End of week 3

This week you have been introduced to the ethical dimension of technological mediation. We looked into the tensions and criticisms concerning ‘moralising technologies’, both in the sense of the moral dimension of technologies as of the possibilities to design morality into technologies . By replacing the word “autonomy” with the word “mediation” one can get actively engaged in the moral implications of technologies. On the one hand, it makes it possible to understand human morality as technologically mediated, and on the other hand, it reveals possibilities for designers to take responsibility for the moral implications of technological mediations. The most important take-home message therefore is that – since there is an ethics of things – designing is actually doing ethics.

Recommendations

Articles:

Verbeek, P.P. (2008), ‘Obstetric Ultrasound and the Technological Mediation of Morality – A Postphenomenological Analysis’. In: Human Studies 31:1,ISSN 0163-8548, pp. 11-26

Verbeek, P.P. (2006), ‘Materializing Morality – design ethics and technological mediation’, in: Science, Technology and Human Values, Vol. 31 no. 3 (May 2006), ISSN 0162-2439, pp. 361-380

Dorrestijn, Steven. The Product Impact Tool: And the Case of the Dutch Public Transport Chip Card

Books:

Foucault, M. (1997). Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth (ed. P. Rabinow). New York: The New Press.

Foucault, M. (1997a). “What is Enlightenment?”. In: M. Foucault, Ethics: subjectivity and truth, edited by Paul Rabinow. New York: The New Press.

Foucault, M. (2010). The Government of Self and Others: Lectures at the Collège de France 1982-1983 (edited by Arnold I. Davidson, translated by Graham Burchell). New York: Palgrave Macmillan

Verbeek, P.P., ‘Moralizing Technology: Understanding and Designing the Morality of Things’. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.

Videos:

Verbeek, Peter-Paul. Moralizing Technology and the ethics of things. TEDxTwenteUT

Deterding, Sebastian. What your design says about you. TEDxTalk