The Popularisation of Emerging Technologies through Ethics

We are used to considering engineering ethics largely a critical enterprise. By pointing out ethical issues and by raising concerns about a technology, ethicists usually criticise rather than promote the technology in question. Of course, from a utilitarianist perspective, an ethicist might come to the conclusion that a certain technology is better than another one or than doing without. However, such conclusions are rare in philosophy and would not be considered uncritical promotion. In this essay I argue that engineering ethics, almost unavoidably, turns into the promotion and popularisation of a technology if that technology does not exist yet but is considered to be emerging in the near future. In other words, ethics of emerging technologies is not only prone to but almost destined to play a propaganda role in the public sphere. As engineering ethics moves from established to emerging technologies ethicists need to be aware that they become useful instruments in the struggle for public attention and funding. After pointing out three popularisation traps that ethicists of emerging technologies tend to walk in, I briefly discuss nanotechnology and synthetic biology as two recent cases. In conclusion, I suggest two strategies that avoid the popularisation traps and other related dilemmas and which, by reorienting the working focus of ethicists, allow the making of useful ethical contributions.