Mark Coeckelbergh – författare

An account of the complex relationship between technology and romanticism that links nineteenth-century monsters, automata, and mesmerism with twenty-first-century technology''s magic devices and romantic cyborgs.

Romanticism and technology are widely assumed to be opposed to each other. Romanticism—understood as a reaction against rationalism and objectivity—is perhaps the last thing users and developers of information and communication technology (ICT) think about when they engage with computer programs and electronic devices. And yet, as Mark Coeckelbergh argues in this book, this way of thinking about technology is itself shaped by romanticism and obscures a better and deeper understanding of our relationship to technology. Coeckelbergh describes the complex relationship between technology and romanticism that links nineteenth-century monsters, automata, and mesmerism with twenty-first-century technology''s magic devices and romantic cyborgs.

Coeckelbergh argues that current uses of ICT can be interpreted as attempting a marriage of Enlightenment rationalism and romanticism. He describes the “romantic dialectic,” when this new kind of material romanticism, particularly in the form of the cyborg as romantic figure, seems to turn into its opposite. He shows that both material romanticism and the objections to it are still part of modern thinking, and part of the romantic dialectic. Reflecting on what he calls “the end of the machine,” Coeckelbergh argues that to achieve a more profound critique of contemporary technologies and culture, we need to explore not only different ways of thinking but also different technologies—and that to accomplish the former we require the latter.

An accessible synthesis of ethical issues raised by artificial intelligence that moves beyond hype and nightmare scenarios to address concrete questions.

Artificial intelligence powers Google''s search engine, enables Facebook to target advertising, and allows Alexa and Siri to do their jobs. AI is also behind self-driving cars, predictive policing, and autonomous weapons that can kill without human intervention. These and other AI applications raise complex ethical issues that are the subject of ongoing debate. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers an accessible synthesis of these issues. Written by a philosopher of technology, AI Ethics goes beyond the usual hype and nightmare scenarios to address concrete questions.

Mark Coeckelbergh describes influential AI narratives, ranging from Frankenstein''s monster to transhumanism and the technological singularity. He surveys relevant philosophical discussions: questions about the fundamental differences between humans and machines and debates over the moral status of AI. He explains the technology of AI, describing different approaches and focusing on machine learning and data science. He offers an overview of important ethical issues, including privacy concerns, responsibility and the delegation of decision making, transparency, and bias as it arises at all stages of data science processes. He also considers the future of work in an AI economy. Finally, he analyzes a range of policy proposals and discusses challenges for policymakers. He argues for ethical practices that embed values in design, translate democratic values into practices and include a vision of the good life and the good society.

This book discusses the problem of freedom and the limits of liberalism considering the challenges of governing climate change and artificial intelligence (AI). It mobilizes resources from political philosophy to make an original argument about the future of technology and the environment.

Can artificial intelligence save the planet? And does that mean we will have to give up our political freedom? Stretching the meaning of freedom but steering away from authoritarian options, this book proposes that, next to using other principles such as justice and equality and taking collective action and cooperating at a global level, we adopt a positive and relational conception of freedom that creates better conditions for human and non-human flourishing. In contrast to easy libertarianism and arrogant techno-solutionism, this offers a less symptomatic treatment of the global crises we face and gives technologies such as AI a role in the gathering of a new, more inclusive political collective and the ongoing participative making of new common worlds.

Written in a clear and accessible style, Green Leviathan or the Poetics of Political Liberty will appeal to researchers and students working in political philosophy, environmental philosophy, and the philosophy of technology.

This book discusses the problem of freedom and the limits of liberalism considering the challenges of governing climate change and artificial intelligence (AI). It mobilizes resources from political philosophy to make an original argument about the future of technology and the environment.

Can artificial intelligence save the planet? And does that mean we will have to give up our political freedom? Stretching the meaning of freedom but steering away from authoritarian options, this book proposes that, next to using other principles such as justice and equality and taking collective action and cooperating at a global level, we adopt a positive and relational conception of freedom that creates better conditions for human and non-human flourishing. In contrast to easy libertarianism and arrogant techno-solutionism, this offers a less symptomatic treatment of the global crises we face and gives technologies such as AI a role in the gathering of a new, more inclusive political collective and the ongoing participative making of new common worlds.

Written in a clear and accessible style, Green Leviathan or the Poetics of Political Liberty will appeal to researchers and students working in political philosophy, environmental philosophy, and the philosophy of technology.

Given the rapid development of new technologies such as smart devices, robots, and artificial intelligence and their impact on the lives of people and on society, it is important and urgent to construct conceptual frameworks that help us to understand and evaluate them. Benefiting from tendencies towards a performative turn in the humanities and social sciences, drawing on thinking about the performing arts, and responding to gaps in contemporary artefact-oriented philosophy of technology, this book moves thinking about technology forward by using performance as a metaphor to understand and evaluate what we do with technology and what technology does with us.

Focusing on the themes of knowledge/experience, agency, and power, and discussing some pertinent ethical issues such as deception, the narrative of the book moves through a number of performance practices: dance, theatre, music, stage magic, and (perhaps surprisingly) philosophy. These are used as sources for metaphors to think about technology—in particular contemporary devices and machines—and as interfaces to bring in various theories that are not usually employed in philosophy of technology. The result is a sequence of gestures and movements towards a performance-oriented conceptual framework for a thinking about technology which, liberated from the static, vision-centred, and dualistic metaphors offered by traditional philosophy, can do more justice to the phenomenology of our daily embodied, social, kinetic, temporal, and narrative performances with technology, our technoperformances.

This book will appeal to scholars of philosophy of technology and performance studies who are interested in reconceptualizing the roles and impact of modern technology.

Given the rapid development of new technologies such as smart devices, robots, and artificial intelligence and their impact on the lives of people and on society, it is important and urgent to construct conceptual frameworks that help us to understand and evaluate them. Benefiting from tendencies towards a performative turn in the humanities and social sciences, drawing on thinking about the performing arts, and responding to gaps in contemporary artefact-oriented philosophy of technology, this book moves thinking about technology forward by using performance as a metaphor to understand and evaluate what we do with technology and what technology does with us.

Focusing on the themes of knowledge/experience, agency, and power, and discussing some pertinent ethical issues such as deception, the narrative of the book moves through a number of performance practices: dance, theatre, music, stage magic, and (perhaps surprisingly) philosophy. These are used as sources for metaphors to think about technology—in particular contemporary devices and machines—and as interfaces to bring in various theories that are not usually employed in philosophy of technology. The result is a sequence of gestures and movements towards a performance-oriented conceptual framework for a thinking about technology which, liberated from the static, vision-centred, and dualistic metaphors offered by traditional philosophy, can do more justice to the phenomenology of our daily embodied, social, kinetic, temporal, and narrative performances with technology, our technoperformances.

This book will appeal to scholars of philosophy of technology and performance studies who are interested in reconceptualizing the roles and impact of modern technology.

What can we learn about the nature of technology by studying practices of maintenance and repair? This volume addresses this question by bringing together scholarship from philosophers of technology working at the forefront of this emerging and exciting topic.

The chapters in this volume explore how attending to maintenance and repair can challenge and complement existing ways of thinking about technology focused on use and design and introduce new philosophical perspectives on the relationship between technology, time and human practice. They examine the significance of maintenance and repair practices at different scales in relation to a diverse range of philosophical traditions and a wide variety of technologies, from urban infrastructure such as bridges and buildings to data technologies such as servers and software systems. Together, the contributions highlight common themes in the philosophical study of maintenance, including the role of skill, the significance of social values and the potential of these practices to transform the technologies to which they are applied. By reflecting on the different ways in which we keep technologies going, from the devices we use in our homes to the large technical systems which surround us, this volume reveals the philosophical significance of practices of maintenance, not only as a source of new insights but also as a resource for enriching our understanding of a variety of existing topics in philosophy.

Maintenance and Philosophy of Technology will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of technology, philosophy of engineering and science & technology studies.

Chapter 9 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

What can we learn about the nature of technology by studying practices of maintenance and repair? This volume addresses this question by bringing together scholarship from philosophers of technology working at the forefront of this emerging and exciting topic.

The chapters in this volume explore how attending to maintenance and repair can challenge and complement existing ways of thinking about technology focused on use and design and introduce new philosophical perspectives on the relationship between technology, time and human practice. They examine the significance of maintenance and repair practices at different scales in relation to a diverse range of philosophical traditions and a wide variety of technologies, from urban infrastructure such as bridges and buildings to data technologies such as servers and software systems. Together, the contributions highlight common themes in the philosophical study of maintenance, including the role of skill, the significance of social values and the potential of these practices to transform the technologies to which they are applied. By reflecting on the different ways in which we keep technologies going, from the devices we use in our homes to the large technical systems which surround us, this volume reveals the philosophical significance of practices of maintenance, not only as a source of new insights but also as a resource for enriching our understanding of a variety of existing topics in philosophy.

Maintenance and Philosophy of Technology will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of technology, philosophy of engineering and science & technology studies.

Chapter 9 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.