Traditional Ethics according to Jonas

1
Traditional Ethics according to Jonas

• Technologies are seen as ethically neutral
• Anthropocentricethics only regards dealings
  between human beings
• Human nature viewed as fixed and not altered or
  enhanced by technology
• Good and evil only have to do with immediate
  consequences of acts, not long-term effects

2
Unintended Consequences

• Focus on traditional ethics has allowed us to
  excuse ourselves from understanding the
  diffuse consequences of our technological
  actions
• Ought implies canso if technology increases what
  we can do, it also increases the need and scope
  of ethical responsibility
• Yet our age is also a time in which belief in
  science (read positivism) has undermined belief
  in ethics
• We also increasingly rely on scientific and
  technological experts to solve our problems

3
Technological Fixes

• Some technological optimists suggest that the
  problems pointed to be technological critics can
  always be dealt with by technological means or
  technological fixes
• Technological Fix The effort to undo unintended
  consequences of technology by modification or the
  creation of a new technology

4
The Myth of the Technological Fix

• Alan Drengson describes the myth of the
  technological fix as the belief that all
  unintended consequences can be addressed by tech
  fixes, rather than by moral and/or political
  restraint of technologies
• Drengsons pejorative definition of tech fix
  The attempt to avoid the critical analysis of
  some existing technology by creating or modifying
  technologiesa mere tech fix

5
Edward Tenners Revenge Effects

• When the use of a technology results (either
  immediately or over the long-term) in the
  creation of a similar problem (of equal or
  greater degree) to the problem meant to be solved
  by the original technology
• Ironic unintended negative social or
  environmental consequence of ingenuity
• Same as McLuhans idea of Reversal

6
The Productivity Paradox

• Although billions of dollars have been invested
  in electronic equipment in offices since the
  1980s, productivity in the non-industrial sectors
  of the economy has been essentially flat since
  that time
• The productivity paradox (also known as the
  Solow computer paradox) is the observation that
  as new IT has been introduced, non-industrial
  worker productivity has gone down, not up
• Whence the dream of the paperless office?

7
Examples of Retrieval

• When a new medium leads to the revitalized need
  for old tools and skills
• Vaudeville performers and writers unemployed by
  the advent of early film industry returned to
  influence in the golden age of television in
  the 1950s
• Canadas decision to cancel Avro Arrow in favour
  of the Bomarck missile for northern defense sent
  thousands of aeronautical engineers to NASA who
  become the core of the Apollo programme