The ethical challenges of converging technologies and their solutions

Abstract

Since the beginning of this century, “Converging Technologies”, represented by the fusion of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science, have developed rapidly around the world. Converging technologies aim at enhancing the ability of human beings and improving people’s living environment. However, the related ethical issues are more prominent because of the remodeling and transformation of people’s inherent nature. This article begins by reviewing U.S., European, and Chinese scientists’ expectations and visions for converging technologies and points out that all these technologies are centered on humans and their needs, aiming at helping people live a life of comfort and convenience. Then, from the perspective of philosophy of technology, the article analyzes the characteristics of modern technology. It points out that although all technologies aim at enhancing and improving people’s abilities, in contrast to traditional technologies, converging technologies under the modern context have undergone major changes, both in the form of technological theory and in the form of technical knowledge. First, converging technologies exhibit unity of material at the nanoscale, therefore, the theoretical premise of this “unified science” is, after all, the unity of nature and the unity of material or matter. Second, the key in the convergence of technologies is to integrate humans and machine, humans and technology, and its path is to break the boundaries between natural objects and artifacts. In contrast to traditional technologies that aim at improving human capabilities though artifacts external to the human body, converging technologies, more often than not, aim at the inside of the human body, attempting to shape and change the human body and functions at the more micro level. At this level, the boundaries between artifacts and natural objects, between life and non-life, are blurred. Third, converging technologies result in the embedding of technology in society and human life. As technology gets more and more embedded within the human body and in the environment outside the human body, humans become more and more dependent on technology, and on the other hand, we are not aware of this dependence, we do not even feel its presence. The deeper the technology is embedded in the environment and the life world, the harder we could feel its presence, the greater its impacts are for social life.