Decisions about technology

For some, changing how decisions about technology are made (or perhaps become made) involves challenging and changing the social forces and interests at work. The problem is identified as the distribution of power between those interests and... 

From my discussion of what these criteria mean for technology, I suggest the following as principles on which more concrete policies to inform decisions about technology could be based. These are not rules for decision making, but indicators of what should be considered in deciding whether a technology helps to make the world a fit home for human life on earth. 

A sense of responsibility for the world is one of the most important of the virtues of citizenship that, along with concern for the world, have traditionally been emphasized by republicanism. In the following chapter I examine this virtue, along with other meanings that responsibility can have. I also look at how decisions about technology are made, by government and by individuals. To what extent are they responsible decisions, informed by a sense of responsibility for the world ... 

In the previous chapter I concluded that decisions about technology should be informed by a sense of responsibility for the public world, and that the public world should foster such a sense of responsibility in its citizens. What does having a sense of responsibility involve What factors affect whether or not people have such a sense of responsibility ... 

To help answer these questions I start this chapter with an examination of the various meanings of responsibility and discuss the nature of our responsibilities for things. I then examine how decisions about technology are currently made and point out the ways in which this leads to organized irresponsibility , particularly in the case of synthetic chemicals. Finally, I consider the limitations of risk assessment as a conception of responsible decision making. 

One part of organized irresponsibility is the neglect of responsibility for the public world constituted by technology when making decisions about technology. The other is the fact that rarely is anyone held to account for that neglect. 

Thus if our decisions about technology are to be responsible decisions, assessments of risks must be supplemented by at least two other considerations the completeness of our knowledge of risks (that is the extent to which we are in fact uncertain or ignorant about what the consequences will be), and who or what is being put at risk. 

The irresponsibility that characterizes modern technology has two aspects. One is that decisions about technology are irresponsible, the other that there is a lack of accountability for damage caused as a result of those decisions. 

In the final chapter I elaborate on how these aims could be achieved. I propose a new framework for making decisions about technology that has at its core a concern for the world. 

An important difference between buildings and what is normally considered as technology is that the latter lacks the fixedness to a particular location that buildings have. Decision making by local committees would therefore not be appropriate in the current economic and political system, decisions about technology have to be made at the national, or in some cases the international, level. However, there is still scope for a system modelled on that for built development. 

In Chapter 3 I argued that our goal when making decisions about technology should be to make the world a better home for human life on earth. 

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