Technology for a Good Society

Technology permeates modern societies for better or worse. This course provides an introduction to contemporary debates on technology and ethics pursuing questions like: Why are technologists now expected to be more ethically sensitive? Can technology meet the grand challenges of our time? May technologists be held responsible for undesirable implications of technologies? Should lay-people's opinion matter in questions of technology development? What are the relationships between technology and values? By entering various cases and technology controversies we shall simultaneously discuss and evaluate implications of various answers given to these questions.

The students will acquire an overview of current issues and lines of debates in the interdisciplinary fields of engineering ethics and ethics of technology. Students will acquire an understanding of the connections between these lines of debates.

Students will qualify their capacity to understand, take part in and critically evaluate contributions to the debates.

Students will be trained to identify and formulate a clear normative issue in a particular field of technology and discuss how the issue can and should be handled in writing, producing a structured, balanced, independent and argumentative essay.

Lectures, group and plenary discussions during first part of the semester. Supervision and essay writing during the second part of the semester. In order to sit the exam, the students must complete compulsory assignments.