Hal Richards: Technological Change and Moral Response

Hal Richards: Technological Change and Moral Response

This case tells the true story of a university employee who suffered from color blindness and who, although he had been an exceptional employee, was terminated when he could not read the color screens displayed by the newly installed PeopleSoft system. Moral outrage on the campus initiated a process that ultimately resulted in Hal Richards being offered another position in which his talents cou...

Technological Change and Technological Strategy

Technological Change and Wage Polarization – The Illiberal Populist Response

The purpose of this paper is discuss how technological change affect the labor market and what populist actions that are expected follow. The causes and consequences of possible technological unemployment will be addressed and to what extent it could be expected that the rapid technological change leads to unemployment (or that the labor market adapts in a similar way to previous technological ...

Technological Artifacts as Moral Carriers and Mediators

In recent times, non-human beings, objects, and structures – for example computational tools and devices – have acquired new moral worth and intrinsic values. Kantian tradition in ethics teaches that human beings do not have to be treated solely as “means”, or as “things”, that is in a merely instrumental way, but also have to be treated as “ends”. I contend that human beings can be treated as ...

Uncertainty and Technological Change

I would like to begin with two generally accepted propositions: First, technological change is a major ingredient of long-term economic growth, and second, technological change is characterized by a high degree of uncertainty. Understanding the nature of these uncertainties and the obstacles to surmounting them is not a trivial matter. Rather, it goes to the heart of how new technologies are de...