Ethics and aesthetics of technologies

Abstract

Human life is thoroughly mediated by technologies and instruments. Contemporary life is a ‘‘technologically mediated life.’’ We rely on what we make in order to survive, to thrive and to live together in societies. Sometimes the things we make improve our lives, and sometimes they make our lives worse. Technological devices shape our culture and the environment, alter patterns of human activity, and influence who we are and how we live. (Kaplan 2009, 2008, 2007). ‘‘Philosophers of technology tend not to celebrate technological achievements, because they get celebrated all the time’’, says Albert Borgmann by emphasizing the problem of how to tame the technological development. Borgmann further elaborates, ‘‘Philosophers point out the liabilities, what happens when technology moves beyond lifting genuine burdens and starts freeing us from burdens that we should not want to be rid of.’’ Technological mediation is precisely this capacity of technology: technologies can mediate between humans and reality, by establishing specific relations between both. This phenomenon of technological mediation has two dimensions, each of them pertaining to one aspect of the relations between humans and reality. [Verbeek paper Persuasive Technology and Moral Responsibility Toward an ethical framework for persuasive technologies addresses the ethical aspects of persuasive technologies. By integrating the concept of ‘persuasive technology’ with the concept of ‘technological mediation’, as developed in theoretical frameworks from the field of persuasive technology and from the philosophy of technology, it will be possible to identify three such points of application. Cf. Verbeek (2010)] (Fig. 1). Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) is concerned with the design, implementation and evaluation of interactive computer-based systems, as well as with the multi-disciplinary study of various issues affecting this interaction. The aim of HCI is to ensure the safety, utility, effectiveness, efficiency, accessibility, and usability of such systems. In recent years, HCI has attracted considerable attention by the academic and research communities, as well as by the Information Society Technologies industry. The ongoing paradigm shift towards a knowledge-intensive Information Society has brought about radical changes in the way people work and interact with each other and with information. Computer-mediated human activities undergo fundamental changes, and new ones appear continuously, as new, intelligent, distributed, and highly interactive technological environments emerge, making available concurrent access to heterogeneous information sources and interpersonal communication. The progressive fusion of existing and emerging technologies is transforming the computer from a specialist’s device into an information appliance. This dynamic evolution is characterized by several dimensions of diversity that are intrinsic to the Information Society. These become evident when considering the broad range of user characteristics, the changing nature of human activities, the variety of contexts of use, the increasing availability and diversification of information, knowledge sources, and services, the proliferation of diverse technological platforms, etc. HCI plays a critical role in the context of the emerging Information Society, as citizens experience technology through their contact with the user interfaces of interactive products, applications, and A. K. Tripathi (&) Department of Philosophy of Technology, Institute for Philosophy, Dresden University of Technology, Dresden, Germany e-mail: arun.tripathi@waoe.org