Two weeks ago, I had the privilege of attending the 2011 Personal Democracy Forum conference where I sat in on a panel about technology and human rights. The discussion ranged from safety concerns for human rights activists using social media (see Jillian C. York’s “Safety and Social Networks in the Middle East”) to whether niche human rights technology platforms might be a better option (not necessarily, says Movement.org’s Susannah Vila). The question, however, that I’ve been mulling over is how and when might the actions of developers and designers in Silicon Valley or New York City lead to grave consequences for citizens a world away.

In a globalized world, technology originally designed to solve a particular problem for a subset of people in the US (say, allowing college students to stay in touch and flirt through wall posts, photos, and pokes) very well could spread to another part of the world and be used for a completely different purpose (say, organizing protests, demonstrations, and movements in the Middle East). Given this, how can software developers, technology enthusiasts, and designers better anticipate and design for unexpected use-cases?