Ethical Assessments of Emerging Technologies

“This volume presents a well-articulated reconstruction of the debate on emerging technologies and proposes an interesting new approach to their assessment. … I think that Lucivero’s approach is very helpful in coping with the complex technological world to come.” (Rosangela Barcaro, Nanoethics, Vol. 11, 2017)

• PART 1.- Chapter 1: Democratic appraisals of future technologies: integrating ethics in Technology assessment.- 1.1 Appraising emerging technologies.- 1.2 From the myth to the history: the evolving social mandate of Technology Assessment.- 1.3 “Institutional” ethics of technology.- 1.3.1 Ethical bodies and the regulation of biomedical research.- 1.3.2 Normative evaluation of emerging technologies and advise to policy-makers.- 1.3.3 Outsourcing ethical reflection.- 1.4 Limitations in traditions assessing technologies.- 1.4.1 The normative deficit in TA.- 1.4.2 The technological and sociological deficit in institutional ethics.- 1.5 The need for integrating ethical inquiry in TA.- 1.6 Between grounding and exploring: the contribution of this study.- Chapter 2: Promises, expectations and visions: on appraising  the plausibility of socio-technical futures.- 2.1 Expecting future science and technologies.- 2.2 The social construction of the future.- 2.3 The guiding normativity in technological visions.- 2.4 Beyond an instrumentalist view: technology and morality.- 2.5 Analyzing expectations’ plausibility: a proposal.- 2.5.1 Desirability vs Plausibility.- 2.5.2 Breaking down the plausibility question.- 2.5.3 In search of plausibility.- 2.5.4 Three strategies to appraise plausible visions.- PART 2.- Chapter 3: The mechanism in the pill. From abstract images to detailed descriptions.- 3.1 Visions of promising technologies: the Nanopil.- 3.2 Promises of emerging artifacts.- 3.3 Rhetoric and black-boxes.- 3.4 A note on methods.- 3.5 The Nanopil: tales of an emerging object.- 3.5.1 From an idea to a project.- 3.5.2 An idealized system and its building-blocks.- 3.5.3 The functional components and their material conditions.- 3.6 From the lab “details” back to the big picture.- Appendix.- Chapter 4: The doctor in the pill. From “technical” details to social practices.- 4.1 Expectations of artifacts in use.- 4.2 (Fictive) scripts and actor-worlds.- 4.3 Research design.- 4.4 TheNanopill: tales of an emerging practice.- 4.4.1 Nanopil designers-world.- 4.4.2 Comparing actors’ worlds: current screening practice and future trends.- 4.4.3 Users’ preference and resistance.- 4. 5 Conclusions.- Chapter 5: The good in the pill. Assessing the plausibility of visions of desirable worlds.- 5.1 Visions of desirable worlds.- 5.2 Different expected artifacts and different values.- 5.3 Plurality of values among actors.- 5.4 Impacts of technologies and the moral landscape.- 5.4.1 Mediation.- 5.4.2 The co-production of technology and morality.- 5.5 Conclusion.- PART 3.- Chapter 6: Expecting diagnostics, diagnosing expectations. The plausibility framework in use.- 6.1 Immunosignatures and the healthcare revolution.- 6.2 Research design.- 6.3 Immunosignatures: a “simple” concept.- 6.3.1 Reconstructing the history of the concept.- 6.3.2 Concepts and components in research practice.- 6.3.3 Some conditions for ImSg to work.- 6.4 The expected context of use.- 6.4.1 The many applications of ImSg.- 6.4.2 Assessing and enriching fictive scripts from situated perspectives.- 6.5 Immunosignatures and a desirable world.- 6.5.1 Articulating moral connotations in different technological platforms.- 6.5.2 Stakeholders and normative divergence.- 6.5.3 The interactions between ImSg and morality.- 6.6 Discussion.- Appendix.- Chapter 7: Scenarios as “grounded explorations”.- Designing tools for discussing the desirability of emerging technologies.- 7.1 In search of a normative framework.- 7.1.2 Democratic deliberation as a normative ideal: a pragmatist approach.- 7.1.2 Triggering moral imagination.- 7.2 Scenarios as tools to foster moral imagination.- 7.3 Plausible scenarios for “grounded explorations”.- 7.4 Techno-moral vignettes and scenarios in action.- 7.4.1 Immunosignatures Workshop.- 7.4.2 Workshop on the Nanopil.- 7.5 Discussion.- References.- Appendix: Techno-ethical scenarios and techno-moral vignettes.- 1. Techno-ethical scenarios on Immunosignatures.- 2. Techno-moral vignettes on Nanopil.- Chapter 8: Building-blocks for ethical assessments of emerging technologies.- 8.1 Between “grounding” and “exploring”.- 8.2 Towards Ethical Assessments of Emerging Technologies.- 8.3 Ethical expertise? Interpreting and intervening.- 8.4 Open questions.- References.