Abstract
This study deals with young people’s attitudes towards and social acceptance of “cyborg technology” including wearables and insideables (or implantable devices) to enhance human ability in Japan as part of the international research project on cyborg ethics, taking Japanese socio-cultural characteristics surrounding cyborg technology into consideration. Those subjects were investigated through questionnaire surveys of Japanese university students, which was conducted in November and December 2016. The survey results demonstrated respondents’ relatively low resistance to using wearables and insideables to improve human physical ability and intellectual power. On the other hand, the morality of insideables were questioned by respondents. In various aspects, statistically significant differences in attitudes towards the technologies between genders were detected.
Highlights
This study deals with people’s attitudes towards and social acceptance of “cyborg technology” including wearables and insideables in Japan as part of the international research project on cyborg ethics, taking Japanese socio-cultural characteristics surrounding cyborg technology into consideration.Wearables are defined as electronic devices that are incorporated into clothes and accessories and interact with the user to enhance human ability, whereas insideables as electronic devices implanted in a human body for non-medical purposes that interact with the user to increase his/her innate human capacities such as mental agility, memory and physical strength, or give him/her new ones such as a capability to control machines remotely
For example, that a cyborg is a human being whose physical and/or intellectual ability is enhanced by wearable or insideable/implantable physical devices or equipment developed based on scientific technology, those with eyeglasses or contact lenses could be considered as cyborgs
As the first step towards a full-fledged, cross-cultural research on cyborg ethics, this study showed the results of an exploratory survey to investigate Japanese youngsters’ attitudes towards wearables and insideables using an online questionnaire
Summary
Meiji University, Centre for Business Information Ethics. Ehime University, Faculty of Collaborative Regional Innovation. Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Business and Management. Universidad de La Rioja, Department of Economy and Business
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