Ethics of Transitions

Inter-section 1What is Ethics of Sciences, Technologies, and Innovation?

True story and oxymoron: ethics of security and surveillance technologies

Once upon a time there was a philosopher, an adviser at the castle, who sent a message to a wise man asking him to come to his country, far far away. The philosopher was convening a grand gathering on the Ethics of Security and Surveillance Technologies and he was hoping the wise man would agree to talk to all of those gathered.

But this is what the man responded:

Let me begin by thanking you for your kind invitation. As you know, I am very sensitive to the problem of Security Technologies to which your Group is devoting its attention.

But it is precisely for this reason that I am somewhat embarrassed by your invitation. I firmly believe that, as far as these technologies are concerned, the only possible ethical attitude is to refuse them completely, as they are inhuman and barbaric, and, moreover, are not designed to achieve the goal they claim to be aiming for. What is more – and this should particularly concern your commission – they act on western democracies as a power that, by establishing a kind of perpetual state of exception, is gradually eliminating any real democracy.

This is why I am hesitating and cannot accept your invitation. Ethics should never be conceived as something that accepts de facto an inhuman situation and tries to establish juridical limits to it.

Yours sincerely,

And so the philosopher gave a similarly ...