Caption: A sculpture after a drawing by Escher, it is a stellated dodecahedron. It can be found in front of the “Mesa+” building on the Campus, University of Twente

(Astigan.com) — Technology plays a major role in every global problem confronting us at the start of the 21st century. Consequently we need to judge new technologies on their relevance to society, even while they are still being developed.

This is the central argument put forward by Philip Brey during his inauguration as Professor of General Philosophy at the University of Twente on Thursday 9 October 2008.

The issue of the environment, shortages of resources, safety and security in society, social cohesion and integration, health and welfare: according to Brey (born 1966) technology plays a key role in all these issues. But is this role a constructive one? That depends in part on whether we are able to make a normative evaluation that helps to improve the development and application of technology.

The UT professor (and successor to Hans Achterhuis) uses the example of Internet shopping to demonstrate that ethical considerations alone are not sufficient. Although this phenomenon is morally neutral it can lead to social cohesion in towns and cities being impaired, meaning that the question ‘good or bad?’ remains relevant. Brey and his co-researchers are thus seeking a broad normative evaluation framework for each of the urgent social issues. And the ‘ultimate’ standard for everything of value in economic, ethical, aesthetic or other terms is: the good life, and living together.

Escapist fun

The research theme ‘The good life in a technological culture’ will focus on how innovations improve or impair our quality of life. This involves not only the all-too-familiar Internet and mobile telephone – which can here be cited because they bring us personal freedom, autonomy and cohesion, while also imposing a stress culture of total availability. The virtual lifestyle is another area that needs to be examined, because do World of Warcraft and Second Life simply offer escapist fun or serious alternatives to a normal life? Another important issue is the use of robots in nursing and geriatric care in response to rising staff shortages.

Brey also proposes other areas of philosophy of technology deserving a more in-depth study. One task is to anticipate the use and social consequences of upcoming technologies (one recent example being molecular diagnostics that extracts genetic information from the human body in order to predict health risks). Another task is to weigh up values against each other, for instance whether security is more important than privacy, or a strong economy more important than a clean environment.

Research in philosophy of technology at Twente mostly takes place at the 3TU. Centre for Ethics and Technology, a centre of excellence in which UT collaborates with Delft and Eindhoven universities of technology. The Netherlands enjoys a global reputation in the relatively new branch of teaching and research known as philosophy of technology: in the last international visitation the University of Twente’s contribution to this field was rated as ‘excellent’.

Material by the University of Twente

Tags: environment, philosophy, Technology, twente