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Earlier this year, Justin Murphy, the founder of the media and education company Other Life, wanted to offer a premium product to his newsletter subscribers. But for months, he’d been grappling with a problem familiar to anyone who writes online: an deficit. “Words on the internet are undervalued,” he said……Continue reading…..
By: Zoë Bernard
Source: Vox
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Critics:
With the increasing impact emerging technologies have on society, the importance of assessing ethical and social issues constantly becomes more important. 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.
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. 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.
It is also concerned with the rights and responsibilities that designers and developers have regarding the outcomes of the respective technology. 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.
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.Technoethics thus has to focus on both sides of the human technology equation when confronted with upcoming technology innovations and applications.
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. 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: Computer ethics: Focuses on the use of technology in areas including visual technology, artificial intelligence, and robotics. Engineering ethics: Dealing with professional standards of engineers and their moral responsibilities to the public. Internet ethics and cyberethics: Concerning the guarding against unethical Internet activity.
Media and communication technoethics: Concerning ethical issues and responsibilities when using mass media and communication technology.
Professional technoethics: Concerning all ethical considerations that revolve around the role of technology within professional conduct like in engineering, journalism, or medicine. Educational technoethics: Concerning the ethical issues and outcomes associated with using technology for educational aims.
Biotech ethics: Linked to advances in bioethics and medical ethics like considerations arising in cloning, human genetic engineering, and stem cell research. Environmental technoethics: Concerning technological innovations that impact the environment and life. Nanoethics: Concerning ethical and social issues associated with developments in the alteration of matter at the level of atoms and molecules in various disciplines including computer science, engineering, and biology.
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:
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 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.
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