开发，其设计者明确将该应用程序定位为主要蓝牙和基于 GPS 方法的替代方案。通过分析这些设计师的选择，本文认为 QR 码基础设施可以解决一系列伦理-政治缝隙，这里讨论了其中两个缝隙——责任化和网络（非）永久性——更多“无缝”协议（如蓝牙）主动旨在绕过，并且可能会被现有的道德框架所忽视。