172 research outputs found
Nanotechnology and Technomoral Change
If nanotechnology lives up to its revolutionary promises, do we then need a ânewâ type of ethics to guide this technological development? After distinguishing different senses in which ethics could be ânewâ, I focus on the phenomenon of TechnoMoral Change. Emerging technologies like nanotechnology have the potential to destabilize established moral norms and values. This is relevant because those norms and values are needed to discuss whether technological developments are desirable or not. I argue that to respond adequately to technological changes in our lifeworld we cannot afford moral rigidity but should rather develop âmoral resilienceâ. This requires that we stop framing the relation between technology and humans in terms of who governs over whom. Instead, we have to explore how both mutually shape one another. I conceptualize technologyâs influence on morality in terms of de- and restabilization, identify several mechanisms of technomoral change, argue that such change usually doesnât occur on the level of individual norms but on the level of moral constellations, and end with a plea for technomoral learning
Getting our hands dirty with technology: The role of the performing arts in technological development
This paper argues for the involvement of the performing and applied arts in technological development in the field of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). It discusses the challenges and the benefits for the arts, and presents existing methods in the field of RRI. It then describes two practical case studies called gameformances carried out by the authors
Designing a Good Life: A Matrix for the Technological Mediation of Morality
Technologies fulfill a social role in the sense that they influence the moral actions of people, often in unintended and unforeseen ways. Scientists and engineers are already accepting much responsibility for the technological, economical and environmental aspects of their work. This article asks them to take an extra step, and now also consider the social role of their products. The aim is to enable engineers to take a prospective responsibility for the future social roles of their technologies by providing them with a matrix that helps to explore in advance how emerging technologies might plausibly affect the reasons behind peopleâs (moral) actions. On the horizontal axis of the matrix, we distinguished the three basic types of reasons that play a role in practical judgment: what is the case, what can be done and what should be done. On the vertical axis we distinguished the morally relevant classes of issues: stakeholders, consequences and the good life. To illustrate how this matrix may work in practice, the final section applies the matrix to the case of the Google PowerMeter
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