Ethics of technology
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Ethics of technology is a subfield of Ethics addressing the ethical questions specific to the Technology Age. Some prominent works of philosopher Hans Jonas are devoted to ethics of technology.
Technology itself is incapable of possessing moral or ethical qualities, since "technology" is merely tool making. Thus, "ethics of technology" refers instead to two basic subdivisions.
- The ethics involved in the development of new technology -- whether it is always, never, or contextually right or wrong to invent and implement a technological innovation.
- The ethical questions that are exacerbated by the ways in which technology extends or curtails the power of individuals -- how standard ethical questions are changed by the new powers.
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. Such tracing devices as RFID, biometric analysis and identification, genetic screening, all take old ethical questions and amplify their import.
[edit] References
- Hans Jonas: The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of Ethics for the Technological Age (1979)
- Hans Jonas: On Technology, Medicine and Ethics (1985)
