Ignorance is Risk: The Ethics of Developing Information Technologies as Forms of Life

Edited by Adam Jackson

Abstract

With the integration of new forms of technology into societal and academic value systems, a tension has emerged as to whether those who create information technologies should be held morally responsible for the consequences their creations have on existing and emerging ways of life. Drawing on the work of Floridi (2013) and Winner (2014), I argue that researchers and scientists should be held morally responsible for considering the potential repercussions of their work on others’ welfare, both before and after the technological system is integrated into social structures. To support this claim, I consider two ways in which technological innovations reshape our value systems and social worlds; first by creating new kinds of activities as well as ways of life, and second, by informing our conditions for moral and epistemic agency.  In light of these points, additional moral responsibilities and dimensions of care ought to be assumed with the operation and creation of information technologies (and other technological innovations). These moral responsibilities should account for how as a vital part of the infosphere, information technologies reshape our reality by dictating the bodies of information one is exposed to. Using Langdon Winner’s concept of technological somnambulism, it is further clear that those living in the infosphere remain vulnerable and unaware of the exact ways technological innovations re-ontologize our world. Thus, developers, engineers, and CEOs must proceed cautiously when crafting new technological innovations and artificial tools – even when the specific consequences are unpredictable or uncertain.