Technology Ethics

This course explores the intersections of ethics, science, and technology. We will examine such questions as: How do we define technology? Is technology value-neutral or does it have values " built into " it? How does technology change human life for the better (and for the worse)? How should we balance competing values such as safety, efficiency, and freedom? Does technology ameliorate or exacerbate injustice and social inequality? How does technology encourage certain ways of viewing the world, and how does it corrupt our notions of " objectivity "? Is it a problem that STEM fields lack diversity, and, if so, what should we do to address that? Is technology going to eat all of our jobs, and what if it does?

Mindfulness is a burgeoning field of study and practice within mental health care and medicine. Yet ethical codes, and the philosophy of the therapist-client relationship, differ greatly between disciplines, and even more between those disciplines and mindfulness-based approaches. The potential for ethical dilemmas is therefore significant.

The book breaks new ground by taking a focused look at an ethics derived from contemporary clinical mindfulness practice itself. What does a secular ethics of mindfulness look like? Who is competent to work therapeutically with mindfulness, and how does one delimit areas and levels of competence? How do clinicians ethically understand the therapist-client relationship from the therapeutic position of mindfulness? And how do clinicians respond when the necessary restraints of their professional role and ethics code come into conflict with the mindfulness-based relationship and therapeutic position?

This book makes a vital contribution to the understanding of ethics as the cornerstone of mindfulness-based practice, and will be of interest to all those involved in delivering mindfulness-based interventions, including psychologists, counselors, spiritual directors, occupational therapists, physicians, nurses, and educators.

In: Van stoommachine tot cyborg: denken over techniek in de nieuwe wereld. Hans Achterhuis (red.) Ambo 1997
In 1978 keerde Langdon Winner voor een korte vakantie terug naar zijn geboortestreek in Californië. Op een zonnige decemberdag laat hij zich meevoeren met een toeristische bustocht langs een kernreactor in aanbouw, gelegen in de afgelegen Duivels Vallei. Wanneer de bus de top van de laatste heuvel passeert, wordt Winner de reusachtige kernreactor met zijn twee glanzende witte koepels gewaar. Op de achtergrond is de grillige kustlijn zichtbaar van de Stille Oceaan. Net op dat moment duikt er in de verte tussen de golven een grote, grijze, Californische walvis op die een straal waterdamp omhoog spuit en dan weer onder de waterspiegel verdwijnt. In het essay 'The Whale and the Reactor' uit de gelijknamige bundel beschrijft Winner hoe hij overweldigd wordt door het contrast tussen deze twee sterke symbolen zo dicht naast elkaar, één van de grootsheid der natuur, de ander van de grootsheid der techniek. Het doet hem beseffen dat de oorsprong van zijn belangstelling voor de morele en politieke dilemma's van moderne technologieën dichter bij huis ligt dan hij dacht. Tot dusverre bracht hij zijn intellectuele keuzes vooral in verband met diverse gebeurtenissen uit zijn studententijd in de jaren zestig. Zo was een stageperiode als 'systeemanalist' op het Pentagon, waar hij een schrille tegenstelling ondervond tussen de strenge, gerationaliseerde planning van het nationale defensiesysteem en de bloedige en zinloze oorlog die met behulp van datzelfde defensiesysteem sinds korte tijd in Vietnam werd gevoerd, reden om zich verder toe te leggen op een studie naar de betekenis van de technocratische tendens in het moderne denken. Maar ervaringen uit zijn jeugd hier in Californië, die de spuitende walvis nu levendig in herinnering roept, zijn wellicht toch doorslaggevender geweest. Hij denkt aan de ingrijpende veranderingen in zijn omgeving en in de dagelijkse leefpatronen, teweeggebracht door de vele introducties van nieuwe technieken. Deze introducties gingen gepaard met een ongekende en grenzeloze roes van techniekoptimisme. 'We waren technologische slaapwandelaars' zegt Winner. De komst van snelwegen, supermarkten, televisie, prefab huizen, plastics, allerhande elektrische apparaten voor het huishouden, hij maakte het allemaal van dichtbij mee. Met naïef enthousiasme gebruikte ook de familie Winner de DDT-spuit, ontsmettende 'Dial-zeep' met hexachlorofeen en het röntgenapparaat in de schoenwinkel dat de kooplust aanwakkerde doordat je er voor de grap je eigen voetgewervelte mee bewonderen kon. Achteraf bezien hebben de gezinsleden zo aan gevaarlijke doses chemicaliën en straling blootgestaan. Toch meent Winner nu dat hij zich destijds al dikwijls ongemakkelijk voelde bij de kritiekloze acceptatie van al dat nieuws. Hij heeft zich als kind meer dan eens afgevraagd of de nieuwe technieken die als verbetering werden geïntroduceerd, dat ook wel zo eenduidig waren. Was de vierbaansautoweg die kaarsrecht door het landschap getrokken werd, waarvoor oude huizen en buurten, bossen en landerijen zonder pardon moesten wijken, wel zo'n overtuigende vooruitgang? Was de melk van de geïndustrialiseerde zuivelbedrijven wel smakelijker dan die van de lokale melkboer? De confrontatie met de walvis in het reactorlandschap geeft Winner een doordringend inzicht dat, zo meent hij, uit geen van de intelligente afwegingen over kernenergie waar hij zo mee vertrouwd is naar voren kon komen. (...)

Human survival is currently threatened by many existential risks. Because humankind is the only known species capable of complex morality, if humankind went extinct, morality would die with us. Given that the existence of humankind is a precondition for morality, therefore the first principle of morality should be, as Hans Jonas noted, that humankind must exist. Compared to ensuring human survival, all other moral values and actions are secondary. While protecting human life on Earth is the obvious choice for human survival, as long as humanity is in only one place, it will never be completely safe. Because space settlement gives humankind the opportunity to significantly raise the chances of survival for our species, it is therefore a moral imperative to settle space as quickly as possible.

On July 21, 2021, journalists from Catholic Substack "The Pillar" published what they considered an expose of a priest who used the gay dating app Grindr. The controversy surrounding the story suggests the need for a Catholic ethic of privacy. I outline the beginning of one, starting with philosophical and legal reflections on privacy before turning to a theological defense for the right to privacy. Privacy is necessary for protecting goods related to the public, domestic and individual sphere, namely: reputation, family intimacy, and conscience. I then propose injustice as the major criterion for breaching the prima facie right to privacy and conclude with that grace and mercy ought to be normative elements of a Catholic ethic of privacy.

This presentation was delivered at the First Annual Conference on the Governance of Emerging Technology organized by the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. The presentation makes a case for extending rights to artificial autonomous agents, AIs, and robots. It is based on research published in "The Machine Question: Critical Perspectives on AI, Robots, and Ethics" (MIT 2012).

The implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies in various sectors ranging from health and education to banking and insurance has changed the way we experience the world. However, the development of AI is not free from ethical and religious issues. In this chapter, I have aimed to bridge the gap between the studies of the ethics of AI with theology and AI. For this, I have employed a qualitative content analysis of interview data gathered from the four well-known AI personal assistants. I have approached the literature on religion, theology, and AI from a posthuman religious perspective as well as benefit from the studies on Natural Learning Processing and dialogue systems. I have offered a preliminary analysis showing that the programming of AI personal assistants, for belief related questions, can be biased towards commonsense knowledge shaped by humanist, dualist, and anthropocentric worldviews.

Heidegger, Marcuse, and Ellul warned against the rise of a technological mass culture. Philosophy of technology has since turned away from such dystopic views, promoting instead the view that we shape technologies just as technologies shape us. Yet the rise of Big Data has exceeded our worst fears about Big Brother, leading us to again question whether technologies are empowering us or enslaving us.

Rather than engage in endless debates about whether technologies are making us better or making us worse, Nolen Gertz investigates what we think “better” and “worse” mean, and what role this thinking has played in the creation of our technological world. This investigation is carried out by using Nietzsche’s philosophy of nihilism in order to explore the ways in which our values mediate how we design technologies and how we use technologies. Examining our technological practices—practices ranging from Netflix and Chill to Fitbit and Move to Twitter and Rage—reveals how our nihilism and our technologies have become intertwined, creating a world of techno-hypnosis, data-driven activity, pleasure economics, herd networking, and orgies of clicking.

There is a striking similarity, in terms of both strategy and purpose, between certain modern AI algorithms and the way demonic intelligence is described in some Christian traditions. Social media algorithms are constantly at work, trying to predict our behaviour, and presenting us with just the right 'temptations' that might trigger our reaction. AI gathers enormous data from our external behaviour and builds actual voodoo-like models of who we are and what we care about, potentially leading to a point when, in Yuval Harari’s words, algorithms come to "know us better than we know ourselves”

In some Christian traditions, the devil is seen as doing a similar job (Book of Job, Life of  Anthony, C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters etc.). Without access to one's internal thoughts or ‘soul’, the devil can only infer our triggers based on our external behaviour (actions, gaze etc.) and physiologic data (heart rate, certain neurons firing etc.). The devil is thus, to some extent, our imagined upper limit of what AI algorithms could ever be capable of.

In spite of the devil’s huge informational advantage over us, Christian belief affirms that we are ultimately free and still able to choose our actions. In contrast, current concerns that AI algorithms could easily manipulate us and rob us of our freedom are built on the presupposition that we are ultimately hackable. 

Which one is it? Is Christian anthropology naïve in ascribing such a high degree of agency to humans? Or, on the contrary, should we see the failure of demonic intelligence to completely break the human being as a reason to be less worried about AI’s ability to manipulate us? I argue for a third type of answer, which is an admission that traditional demonologies, which speak of quasi-omniscient devils, are rather untenable.

In this essay, I ask what the precise relation is between Laudato si’s theology and its claims about our individual and corporate responsibility for the environment and the plight of the poor. To do so, I first clarify the relationship between the theological claims and its account of moral norms, situating the text within the history of western ethical theory. I then turn to reconstruct the submerged theology of the encyclical, focusing on Pope Francis’s accounts of the techno-economic paradigm and the possibility of an “integral ecology” paradigm. I end by assessing the text in terms of the coherence and plausibility of its argument as an ethical and theological statement.


KEYWORDS: techno-economic paradigm, integral ecology, Laudato si’, moral theory, Catholic Social Thought, Catholic Social Teaching

First Paragraph: In his famous 1950 paper where he presents what became the benchmark for success inartificial intelligence, Turing notes that "at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted" (Turing 1950, 442). Kurzweil (1990) suggests that Turing's prediction was correct, even if no machine has yet to pass the Turing Test. In the wake of the computer revolution, research in artificial intelligence and cognitive science has pushed in the direction of interpreting "thinking" as some sort of computational process. On this understanding, thinking is something computers (in principle) and humans (in practice) can both do.

English Abstract: "Current status of ethical discussions surrounding synthetic biology" (chapter 7; Johannes Achatz, Martin O’Malley, Peter Kunzmann)
In their contribution, Johannes Achatz, Martin O’Malley and Peter Kunzmann describe the areas of ongoing conflict in synthetic biology that are worthy of concrete ethical consideration. So just what is new in terms of the ethical challenges facing synthetic biology? Firstly, an epistemic interest in the function and standardising of biological components and systems, whose ultimate goal is to duplicate and redesign any step that further propels synthetic biology in the direction of engineering science, as well as to integrate other ancillary sciences ranging from computer science to medicine. It follows that any creation of new forms of life and new applications, if successful, would no longer be subject to concrete gene technology regulations. Governments have assumed a hopeful wait-and-see stance in this regard, but are also monitoring developments in the field of synthetic biology, as in the case in Germany with its Central Committee on Biological Safety of the Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety. Secondly, the open nature of synthetic biology and numerous laypersons conducting research in private are indeed remarkable innovations. Both represent opportunities for free and transparent science endeavours, but also entail the risk of abuse. The opportunities and risks associated with these new technologies include issues of biosafety, biosecurity, and maintaining equitable access to new scientific knowledge and related economic benefits. Thirdly, the two intuitive approaches of “bioconservatism” and “bioliberalism” can be distinguished as the most extreme positions. In the context of the ongoing transformation of bioscience into synthetic biology, there are factions that either reject such developments outright or that embrace them with open arms, with the standpoints of the various interest groups falling within these two poles. Both are incompatible positions. Nevertheless, they remain the core elements of any assessment of philosophical concept- of-life questions and endeavours to ensure the equitable distribution of both the benefits and disadvantages of synthetic biology; they are also the key points for discussions on such issues as the patentability of forms of life. Fourthly, the descriptions and assessments of synthetic biology are still in the framing stage, with the various actors determined to gain interpretational sovereignty over this new research field. The same points cited above in “Thirdly” are also the focus of the necessary social process of delineating a framework for this new research and application area of synthetic biology. In order to properly face the ethical challenges posed in these early stages of synthetic biology, it is recommended that all the different interest groups be taken into account and that a minimum of transparency be established, which will give both opponents and supporters an exact picture of the actual state of research. It is also recommended that the standpoints of the involved interest groups be fully documented, for instance through suitable discursive measures, before agreeing to any restrictive regulations for  synthetic biology. In this way it can be ensured that the promising prospects of synthetic biology are implemented safely and that the related advantages and disadvantages are well understood by the general public."

There are few issues more emotional and divisive than what has become known as “the right to die.” One camp advocates the “death with dignity” approach, according to which the patient is an autonomous being who can form his or her own judgment on the timing and process of dying. The other camp advocates the sanctity of life approach, in which life is intrinsically valuable and should be sustained as long as possible. Is
there a right answer?
    In The Right to Die With Dignity, Raphael Cohen-Almagor takes a balanced approach in analyzing this emotionally charged debate, viewing the dispute uniquely from public policy and international perspectives. This book offers an interdisciplinary, compelling study in medicine, law, religion and ethics. It is, arguably, the most comprehensive book yet to be written on the fascinating question of whether physician-assisted suicide should be allowed. Cohen-Almagor delineates the distinctions between active and passive euthanasia and discusses some of the legal measures that have been invoked in the United States and abroad. He outlines the reasons non-blood relatives should be given a role in deciding a patients’ last wishes. He examines euthanasia policies in the Netherlands and the 1994 Oregon Death with Dignity Act, suggesting improvements to each. Finally, he makes a circumscribed plea for voluntary physician-assisted suicide.

Principles of fairness and solidarity in AI ethics regularly overlap, creating obscurity in practice: acting in accordance with one can appear indistinguishable from deciding according to the rules of the other. However, there exist irregular cases where the two concepts split, and so reveal their disparate meanings and uses. This paper explores two cases in AI medical ethics-one that is irregular and the other more conventional-to fully distinguish fairness and solidarity. Then the distinction is applied to the frequently cited COMPAS versus ProPublica dispute in judicial ethics. The application provides a broader model for settling contemporary and topical debates about fairness and solidarity. It also implies a deeper and disorienting truth about AI ethics principles and their justification.

Technical design can produce exclusionary and even discriminatory effects for users. A lack of discriminatory intent is insufficient to avoid discriminatory design, since implicit assumptions about users rarely include all relevant user demographics, and in some cases, designing for all relevant users is actually impossible. To minimize discriminatory effects of technical design, an actively anti-discriminatory design perspective must be adopted. This article provides examples of discriminatory user exclusion, then defining exclusionary design in terms of disaffordances and dysaffordances. Once these definitions are in place, principles of anti-discriminatory design are advanced, drawing upon a method of phenomenological variation employed in the context of standpoint epistemology.

Ethical issues of information and communication technologies (ICTs) are important because they can have significant effects on human liberty, happiness, and people’s ability to lead a good life. They are also of functional interest because they can determine whether technologies are used and whether their positive potential can unfold. For these reasons, policy makers are interested in finding out what these issues are and how they can be addressed. The best way of creating ICT policy that is sensitive to ethical issues pertain to being proactive in addressing such issues at an early stage of the technology life cycle. The present paper uses this position as a starting point and discusses how knowledge of ethical aspects of emerging ICTs can be gained. It develops a methodology that goes beyond established futures methodologies to cater for the difficult nature of ethical issues. The authors outline how the description of emerging ICTs can be used for an ethical analysis.

This review article briefly considers the history of AI and the most relevant milestones, and assesses the current state of the art in various AI applications. It then reviews some of the deeper questions posed by present and future AI technologies, and their representation in current literature in the science and theology dialogue.

This book equips readers with the knowledge, insights and key capabilities to understand and practice business activities from ethical and sustainable vantage points.
In our interconnected global business environment, the impacts of business activities are under increased ethical scrutiny from a wide range of stakeholders. Written from an international perspective, this book introduces the theory and practice of ethical and sustainable business, focusing in particular on eco-environmental sustainability, intergenerational responsibilities, current disruptive technologies, and intercultural values of the business community and consumers. Written by an expert author who also brings to the fore non-Western concepts and themes, this book:
• features positive case studies, as well as transferrable and applicable key insights from such cases;
• highlights the importance of taking cultural differences into account;
• takes a transdisciplinary approach which considers findings from research fields including conceptual and empirical business ethics, behavioral economics, ecological economics, environmental ethics, and the philosophy of culture;
• weaves in pedagogical features throughout, including up-to-date case studies, study questions, thought experiments, links to popular movies, and key takeaways.
Written in an accessible and student-friendly manner, this book will be of great interest to students of business ethics, environmental ethics, applied ethics, and sustainable development, as well as business practitioners striving toward ethical, sustainable, and responsible business practice.

"The article includes a short reflection on the ethical aspects of cooperation between researchers and business owners in the context of the absorption of EU structural funds.
The result of the article are practical guidelines for such cooperation, based on a set of principles promoted by the Committee on Ethics in Science of the Polish Academy of Sciences."

This paper argues in favor of more widespread and systematic applications of a virtue-based normative framework to questions about the ethical impact of information technologies, and social networking technologies in particular. The first stage of the argument identifies several distinctive features of virtue ethics that make it uniquely suited to the domain of IT ethics, while remaining complementary to other normative approaches. I also note its potential to reconcile a number of significant methodological conflicts and debates in the existing literature, including tensions between phenomenological and constructivist perspectives. Finally, I claim that a virtue-based perspective is needed to correct for a strong utilitarian bias in the research methodologies of existing empirical studies on the social and ethical impact of IT. The second part of the paper offers an abbreviated demonstration of the merits of virtue ethics by showing how it might usefully illuminate the moral dimension of emerging social networking technologies. I focus here on the potential impact of such technologies on three virtues typically honed in communicative practices: patience, honesty and empathy.

Part of answering the social epistemological question How should the pursuit of knowledge be organized? involves identifying obstacles to the pursuit of knowledge and developing strategies for overcoming them. There is some reason to believe the technology intended to enhance our access to evidence has the unintended consequence of distracting from important sources of it. And even worse, this technology makes it easier for a small minority to manipulate beliefs and interests in new and subtle ways. Here, I explain a phenomenon called the filter bubble and how the preferences we express through our use of the Internet can be used to undermine epistemically responsible behavior. I argue that what I will call filtering bias is a type of censorship in which there is significant public interest and that, although there are no promising solutions to the problem, understanding this obstacle can help us guard against complacency when using technology as part of our epistemic activities.

The aim of this paper is to offer some philosophical remarks concerning the concept of moral application in applied ethics. In doing so, I argue in favour of a philosophical approach towards applied ethics as a unitary form of moral experience. In fact every form of applied ethics, no matter how specific, moves from a problem of application and tries to fill a gap between moral theory and practice. This essential unity of applied ethics as a moral phenomenon is of great philosophical interest, since it belongs to the core problem from which moral thinking itself originates. For this reason, what applied ethics may reveal to a philosophical inquiry could provide valuable insight into the nature of moral experience itself. This is why it is important to reflect on what applied ethics is and whether the way in which application is usually framed be ts the properties of moral experience or not.
In the first section I submit some preliminary remarks concerning the theoretical requirements to any philosophical approach to applied ethics. In the second section I present how application is commonly understood in the applied ethics debate by discussing the deductive and the procedural models of application. Both models, however, draw upon a technological conception of application which fails to  t the structure of moral experience. Finally, I brie y sketch out the main features and the future tasks of what seems to me to be the most promising approach to the issue, i.e., the hermeneutic concept of application.

On 21 March 2011 President José Manuel Barroso requested the EGE to draft an Opinion on the ethical implications of information and communication technologies and to produce, subsequently and separately, an Opinion on the ethical implications of security technologies, with due attention given to the development of security technologies and to surveillance technologies. The EGE has provided the Commission with its Opinion on Ethics of Information and Communication Technologies on 22 February 2012. It also drafted an Opinion on Research, Production and Use of Energy that was published on the 16th January 2013, in response to an intervening request from the President of the Commission. The present Opinion addresses the issues of security and surveillance technologies from an ethical perspective. As the group prepared the re- port, the revelations of Edward Snowden emphasised how important a reorganisation and reinterpretation of our approach to security and surveillance is. Indeed the predicament of data flows and surveillance activities thrown into sharp relief by these revelations form part of the evolving backdrop against which this Opinion is set.

National security is the responsibility of the Member States, but the Lisbon Treaty, and particularly the Charter of Fundamental Rights embedded in it provides for action by the Union where necessary to protect the rights of individual citizens. In addition, the EU shares competence with member states as regards the internal security of the Union and has established an Internal Security Strategy to identify and coordinate action against common threats. In this opinion we address the manner in which surveillance has been enhanced due to the availability of new technologies and the means to record and analyse and retain vast amounts of data provided by advances in information and communication technologies.

While national security or state security paradigms pertain to a state’s ability to defend itself against external threats, the notion of human security holds that the referent for security is the individual rather than the state. This is to be considered against the backdrop of the forms of security expected from the Westphalian nation-state (46) (with the social contract on which it is premised calling upon the state to ensure the security of its citizens) and against the backdrop of an increasing technologically mediated attention to border control as well as to the ‘enemy within’.

Security procedures lie within the compass of the State that in addition may procure services from national or international companies to provide the facilities for collection and management of information that the security services require. Information gathered about individuals or organisations may then be held either by the State, where democratic accountability ought to exist, or by private entities where the conditions for handling sensitive material may not be in the public domain and may possibly be retained or may not only be used for the purposes of a particular State. The Opinion addresses the principles by which these forms of surveillance should be governed.

In addition, surveillance of the public by companies or by other individuals should be subject to conditions, and again, the opinion addresses the principles that govern these forms of ‘commercial’ or individual surveillance, and the manner in which the data so gathered may be used as part of a data mining or profiling system by private entities or the state.

The digital revolution and subsequent advances in mobile, wireless and networked devices have significantly contributed to the development of security and surveillance technologies. New technologies offer the possibility of recording the everyday activities of billions of individuals across the globe. Our mobile phones can identify and pinpoint our location at any given moment, loyalty cards allow commercial entities to analyse our spending and track our personal preferences, keystroke software monitors our performance and productivity in the workplace and our electronic communications can be screened for key words or phrases by intelligence services. Moreover, personal data concerning our health, employment, travel and electronic communications are stored in databases, and data mining techniques allow for large amounts of personal data from these disparate sources to be organised and analysed, thereby facilitating the discovery of previously unknown relationships within these data. Security technologies are no longer discrete; the
trend is toward convergence, creating more powerful networked systems. Thus, our everyday lives are scrutinised by many actors as never before, all made possible by developments in technology together with political choices or lack thereof.

Introduction:
Value-sensitive design (VSD) refers to a field of research addressing the inscription of values in technologies in general and information and communication technologies (ICT) in particular. In this contribution, value-sensitive design, a term originally proposed by (Friedman et al. 2006) is used as an umbrella term encompassing also similar approaches developed by other proponents, such as values in design (Knobel & Bowker 2011), values at play (Nissenbaum 2005; Flanagan et al. 2008), and disclosive computer ethics (Brey 2000, 2010).
Value-sensitive design departs from the observation that in the process of designing technologies, societal values are often unintentionally inscribed into these technologies and that resulting technologies in return may promote or demote certain values, e.g. justice, fairness or privacy. The crucial idea behind value-sensitive design as a research approach and a methodology is then to turn this insight into a research question: if values are often unconsciously imparted in the process of designing and developing technologies, can we steer this inscription more reflexively, i.e. can we intentionally embed desired values into technologies? In line with this goal of embedding desired values into technologies, proponents of value-sensitive design have developed concrete methodologies to guide the design and development of technological artefacts that promote the values desired by the various stakeholders who are or can be affected by these technologies.
Value-sensitive design, therefore, a) aims at steering technology design and development to attune to shared societal values and b) promotes the early inclusion of various direct and indirect stakeholders into the process of technology design and development. As such VSD appears to be particularly suited to support and feed into initiatives promoting more “Responsible Research and Innovation”.
Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) as a term refers to both strategic efforts of national and international funding bodies, most notably the European Commission to better align the process and the outcomes of research and innovation with the values, needs and expectations of society as well as to the academic discourse which has formed around these strategic initiatives (e.g. Grunwald 2011, Koops et al. 2015, Oftedal 2014, Owen et al. 2013a, von Schomberg 2013, Simon 2015, Stilgoe et al. 2013, Timmermans and Stahl 2013, or van den Hoven et al. 2014).
Linking RRI and value-sensitive design therefore appears only consequential: value- sensitive design can support RRI by providing a concrete methodology to both assess societal values, needs and expectations and to implement desired values into technologies. Moreover, RRI can benefit from the lessons learned in value-sensitive design as a research field, in particular with regards to the pitfalls of stakeholder inclusion and the performativity of value inscription. Accordingly, RRI as a strategy should learn from value-sensitive design as a research field and methodology (van den Hoven 2013; Simon 2016). In return, RRI can provide ample opportunity for value-sensitive design to be further applied, developed and refined in highly diverse research settings stretching beyond ICT design.

There are prima facie ethical reasons and prudential reasons for people to avoid or withdraw from social media platforms. But in response to pushes for people to quit social media, a number of authors have argued that there is something ethically questionable about quitting social media: that it involves — typically, if not necessarily — an objectionable expression of privilege on the part of the quitter. In this paper I contextualise privilege-based objections to quitting social media and explain the underlying principles and assumptions that feed into these objections. I show how they misrepresent the kind of act people are performing in quitting, in part by downplaying its role in promoting reforms in communication systems and technologies. And I suggest that this misrepresentation is related to a more widespread, and ultimately insidious, tendency to think of recently-established technological states of affairs as permanent fixtures of our society.

Heidegger, Marcuse, and Ellul warned against the rise of a technological mass culture. Philosophy of technology has since turned away from such dystopic views, promoting instead the view that we shape technologies just as technologies shape us. Yet the rise of Big Data has exceeded our worst fears about Big Brother, leading us to again question whether technologies are empowering us or enslaving us. Rather than engage in endless debates about whether technologies are making us better or making us worse, Dr. Nolen Gertz investigates what we think " better " and " worse " mean, and what role this thinking has played in the creation of our technological world. This investigation is carried out by using Nietzsche's philosophy of nihilism in order to explore the ways in which our values mediate how we design technologies and how we use technologies. Dr Gertz will investigate our technological practices—practices ranging from Netflix and Chill to Fitbit and Move to Twitter and Rage—and reveal how our nihilism and our technologies have become intertwined, creating a world of techno-hypnosis, data-driven activity, pleasure economics, herd networking, and orgies of clicking.

The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis's masterpiece in ethics and the philosophy of science, warns of the danger of combining modern moral skepticism with the technological pursuit of human desires. The end result is the final destruction of human nature. From Brave New World to Star Trek, from steampunk to starships, science fiction film has considered from nearly every conceivable angle the same nexus of morality, technology, and humanity of which C. S. Lewis wrote. As a result, science fiction film has unintentionally given us stunning depictions of Lewis's terrifying vision of the future. In Science Fiction Film and the Abolition of Man, scholars of religion, philosophy, literature, and film explore the connections between sci-fi film and the three parts of Lewis's book: how sci-fi portrays "Men without Chests" incapable of responding properly to moral good, how it teaches the Tao or "The Way," and how it portrays "The Abolition of Man."

Available from Wipf and Stock Publishers, Hearts and Minds Books (Dallastown, PA), Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, Christian Books Distributors, and other places where fine books are sold!

Excerpt used with Permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers (http://wipfandstock.com/science-fiction-and-the-abolition-of-man.html).

It is widely believed that a cyberattack victim should not “hack back” against attackers. Among the chief worries are that hacking back is (probably) illegal and immoral; and if it targets foreign networks, then it may spark a cyberwar between states. However, these worries are largely taken for granted: they are asserted without much argument, without considering the possibility that hacking back could ever be justified. This policy paper offers both the case for and against hacking back—examining six core arguments—to more carefully consider the practice.

The article is one of a collection of articles examining new fields of applied ethics for emerging technologies. This contribution points to the dilemmas surrounding ethical approaches for "green technology" and synthetic biology, and suggests using the negotiation model of the "Mutual Gains Approach" in a promising new approach for ethics. In: Matthias Maring (ed) Bereichsethiken im interdisziplinären Dialog (German language).

In publication since 1906, the venerable American Men and Women of Science remains without peer as a chronicle of scientific endeavor and achievement ..." -- WorldTrade Review Essays 

"The Cadillac of scientific biography" -- Booklist. Selected for collections at Princeton, Harvard,  MIT,  JPL/ Caltech; the Wellcome Trust Collection, and more 

K. Lee Lerner has served on the Advisory Board for American Men and Women of Science for the last 20 editions (21st through 40th edition;  2003-0222),  He is currently working as an advisor for the 41st edition due to be published in 2023.

First published as American Men of Science by J. McKeen Cattell in 1906, throughout its 116 year history American Men and Women of Science has recognized both men and women scientists who have made significant contributions in their field.  In 1971, the name of the series was changed to American Men and Women of Science.

American Men and Women of Science includes scientists selected for their contributions to science as measured by their publications in reputable scientific journals and media. Also included are those whose work cannot be published due to governmental or industrial security. Inclusion criteria include awards, grants and other forms of recognition, publication record, attainment of a position of substantial scientific responsibility, and nomination by peers in their respective fields. Scientists who are not citizens of the United States or Canada are included if a significant portion of their work was performed in North America.

This contribution focuses on two claims advanced by the proponents of the project of "Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance." Firstly, it is maintained that this project represents something genuinely new and quite unique. Secondly, it is argued that the future prospects of the project are extraordinarily positive. In order to critically assess both claims this paper first focuses on the question of whether there is actually anything genuinely new about the project of improving human performance by means of converging NBIC technologies. In addition it is analyzed whether the project warrants that we be optimistic about its future prospects.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology presents a multitude of ethical concerns, many of which are being actively considered by organizations ranging from small groups in civil society to large corporations and governments. However, it also presents ethical concerns which are not being actively considered. This paper presents a broad overview of twelve topics in ethics in AI, including function, transparency, evil use, good use, bias, unemployment, socioeconomic inequality, moral automation and human de-skilling, robot consciousness and rights, dependency, social-psychological effects, and spiritual effects. Each of these topics will be given a brief discussion, though each deserves much deeper consideration.