What Is Living and What Is Dead in Classic European Philosophy of Technology?

Classic European philosophy of technology is the original effort to think critically rather than promotionally about the historically unique mutation that is anchored in the Industrial Revolution and has since progressively transformed the world and itself. Three representative contributions to this pivotal philosophical project can be found in texts by Alan Turing, Jacques Ellul, and Martin Heidegger. Despite having initiated analytic, sociological, and phenomenological approaches to philosophy of technology, respectively, all three are often treated today in a somewhat patronizing manner. The present chapter seeks to revisit and reconsider their contributions, arguing that, especially in the case of Ellul and Heidegger, what is commonly dismissed as their overgeneralizations about modern technology as a whole might reasonably be of continuing relevance to contemporary students in the philosophy of technology.

Understanding Engineering Design and Its Social, Political, and Moral Dimensions

This chapter covers two central issues in the philosophy of engineering design. The first concerns the nature, structure, and function of engineering design. Building on the existing literature, the chapter provides an account of engineering design from a bird’s eye view, asking what kind of practice it is, how it relates to other human practices (including other forms of design and other forms of engineering), and how engineering design processes are typically structured. The second issue concerns the moral, social and political choices embedded in design. The chapter investigates what a good design is from the perspective of ethics and society, how new designs can affect society in positive and negative ways, and how design processes can be supportive of values and ideals of a good society.

Whence and W(h)ither Technology Ethics

Will there be a future for technology ethics as a respected academic discipline among philosophers, scientists, engineers, and the general public? We hope that the answer is, “Yes.” But for that to be so, the field must undertake a frank assessment of its historical origins in Heidegger’s ideology-laden, technology critique and in the environmental crisis of the 1960s and 1970s, along with the nuclear arms race and protests against newer technologies of war deployed in Vietnam. Moreover, technology ethics for the twenty-first century will thrive and will have an impact on technologists and policymakers only if it finds its way to complement its traditional emphasis on risk with an analytical framework that foregrounds the promotion of the human and the common good independent of received assumptions about the moral valence of technology, itself.

Philosophy of Technology between the Continental and Analytic Traditions

During the past fifty-odd years, philosophy of technology has been nurtured by two distinct philosophical traditions, the continental and the analytic, with the former at first sight dominating. On closer scrutiny, however, it appears that philosophy of technology’s borrowings from the continental tradition have been superficial and eclectic at best, and philosophy of technology cannot be said to be firmly rooted in either continental or analytic philosophy. Yet the felt contrast, or even antagonism, between these traditions has arguably prevented the field from acknowledging that it failed to develop an encompassing conception of technology and from contemplating as a serious possibility that the phenomenon of technology may be so large as to escape such a definition. In response, this chapter proposes to think of philosophy of technology as composed of three subfields, and it makes suggestions on how the particular strengths of analytic and continental philosophy can contribute to these subfields.

Urban Aesthetics and Technology

Technology in one form or another has always been a part of urban life. Its development and uses have traditionally been dictated by the practical needs of the community. However, technologies also impact how a city looks and feels. Some technologies have a clear perceivable presence, whereas others are more invisibly embedded into the material structures of the city. This chapter is a study of how the aesthetic features of cities manifest through and in relation to technologies. The chapter bridges recent developments in philosophical urban aesthetics and contemporary approaches in the philosophy of technology. Central concepts include perception, aesthetic experience, aesthetic value, affordance, and attention. The chapter presents urban mobility as an example of how technology can be studied through the framework of urban aesthetics. The final part of the chapter highlights some implications of the aesthetics of technology for urban design.

A Framework for Thawing Value Conflicts in the GMO Debate

This chapter explores the ethical dimensions of one of the most contentious applications of agricultural biotechnology: the genetic modification of food products. While the development of genetically modified breeds and seeds has many advantages, the public has consistently expressed worries concerning the adoption of genetically modified organisms. The first section of this chapter uses the AquAdvantage salmon debate in the United States to highlight the most common concerns discussed in current labeling debates, from the potential for environmental harm to health impacts. This analysis illustrates how the polarization of the public debate stems from normative conflicts, rather than a lack of empirical research. Two barriers to achieving consensus concerning genetic modification are identified, before the chapter ends with the introduction of the “GMO Value Framework,” a reflexive approach designed to help cultivate fruitful value-focused discussions concerning current and future bioengineering applications.

Reflections on Promises and Perils Thinking for Emerging Technologies

Recent work in the philosophy of technology draws attention to the connection between technology and the good life. Discourse around emerging technologies also makes this connection, albeit implicitly, when it focuses on the promises and perils of going forward with a nascent technology. Emerging technologies are touted for their potential to bring about increased safety, health, convenience, or enlightenment and disparaged for their perils—diminished freedom, erosion of privacy, new vulnerabilities to nature. Use of the promises-and-perils framework is commonplace and rarely challenged. A comparison between the promises-and-perils framework and cost-benefit analysis reveals some of the advantages and disadvantages of promises-and-perils thinking. Uncertainty is an overarching problem and that makes plausibility important. How can the plausibility of promises and perils be assessed? A sociotechnical systems understanding of technology reveals at least three sources of uncertainty, and these provide some basis for evaluating the plausibility of promises and perils.

Revisiting Smartness in the Smart City

This chapter critically examines the intelligence of smart city government, which often ignores experiential and practical knowledge of citizens. The smart city movement’s tunnel-visioned pursuit of technology-driven intelligence distracts from smart citizenship: civic intelligence and knowledge that lives outside the scope of business-friendly tech entrepreneurs. The disenfranchised, although knowledgeable decision makers, are often ignored in the design process, because their values challenge or conflict with the status quo. Sensible actions of the non-valued are actively undermined as aberrant, rather than taken as informed input on how to improve the city for all. The term “smart city” assumes that data-driven innovation is needed because the citizenry is not already smart, while pushing forward with the premise that technical and surveillance-driven solutions are integral to solving “universal” problems that reflect corporate and governmental values. This precludes taking the knowledge claims and actions of citizens seriously.

Technological Multistability and the Trouble with the Things Themselves

Following Husserl, phenomenologists and “postphenomenologists” often use a rhetoric of getting back to the “things themselves.” However, open questions remain about how we should understand the metaphysical status of the technologies that we encounter. These questions remain especially open for perspectives such as postphenomenology (and sister accounts such as feminist new materialism, and actor-network theory), with their commitments to an ontology of relations. One way forward is through a deeper consideration of the postphenomenological notion of “multistability,” the idea that technologies always support multiple meanings and uses. Including a detour through Jean-Paul Sartre’s example of the letter opener, I explore what it can mean for technological multistability to constitute a jumping-off point for analysis, rather than a conversation stopper. The “things themselves” are a fine investigative target to be sought. Nevertheless, we should prepare for the possibility that we may find something else.

Introducing the Philosophy of Technology

This introduction to the Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Technology begins with a provocation and rumination on the lateness of its arrival—that is, the fact that only in the twenty-first century do we have a mature body of Anglophone philosophical scholarship on technology that seems worthy of such an in-depth survey. Technology has been radically transforming the conditions of human existence for millennia; how could the pursuit of wisdom neglect it? This chapter reflects upon the ancient sources and contemporary costs of philosophical prejudice against, and considerable past neglect of, technology as an independent subject of inquiry, before outlining and summarizing the contributions in this volume that represent the robust field of philosophical study that has emerged to meet this need. The chapter concludes with a call for philosophers to embrace the profound and growing responsibility of becoming wise about technology, and humanity’s future with it.