Redeeming Technology: An Introduction
Technology, by its nature, is designed and intended to be used in a particular way. You can use a landmine as a paperweight, but if you do you are using it wrong. The moral questions are simple to see in the case of landmine design, but they are just as real in less-obvious contexts. What, for example, are the moral issues with your mobile phone? What are the ethics of drinks bottles? The social impact of cooking by microwave? The spiritual impact of worshiping by Power Point?
It is convenient to think of such everyday items as “value free”. This makes life simple. We think of a phone being “good” or “bad” when it is fast or slow; cheap or expensive; light or heavy. How can a phone be morally good?
For creators of technology, though, value-free thinking means we can be oblivious entire areas of creative research, simply because it never occurred to us that the key questions could be asked.
For users of technology, it means that we can go through life oblivious to simple choices that work to our harm or our benefit.
This half-day workshop lays the groundwork for a series of workshops bringing technology users and technology creators together to understand and work on the opportunities available in redeeming technology.
Talk 1.1: Can “Stuff” be Morally Good?
Dr Mike Brownnutt
Talk information
Synopsis
Video
Slides
Activity
Talk 1.2: Overview: Beyond a Utilitarian View of Technology
Dr Leung Wing-Tai
Talk information
Synopsis
Video
Slides
Book Discussions
“Technopoly” – Neil Postman
“Tool Users vs. Homo Sapiens and the Megamachine” – Lewis Mumford
“A Moratorium on Cyborgs” – Evan Selinger and Timothy Engström
Post-workshop
Explanation of homework
Homework
Future Talks
The series will continue over four further sessions, once every two months, on the first Saturday of each month:
These sessions will engage with topics including