Evaluating New Technologies: Methodological Problems for the Ethical Assessment of Technology Developments.(3 The International Library of Ethics, Law and Technology)

human practices? How are we to morally evaluate technology developments that have open horizons, encompass uncertainties, and lack control? Technology is in- uential on society; technological innovations act upon the perception of ourselves, the world, and our relation with fellow humans and other objects. Technology is changing everything we do by creating new entities (such as software, nanop- ticles, or Internet), by changing the scale of activities (e. g. vast amounts of data about people can be stored and analysed, and not infrequently without people - ing aware of this), by generating new kinds of knowledge (for instance about i- nesses, the human genome and so on). Technologies, as a consequence, impinge upon our morality and for this reason an ethics of technology should not wait passively until moral problems arise and not only focus on identi ed and exi- ing moral problems, but contemplate technology developments and possible - pacts proactively. However, this is easier said than done, because a prospective and proactive evaluation of technology developments is complicated by complexity and uncertainty. The uncertainty of technology development is closely related to one of the str- ing features of technology, namely what Jim Moor has coined logical malleability. (1985, 269) Technological devices are logically malleable in that they can be shaped to do any activity that can be characterised in terms of logical operations.

Table of Contents:
Evaluating New Technologies: An Introduction.- Evaluating New Technologies: An Introduction.- A Case Study: Ultrafast Communication.- Ethical Aspects of Research in Ultrafast Communication.- Whose Responsibility Is It Anyway? Dealing with the Consequences of New Technologies.- Ethics in and During Technological Research; An Addition to IT Ethics and Science Ethics.- The Need for a Value-Sensitive Design of Communication Infrastructures.- Evaluating New Technologies: Methodological Issues.- The Moral Relevance of Technological Artifacts.- Interdisciplinarity, Applied Ethics and Social Science.- Facts or Fiction? A Critique on Vision Assessment as a Tool for Technology Assessment.- Exploring Techno-Moral Change: The Case of the ObesityPill.- Evaluating New Technologies: Uncertainty and Precaution.- On Uncertainty in Ethics and Technology.- New Technologies, Common Sense and the Paradoxical Precautionary Principle.- Complex Technology, Complex Calculations: Uses and Abuses of Precautionary Reasoning in Law.- Ethics of Technology at the Frontier of Uncertainty: A Gewirthian Perspective.