The Frailest Thing: Technology, Ethics, and the Moral Life↗

18 Conscience of a Machine Gary Marcus has predicted that within the next two to three decades we would enter an era “in which it will no longer be optional for machines to have ethical systems.

19 Perspectives on Privacy and Human Flourishing I’ve not been able to track down the source, but somewhere Marshall McLuhan wrote, “Publication is a self-invasion of privacy.

20 When Silence Is Power In The Human Condition , Hannah Arendt wrote, “What first undermines and then kills political communities is loss of power and final impotence.

21 Troubles We Must Not Refuse In an editorial at Wired , “Today’s Apps Are Turning Us Into Sociopaths,” Evan Selinger provides an incisive critique of an app that promises to automate aspects of...

22 Just Livin' To Be Heard I don’t ordinarily take my cues from John Mellencamp’s lyrics, but … consider: “A million young poets Screamin’ out their words To a world full of people Just livin’ to be...

23 The Transhumanist Promise: Happiness You Cannot Refuse Transhumanism, a diverse movement aimed at transcending our present human limitations, continues to gravitate away from the fringes of public...

24 Are Human Enhancement and AI Incompatible? An essay adapted from Nick Bostrom’s book, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies , appeared on Slate’s “Future Tense” blog with the cheerfully...

25 Do Artifacts Have Ethics? Writing about “technology and the moral dimension,” tech writer and Gigaom founder, Om Malik made the following observation : “I can safely say that we in tech don’t...

26 Lethal Autonomous Weapons and Thoughtlessness In the mid-twentieth century, Hannah Arendt wrote extensively about the critical importance of learning to think in the aftermath of a great rupture...

27 Attention and the Moral Life I’ve continued to think about a question raised by Frank Furedi in an otherwise lackluster essay about distraction and digital devices.

28 To Act, or Not to Act On Social Media In November 2016, The Atlantic posted a video showing an audience of two-hundred or so reacting fervently, some with Nazi salutes, when Richard Spencer came...

29 The Ethics of Information Literacy On NPR’s Here and Now , Derek Thompson of The Atlantic discussed the problem of “fake news.” It was all very sensible, of course.

30 What Do I See When I See My Child? At first glance, this may seem like a question with an obvious and straightforward answer, but it isn’t. Vision plays a trick on us all.

31 Growing Up With AI In an excerpt from her forthcoming book , Who Can You Trust?

32 Digital Devices and Learning to Grow Up Last week the NY Times ran the sort of op-ed on digital culture that the cultured despisers love to ridicule.

33 The Ethics of Technological Mediation Where do we look when we’re looking for the ethical implications of technology? A few would say that we look at the technological artifact itself.

34 One Does Not Simply Add Ethics To Technology In a twitter thread that was retweeted thousands of times, the actor Kumail Nanjiani took the tech industry to task for its apparent indifference to...

35 There Is No "We" “Questioning AI ethics does not make you a gloomy Luddite,” or so the title of an article in a London business newspaper assures us.

36 Does Technology Evolve More Quickly Than Ethical and Legal Norms? It is frequently observed that developments in technology run ahead of law and ethics, which never quite catch up.

37 Why We Can’t Have Humane Technology I wrote the title post for this collection of essays you are now reading in 2014.

38 Beyond the Trolley Car: The Moral Pedagogy of Ethical Tools It is almost impossible to read about the ethics of autonomous vehicles without encountering some version of the trolley car problem .

39 In Defense of Technology Ethics, Properly Understood One of the more puzzling aspects of technology discourse that I encounter with some frequency is the tendency to oppose legal, political, and...