I spoke to her about ethical design, and how to balance individual privacy with the potential for social good of connected devices that share data with one another. A transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for concision and clarity, follows.

Kaveh Waddell: Why is it particularly important to think about ethics in the Internet of Things?

Francine Berman: I think we’ve been running up against these issues as digital technologies become more and more prevalent—but the Internet of Things is particularly interesting.

First of all, we’re just at the tip of the iceberg in what is arguably going to be a brave new world. And it’s highly heterogenous: We’ll be seeing a lot more autonomous systems, we’ll be seeing enhanced humans and smart systems, devices, and organizations. When you put all of those together, and you start thinking about how to bring out the best of the Internet of Things rather than the worst of the Internet of Things, governance is really the key.

That means understanding how to design and build and think about these systems. Who’s responsible and who’s accountable, what does it mean to be ethical, and what does it mean to promote the public good?

Waddell: What’s another example of a new technology driving the creation a new ethical framework?

Berman: Think about the Industrial Revolution: The technologies were very compelling—but perhaps the most compelling part were the social differences it created. During the Industrial Revolution, you saw a move to the cities, you saw the first child-labor laws, you saw manufacturing really come to the fore. Things were available that had not been very available before. There was a workforce evolution.

In some sense, the Information Age has had that same kind of impact on all aspects of life. And the Internet of Things exacerbates it, because now the boundaries between the physical world and the biological world and the cyber world are blending. We’re bumping into something that’s going to have a tremendous impact in the way we live, what we do, how we think about things, and even our individual rights.

Waddell: Have we seen a shift in governance in the Information Age in the way we did at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution?

Berman: Well, sure. You think about something like copyright: That was around at the time of the Constitution, and now we’re worrying about whether Stairway to Heaven is a copyright infringement. There’s a lot of things we’re looking at now that we never even imagined we’d have to think about. A great example: What if self-driving cars have to make bad choices? How do they do that? Where are the ethics? And then who is accountable for the choices that are made by autonomous systems?

This needs to be more of a priority, and we need to be thinking about it more broadly. We need to start designing the systems that are going to be able to support social regulation, social policy, and social practice, to bring out the best of the Internet of Things.