Ethics of technology
The ethics of technology is a sub-field of ethics addressing the ethical questions specific to the Technology Age, the transitional shift in society wherein personal computers and subsequent devices provide for the quick and easy transfer of information. Technology ethics is the application of ethical thinking to the growing concerns of technology as new technologies continue to rise in prominence.
The topic has evolved as technologies have developed. Technology poses an ethical dilemma on producers and consumers alike.
The subject of technoethics, or the ethical implications of technology, have been studied by different philosophers such as Hans Jonas and Mario Bunge.
Technoethics (TE) is an interdisciplinary research area that draws on theories and methods from multiple knowledge domains (such as communications, social sciences, information studies, technology studies, applied ethics, and philosophy) to provide insights on ethical dimensions of technological systems and practices for advancing a technological society.[1]
Technoethics views technology and ethics as socially embedded enterprises and focuses on discovering the ethical uses for technology, protecting against the misuse of technology,[2][3] and devising common principles to guide new advances in technological development and application to benefit society. Typically, scholars in technoethics have a tendency to conceptualize technology and ethics as interconnected and embedded in life and society.[4] Technoethics denotes a broad range of ethical issues revolving around technology – from specific areas of focus affecting professionals working with technology to broader social, ethical, and legal issues concerning the role of technology in society and everyday life.[1]
Technoethical perspectives are constantly in transition as technology advances in areas unseen by creators and as users change the intended uses of new technologies. Humans cannot be separated from these technologies because it is an inherent part of consciousness.[5] The short term and longer term ethical considerations for technologies engage the creator, producer, user, and governments.
With the increasing impact emerging technologies have on society, the importance of assessing ethical and social issues constantly becomes more important.[6] While such technologies provide opportunities for novel applications and the potential to transform the society on a global scale, their rise is accompanied by new ethical challenges and problems that must be considered.[7] This becomes more difficult with the increasing pace at which technology is progressing and the increasing impact it has on the societal understanding by seemingly outrunning human control.[8] The concept of technoethics focuses on expanding the knowledge of existing research in the areas of technology and ethics in order to provide a holistic construct for the different aspects and subdisciplines of ethics related to technology-related human activity like economics, politics, globalization, and scientific research.[6] It is also concerned with the rights and responsibilities that designers and developers have regarding the outcomes of the respective technology.[6][9] This is of particular importance with the emergence of algorithmic technology capable of making decisions autonomously and the related issues of developer or data bias influencing these decisions.[9] To work against the manifestation of these biases, the balance between human and technology accountability for ethical failure has to be carefully evaluated and has shifted the view from technology as a merely positive tool towards the perception of technology as inherently neutral.[8][10] Technoethics thus has to focus on both sides of the human technology equation when confronted with upcoming technology innovations and applications.[9]
With technology continuing to advance over time, there are new technoethical issues that come into play. For instance, discussions on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have brought about a huge concern for technology, ethics, and safety.[11] There is also a huge question of whether or not artificial intelligence (AI) should be trusted and relied upon. These are just some examples of how the advancements in technology will affect the ethical values of humans in the future.
Technoethics finds application in various areas of technology. The following key areas are mentioned in the literature:[6]
Using theories and methods from multiple domains, technoethics provides insights on ethical aspects of technological systems and practices, examines technology-related social policies and interventions, and provides guidelines for how to ethically use new advancements in technology.[13] Technoethics provides a systems theory and methodology to guide a variety of separate areas of inquiry into human-technological activity and ethics.[13] Moreover, the field unites both technocentric and bio-centric philosophies, providing "conceptual grounding to clarify the role of technology to those affected by it and to help guide ethical problem solving and decision making in areas of activity that rely on technology."[13] As a bio-techno-centric field, technoethics "has a relational orientation to both technology and human activity";[13] it provides "a system of ethical reference that justifies that profound dimension of technology as a central element in the attainment of a 'finalized' perfection of man."[15]
Technology is merely a tool like a device or gadget. With this thought process of technology just being a device or gadget, it is not possible for technology to possess a moral or ethical quality. Going by this thought process the tool maker or end user would be the one who decides the morality or ethicality behind a device or gadget. "Ethics of technology" refers to two basic subdivisions:
In the former case, ethics of such things as computer security and computer viruses asks whether the very act of innovation is an ethically right or wrong act. Similarly, does a scientist have an ethical obligation to produce or fail to produce a nuclear weapon? What are the ethical questions surrounding the production of technologies that waste or conserve energy and resources? What are the ethical questions surrounding the production of new manufacturing processes that might inhibit employment, or might inflict suffering in the third world?
In the latter case, the ethics of technology quickly break down into the ethics of various human endeavors as they are altered by new technologies. For example, bioethics is now largely consumed with questions that have been exacerbated by the new life-preserving technologies, new cloning technologies, and new technologies for implantation. In law, the right of privacy is being continually attenuated by the emergence of new forms of surveillance and anonymity. The old ethical questions of privacy and free speech are given new shape and urgency in an Internet age.[16] Such tracing devices as RFID, biometric analysis and identification, genetic screening, all take old ethical questions and amplify their significance. As you can see, the fundamental problem is as society produces and advances technology that we use in all areas of our life from work, school, medicine, surveillance, etc. we receive great benefits, but there are underlying costs to these benefits. As technology evolves even more, some of the technological innovations can be seen as inhumane and those same technological innovations can be seen by others as creative, life changing, and innovative.
History of technoethics[edit]
Though the ethical consequences of new technologies have existed since Socrates' attack on writing in Plato's dialogue, Phaedrus, the formal field of technoethics had only existed for a few decades. The first traces of TE can be seen in Dewey and Peirce's pragmatism. With the advent of the industrial revolution, it was easy to see that technological advances were going to influence human activity. This is why they put emphasis on the responsible use of technology.
The term "technoethics" was coined in 1977 by the philosopher Mario Bunge to describe the responsibilities of technologists and scientists to develop ethics as a branch of technology. Bunge argued that the current state of technological progress was guided by ungrounded practices based on limited empirical evidence and trial-and-error learning. He recognized that "the technologist must be held not only technically but also morally responsible for whatever he designs or executes: not only should his artifacts be optimally efficient but, far from being harmful, they should be beneficial, and not only in the short run but also in the long term." He recognized a pressing need in society to create a new field called 'technoethics' to discover rationally grounded rules for guiding science and technological progress.[17]
With the spurt in technological advances came technological inquiry. Societal views of technology were changing; people were becoming more critical of the developments that were occurring and scholars were emphasizing the need to understand and to take a deeper look and study the innovations. Associations were uniting scholars from different disciplines to study the various aspects of technology. The main disciplines being philosophy, social sciences and science and technology studies (STS). Though many technologies were already focused on ethics, each technology discipline was separated from each other, despite the potential for the information to intertwine and reinforce itself. As technologies became increasingly developed in each discipline, their ethical implications paralleled their development, and became increasingly complex. Each branch eventually became united, under the term technoethics, so that all areas of technology could be studied and researched based on existing, real-world examples and a variety of knowledge, rather than just discipline-specific knowledge.
Technology and ethics[edit]
Ethics theories[edit]
Technoethics involves the ethical aspects of technology within a society that is shaped by technology. This brings up a series of social and ethical questions regarding new technological advancements and new boundary crossing opportunities. Before moving forward and attempting to address any ethical questions and concerns, it is important to review the three major ethical theories to develop a perspective foundation:[18]
Organizational technoethics[edit]
Recent advances in technology and their ability to transmit vast amounts of information in a short amount of time has changed the way information is being shared amongst co-workers and managers throughout organizations across the globe. Starting in the 1980s with information and communications technologies (ICTs), organizations have seen an increase in the amount of technology that they rely on to communicate within and outside of the workplace. However, these implementations of technology in the workplace create various ethical concerns and in turn a need for further analysis of technology in organizations. As a result of this growing trend, a subsection of technoethics known as organizational technoethics has emerged to address these issues.
Key scholarly contributions linking ethics, technology, and society can be found in a number of seminal works:
This resulting scholarly attention to ethical issues arising from technological transformations of work and life has helped given rise to a number of key areas (or branches) of technoethical inquiry under various research programs (i.e., computer ethics, engineering ethics, environmental technoethics, biotech ethics, nanoethics, educational technoethics, information and communication ethics, media ethics, and Internet ethics).