Technology and the weight of responsibility

In the world of technological life, responsibility has become a ubiquitous theme and a compelling new form of good. This manifests itself in different ways: in the field of law through strict liability for technological products; in Christian theologies that emphasize response to God in a secular age; in the professional responsibility of engineers to public safety, health, and welfare; in the social responsibility of scientists when considering the implications of research; and in philosophy's growing attention to responsibility as an ethical concept. The experience of living with ever-increasing technological powers in this world of technological life demands greater responsibilities, which introduces special and unique responsibilities into the human experience, which can be expressed as a duty plus respicere, that is, as exercising of a more conscious reflection on human actions unprecedented to date.

During the five hundred years that have elapsed since 1500, traditional manual technique, based on human labor, has undergone a transformation through the systematic exploitation of hitherto unknown forces, to become what we now call modern technology. This technology is an accomplice of all the fundamental problems that humanity faces in these first decades of the 21st century - whether they are nuclear (nuclear weapons and plants), chemical (environmental pollution), medical (prolongation of life and hybridization ), biological (loss of biodiversity, biotechnology), informational (excess information, privacy and virtual reality), climatological (transformations of the sky, the sun, the oceans and the Earth at a planetary level) and many other types. Despite continuing efforts to tackle these problems through scientific research and technological innovation, the answers remain fundamentally ethical. Technological solutions to these problems require ethical reflection about which is the best option among those available. However, we are so overwhelmed with competing crises and divergent arguments from different interest groups in favor of different solutions that we often find it difficult to think. How can we begin to value the technohuman condition in which we live, move and exist today?

Faced with this dynamism of problems, there has been a promiscuous and polymorphous invocation of the concept of ethical responsibility. Scientists have an obligation to conduct their research responsibly. Physicians must have a responsibility to their patients. Engineers are responsible for ensuring public safety, health, and welfare when designing structures, products, processes, and systems. Entrepreneurs have a responsibility to commercialize science and technology for public benefit. The population is recommended to practice responsible sexuality. Consumers must be responsible users of the devices and opportunities that saturate the world of technological life. Governments must be accountable to their citizens, companies to their investors, schools to their students.