Taking its start from current debates about Technology Assessment, the proposed solution emerges as a combination of theoretical and methodological insights from the fields of Philosophy of Technology, Science and Technology Studies and a normative justification based on pragmatist ethics.

This book provides insights on how emerging technosciences come together with new forms of governance and ethical questioning. Combining science and technologies and ethics approaches, it looks at the emergence of three key technoscientific domains - body enhancement technologies, biometrics and technologies for the production of space -exploring how human bodies and minds, the movement of citizens and space become matters of technoscientific governance. The emergence of new and digital technologies pose new challenges for representative democracy and existing forms of citizenship. As...

This book addresses the problem of how to make democratically-legitimate public policy on issues of contentious bioethical debate. It focuses on ethical contests about research and their legitimate resolution, while addressing questions of political legitimacy. How should states make public policy on issues where there is ethical disagreement, not only about appropriate outcomes, but even what values are at stake? What constitutes justified, democratic policy in such conflicted domains? Case studies from Canada and Australia demonstrate that two countries sharing historical and institutional...

The central promise of BCI technology is enabling severely impaired people in mobility, grasping, communication, and entertainment. Successful applications are for instance communication devices enabling locked-in patients in staying in contact with their environment, or prostheses enabling paralysed people in reaching and grasping.

This volume assembles an interdisciplinary team of leading academics, industry figures, policymakers and NGO s to consider the legal, ethical and social issues that are raised by innovations in nanoscience and nanotechnology. By bringing together international experts from a diverse range of fields this volume addresses the implications and impact that nanotechnology has on society. Through the exploration of six key themes the contributors analyse both the impact of nanotechnology and the emergence of the concept of nanoethics. Each section includes authors from both sides of the political...

This book disentangles the complex meanings of responsibility in nanotechnology development by focusing on its theoretical and empirical dimensions. Furthermore, the interplay between such expertises, disciplines, and research programmes in providing a multidisciplinary understanding of responsibility is emphasized.

The information age we inhabit brings to completion our self-understanding as informational systems that produce, process, and exchange information with other informational systems, in an environment that is itself made up of information.