Abstract
The lives of contemporary men and women are entangled with technology. The alarm clock that wakes them in the morning, the clothes they put on, the food they eat, the ways they move around, the heated and air-conditioned environments they reside in, their means of communication, their entertainment (television, movies, games, books)—all are examples of technological artefacts that many people use every day. These technological artefacts don’t fulfil their purposes by themselves, but depend on specific practices to do so. Sometimes these are modest, like knowing how to set the alarm; sometimes they are more complex like driving a car or handling a computer. Furthermore, all artefacts and their accompanying practices also presuppose that certain background conditions have been fulfilled (Sclove 1995). Picking up the jar of peanut butter on the breakfast table and asking where it comes from, who produced it and how, and how it arrived here reveals a long, heterogeneous and complex network of people, things and activities, such as farming skills, the production of fertilisers, flying and driving licenses, planes and cars, roads, road maintenance, petrol stations, traffic rules, police and so forth.
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Further reading
Beck, U. (1992) Risk Society. Towards a New Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press).
Grin, J. and Grunwald A. (2000) Vision Assessment: Shaping Technology in the 21st Century Towards a Repertoire for Technology Assessment (Berlin: Springer Verlag).
Lucivero, F., Swierstra, T. and Boenink, M. (2011) ‘Assessing Expectations: Towards a Toolbox for an Ethics of Emerging Technologies’, NanoEthics, 5(2): 129–41
Pols, J. (2012) Care at a Distance. On the Closeness of Technology (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press).
Turkle, S. (2010) Alone Together. Why We Expect More from Technology and Less From Each Other (New York: Basic Books).
Wynne, B. (1996) ‘Misunderstood Misunderstandings. Social Identities and Public Uptake of Science’, in Irwin, A. and Wynne, B. (eds) Misunderstanding Science? The Public Reconstruction of Science and Technology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Wynne, B. (2001) ‘Creating Public Alienation: Expert Cultures of Risk and Ethics on GMOs’, Science as Culture, 10(4): 446–81.
Wynne, B. (2006) ‘Public Engagement as a Means of Restoring Public Trust in Science—Hitting the Note, but Missing the Music?’, Community Genetics, 9(3): 211–20.
References
Akrich, M. (1992) ‘The De-Scription of Technical Objects’, in Bijker, W. and Law, J. (eds) Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Clark, G. (2008) A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Harré, R. (2002) ‘Material Objects in Social Worlds’, Theory Culture Society, 19(23): 23–33.
Holbrook, J. B. (2005) ‘Assessing the Science–Society Relation: The Case of the US National Science Foundation’s Second Merit Review Criterion’, Technology in Society, 27(4): 437–51.
Keulartz, J., Schermer, M., Korthals, M. and Swierstra, T. (2004) ‘Ethics in a Technological Culture. A Programmatic Proposal for a Pragmatist Approach’, Science, Technology and Human Values, 29(1): 3–29.
Latour, B. (1999) Pandora’s Hope. Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. (Boston, MA: Harvard University Press).
Nowotny, H., Scott, P. and Gibbons, M. (2001) Rethinking Science. Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty (Cambridge: Polity).
Sclove, R. E. (1995) Democracy and Technology (New York: The Guilford Press).
Swierstra, T. (2005) ‘Hoe samen te leven met techniek?’, Wijsgerig Perspectief, 45(3): 18–28.
Swierstra, T. and Te Molder, H. (2012) ‘Risk and Soft Impacts’, in Roeser, S., Hillerbrand, R., Peterson, M., and Sandin, P. (eds) Handbook of Risk Theory. Epistemology, Decision, Theory, Ethics and Social Implications of Risk (Dordrecht: Springer).
Von Schomberg, R. (in press) ‘Prospects for Technology Assessment in a Framework of Responsible Research and Innovation’, in Dusseldorp, M. and Beecroft, R. (eds) Technikfolgen abschätzen lehren: Bildungspotenziale transdisziplinärer Methoden (Wiesbaden: Vs Verlag).
Verbeek, P. P. (2005) What Things Do. Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency and Design (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press).
Verbeek, P. P. (2011) Moralizing Technology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2013 Simone van der Burg and Tsjalling Swierstra
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
van der Burg, S., Swierstra, T. (2013). Introduction. In: van der Burg, S., Swierstra, T. (eds) Ethics on the Laboratory Floor. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137002938_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137002938_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-43407-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-00293-8
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social Sciences CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)