Doing Good with Technologies: Taking Responsibility for the Social Role of Emerging Technologies

Chapter 1. Introduction: responsibility for the social role of technologies.- 1.1 Designing mediating technologies.- 1.2 The main argument of this study.- Chapter 2. Mastering technologies.- 2.1 Traditional debates on the social role of technologies.- 2.2 The empirical turn in philosophy of technology.- 2.3 ANT and Responsibility.- Chapter 3. Actor-networks and taking responsibility.- 3.1 ANT and responsibility.- 3.2 Acting willingly.- 3.3 Causation and mediation.- 3.4 Foresee ability and black-boxing.- 3.5 Responsibility: three problems, three solutions.- Chapter 4. Becoming responsible for techno-social practices.- 4.1 Different styles of doing ethics.- 4.2 Intrinsic motives and practices in actor-networks.- 4.3 Embedded agency.- 4.4 Explaining forward-looking responsibility.- 4.5 An ethics for taking responsibility for the social role of technologies.- Chapter 5. Human practices in a technological contexts.- 5.1 Reinterpreting technological mediation.- 5.2 What do we perceive? Technological mediation of factual beliefs.- 5.3 What can we do? Technological mediation of options for action.- 5.4 What do we want? Technological mediation of moral beliefs.- 5.5 Again: the question of responsibility.- Chapter 6. Tools for a forward-looking responsibility.- 6.1 Part 1 of the toolbox: questions to address.- 6.2 Part 2 of the toolbox: means to answer the questions.- 6.3 Part 3 of the toolbox: evaluating the social role of technologies.- Chapter 7. Case study: Taking responsibility for future driving.- 7.1 Studying the social role of intelligent cars.- 7.2 Step 1: the aims of the technologies.- 7.3 Step 2: the involved practices.- 7.4 Step 3: common reasons of actions of the involved practices.- 7.5 Step 4: future use of the technology.- 7.6 Step 5: mediation of reasons for action.- 7.7 Evaluation.- Chapter 8. Will we accept responsibility?.- Literature.

Katinka Waelbers is a researcher at the philosophy department at the Maastricht University. Her research interests range broadly in bio-ethics, philosophy of technology, environmental philosophy, and political philosophy. She studied Science & Policy (BSc and MSc) and Philosophy (Ba and MSc) at the Utrecht University. She participated in multiple research projects in bio-ethics, environmental ethics, and ethics of technology at the Utrecht University (1998-2005). In 2005, she decided to focus on the philosophy of technology and she went to the University of Twente. There, her work focused on responsibility and future technologies such as nano-technology, IT, and the intelligent car of the future. Since november 2010, she is employed at the Maastricht University to reflect about the future techno-social and techno-moral change. She authored multiple articles and reports, and published several books.