Cookies on this website

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you click 'Accept all cookies' we'll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies and you won't see this message again. If you click 'Reject all non-essential cookies' only necessary cookies providing core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility will be enabled. Click 'Find out more' for information on how to change your cookie settings.

Building on the analyses provided in Chaps. 3 and 4, this chapter establishes that general claims regarding the desirability of an emerging technology appear to often draw on a superficial unifying rhetoric of supposedly shared values. The discourses on the desirability of the Nanopil implicitly or explicitly refer to a number of values – autonomy, care, comfort, efficiency – that the technology is claimed to promote. The analysis demonstrates the ambivalence and contradictions inherent in the expectation that a technology “offers a solution for a social problem”, “addresses a need” and “improves our current practice”. It does so by building on frameworks developed in the field of philosophy of technology and within the “Vision Assessment” approach. Such frameworks bring forward the moral connotation of possible design choices and the latent ethical controversies in stakeholders’ normative positions, as well as potential technology-mediated changes in the current moral landscape and value framework.

Original publication

DOI

10.1007/978-3-319-23282-9_5

Type

Chapter

Book title

International Library of Ethics, Law and Technology

Publication Date

01/01/2016

Volume

15

Pages

103 - 121