The Family of the Future: How Technologies Can Lead to Moral Change

Rethinking the Implications of Transformative Economic Innovations: Mapping Challenges of Private Law

“…Most drones carry on-board video cameras that are able to capture images of superior quality, some are equipped with sensors that can help avoid obstacles, others have the ability to autonomously follow a person around, the higher-end drones even have advanced facial recognition capabilities. With such extensive technological surveillance capabilities, relative invisibility and silent flight of drones, it is no surprise that individuals might feel like they are being constantly under surveillance 66. There are different dimensions of privacy that might be infringed by drone use.…”

The moral matter of an interactive online domain: a philosophical and empirical exploration of how our relation with the online domain mediates online morality

“…The possibility of getting pulled over by a police officer may lead to yet another reason to slow down, to avoid a personal reprimand and time delay. Waelbers and Swierstra (2014) conclude that technologies do not simply transform our action programs; they also mediate why we do what we do. According to Waelbers and Swierstra, technology may mediate peoples' beliefs about how the world is, how they can act in the world, and how they should act in that world.…”

“…Technological objects also possess them. When both programs (human and technological object) are combined, the connection obtains a new program of action, different from both original action programs (Waelbers & Swierstra, 2014). In many of these new programs of actions, a moral role of technology may appear.…”

“…Nonetheless, for a general understanding of how technological objects shape human morality, analyzing technologies as transformations of programs of actions is not sufficient. Waelbers (2011) and Waelbers and Swierstra (2014) suggest that technologies do not only affect peoples' actions, they also mediate why people should act in a particular way. Motorists' programs of action for slowing down for speed cameras or for speedbumps may be identical, but the reasons why they slow down differ significantly, preventing a speeding ticket, on the one hand, and avoiding a damaged car, on the other.…”

“…Nonetheless, the most important mediating role of an obstetric ultrasound is that, in case of developmental anomaly, it empowers the parents as decision-makers regarding the life of their unborn child. Though the role of the ultrasound is ambivalent here, the information it provides may encourage abortion, but it may also discourage abortion because of the enhanced bond between the parents and the unborn child: a simple look into the womb becomes a first step in a moral decision-making process for which many couples had not opted (Verbeek, 2008) The various approaches to how technology influences our life-worlds, as developed by Latour (1992;, Waelbers and Swierstra (2014) and Verbeek (2008;, demonstrate that, when humans use technologies, these must not be appreciated as mere neutral extensions of human practices and needs. Instead technologies actively shape life-worlds.…”