Technological developments are accelerating and increasingly affecting human existence. This sometimes puts central social and ethical values under pressure, such as care for the environment, respect for privacy and safety, autonomy, attention and concentration, and the quality of social relationships. New technologies raise questions regarding privacy, quality of life, the possibility of super-intelligent robots making humans redundant and the question of who is liable if a self-driving car makes a wrong decision. The question focuses on three different aspects. First, it is about how we anticipate the social impact of future technology. This focuses both on the characteristics of the technology itself and the process of technology development, and on the use of technology. In addition, it is important to learn to understand the societal impact of existing technology. Finally, we need to learn to assess this societal impact. The anticipation and description of the impact of technology on people and society can provide input for this normative and ethical assessment of it.
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This question connects historical, philosophical, sociological or legal studies with technological researchers, designers and engineers. The description and normative assessment of technology's impact on society can provide input for policy, the operations of technology companies and the practices of technology researchers or engineers. Methodological questions, such as how best to map the impact of technology, will flesh out evaluative questions about the desired impact. The use of serious games, for example, is an interesting method to simulate anticipated technology change and associated societal impact. Many questions are normative in nature and require ethical investigation. Medical or healthcare technologies, for example, often raise questions of responsibility. When the norm is already set, the question lies in the design of technologies that achieve precisely the desired impact. Subsequently, these questions will provide input for the design of legislation and/or policies to best ensure the standards set in a broad sense. For questions of an applied nature, the answers will be able to be used fairly directly to guide innovation processes. In order to find these answers, many fundamental research questions on the relationship between humans and technology also need to be addressed first.
