Ethics and technology

Abstract

In the previous chapter deliberative public engagement towards technology policy was presented as a necessary means to achieve democratically legitimate and socially robust outcomes when risks, costs and other social and environmental benefits and burdens are distributed asymmetrically between social groups and ecological systems. The arguments within this book are grounded in a normative ethical commitment to deliberative democratic control of technology governance despite the various drawbacks associated with representativeness and legitimacy discussed in chapter 1. The grounding assumption is that pluralistic involvement of heterogeneous publics in participatory Technology Assessment (PTA) can assure that decisions are substantively fairer than those that are based upon technical expertise alone. Public trust in institutions gained through fair and open decision-making may help to foster broader acceptance of controversial technology proposals when they would have been otherwise objected to. At the very least, the processes and methods of PTA legitimise public objections, in the sense that they are transparent to decision-makers and based upon a process of justification through open deliberation. This procedural fairness aspect of decision-making has been shown under certain circumstances to alleviate public scepticism towards implementing institutions and to build public support for decisions taken, even when they are politically unpopular amongst an affected community (Gross 2007; Renn et al. 1996). However, though it provides opportunities to enhance democratic legitimacy, this should not be confused with an assessment of the ethics of technology policy and practice, as these two facets are ontologically distinct.