20th century technologies like cars, the Internet, and the contraceptive pill have altered our actions, changed our perceptions and influenced our moral ideas, for better and worse. Upcoming technologies are bound to fulfill their own unique social roles. How can we advance this social role so that it will support the good live and limit undesired changes? This book explores whether we can take a forward looking responsibility to optimize the social roles of technologies. In doing so, the book discusses three issues: first, it aims to understand the social role of technologies; second, it...
20th century technologies like cars, the Internet, and the contraceptive pill have altered our actions, changed our perceptions and influenced our mor...
As science becomes more deeply embedded in a complex technological infrastructure, has this changed the relationship between the sciences and the various technologies that support them? As our technologies help shrink our world, can we restrict our ethical concerns or must we find a way to face the fact that we are now one world? What do new forms of architecture say about whom we are? Is the design process the new epistemological paradigm? The answers to all of these is "yes" according to Joseph C. Pitt (VirginaTech).
Doing Philosophy of Technology presents an updated and...
As science becomes more deeply embedded in a complex technological infrastructure, has this changed the relationship between the sciences and the v...
This volume rethinks the work of Jacques Ellul (1912-1994) on the centenary of his birth, by presenting an overview of the current debates based on Ellul's insights. As one of the most significant twentieth-century thinkers about technology, Ellul was among the first thinkers to realize the importance of topics such as globalization, terrorism, communication technologies and ecology, and study them from a technological perspective.
The book is divided into three sections. The first discusses Ellul's diagnosis of modern society, and addresses the reception of his work on the...
This volume rethinks the work of Jacques Ellul (1912-1994) on the centenary of his birth, by presenting an overview of the current debates based on...
New biotechnologies have propelled the question of what it means to be human or posthuman to the forefront of societal and scientific consideration. This volume provides an accessible, critical overview of the main approaches in the debate on posthumanism, and argues that they do not adequately address the question of what it means to be human in an age of biotechnology. Not because they belong to rival political camps, but because they are grounded in a humanist ontology that presupposes a radical separation between human subjects and technological objects.
The volume offers a...
New biotechnologies have propelled the question of what it means to be human or posthuman to the forefront of societal and scientific consideration...
This book considers the question: to what extent does it make sense to qualify technical artefacts as moral entities? The authors contributions trace recent proposals and topics including instrumental and non-instrumental values of artefacts, agency and artefactual agency, values in and around technologies, and the moral significance of technology.
The editors introduction explains that as agents rather than simply passive instruments, technical artefacts may actively influence their users, changing the way they perceive the world, the way they act in the world and the way they...
This book considers the question: to what extent does it make sense to qualify technical artefacts as moral entities? The authors contributions tra...
This book investigates the emerging phenomenon of the self as it exists in the online world. It argues for an externalist conception of self and identity, one that does not depend on the continuity of consciousness of the subject. It also offers an analysis of related phenomenon such as online friendship and games based on this analysis. An outstanding feature of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace is that it allows for the user to put forward their selves or their identity onto the Internet and use the online self as an anchor to connect with any number of friends each of...
This book investigates the emerging phenomenon of the self as it exists in the online world. It argues for an externalist conception of self and ident...
Despite the topic s urgency and centrality, this is the first edited volume to offer a comprehensive assessment of the varying approaches to early engagement with new technologies, including nanotechnology, synthetic biology, biotechnology and ICT. Covering five main approaches to early engagement constructive technology assessment (CTA), value-sensitive design (VSD), midstream modulation (MM), the network approach for moral evaluation, and political technology assessment the book will be a pivotal text in the rapidly developing research field of ELSI, which explores the ethical, legal,...
Despite the topic s urgency and centrality, this is the first edited volume to offer a comprehensive assessment of the varying approaches to early ...
This book presents an attempt to understand the nature of technical artefacts and the way they come into being. Its primary focus is the kind of technical artefacts designed and produced by modern engineering. In spite of their pervasive influence on human thinking and doing, and therefore on the modern human condition, a philosophical analysis of technical artefacts and engineering design is lacking. Among the questions addressed are: How do technical artefacts fit into the furniture of the universe? In what sense are they different from objects from the natural world, or from the social...
This book presents an attempt to understand the nature of technical artefacts and the way they come into being. Its primary focus is the kind of techn...
Information and communication technologies of the 20th century have had a significant impact on our daily lives. They have brought new opportunities as well as new challenges for human development. The Philosopher: Luciano Floridi claims that these new technologies have led to a revolutionary shift in our understanding of humanity s nature and its role in the universe. Florodi s philosophical analysis of new technologies leads to a novel metaphysical framework in which our understanding of the ultimate nature of reality shifts from a materialist one to an informational one. In this world, all...
Information and communication technologies of the 20th century have had a significant impact on our daily lives. They have brought new opportunities a...
Computer games have become a major cultural and economic force, and a subject of extensive academic interest. Up until now, however, computer games have received relatively little attention from philosophy. Seeking to remedy this, the present collection of newly written papers by philosophers and media researchers addresses a range of philosophical questions related to three issues of crucial
importance for understanding the phenomenon of computer games: the nature of gameplay and player experience, the moral evaluability of player and avatar actions, and the reality status of the...
Computer games have become a major cultural and economic force, and a subject of extensive academic interest. Up until now, however, computer games...
