Technologies of control & desireMathias Klang @klangable

Can you make an ethical choice?

Which choices don’t need to be ethical?

Ethical zones

Ethical choicesEffects on

others

Effects onother

sentientbeings

Effects on non-feelingbeings, ecosystems &culture etc

The non-choice choice: ethics without thought? Why did you drink coffee this morning?

The unreasoned choice

Which reasoning makes a choice ethical?

Ethics:a very very

short version

ethnocentrism

Cultural relativism

Culture

Human Nature

Good Evil

Choice?

Nurture Nature

absolutism

Ethical relativism

Social construct

Social Contract

Rousseau Hobbes

Utilitarianism

Bentham - Happiness

Teleological ethics

Mill - Good

Rule ethics

Kant

Duties – not impulses

Categorical imperative

Rawls

Rule creation

Veil of ignorance

Habermas

Discourse ethics

Virtue ethics

Aristotle’s Golden mean

Where technology?

Technology: techne (art) & logos (discourse)

• T as object– Tools, instruments, machines…

• T as knowledge– How to make and use the objects

• T as activity– Methods, routines & skills

• T as sociotechnical system– Design, development & control

In America I had arranged with a gramophonefirm to make some of my music. This suggested the idea that I should compose something whose length should be determined by the capacity of the record.

Igor Stravinsky (1925)

Technological determinism

determinism Nothing to be done.

Technological determinism: society's technology drives the development of its social structure and cultural values

Hard vs soft deterministsWe role the dice

L. Winner: do artifacts have politics?

Who creates what controls us?

Techno-Love

Euphoric optimism

Techno-Fear

Plato – The Phaedrus (ca 370 bc)

…you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.

“The word written on parchment will last a thousand years. The printed word is on paper. How long will it last? The most you can expect a book of paper to survive is two hundred years.” Johannes Trithemius (1494) In Praise of Scribes

Rail travel at high speeds is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia. Dionysius Lardner (1830) The Steam Engine Explained

No one will pay good money to get from Berlin to Potsdam in one hour when he can ride his horse there in one day for free. William I of Prussia (1864), on the invention of trains

Newspapers & Telegraph create nervous disorders by exposing people to "the sorrows of individuals everywhere”

George M Beard (1881)

These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy...in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape.

John Philip Sousa (1854 – 1932)

Today’s discussion

Blogger 1999Google 1999

Orwell v. Huxley

Destroying Culture & Knowledge

Censorship v. Information overload

Captives v. Trivial

Fear & Pain v. Entertainment & Stimuli

Check out Evgeny Morosov!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk8x3V-sUgU

Optimism!

Mathias Klang mklang@sju.edu or @klangable

www.klangable.com

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