25TH ANNIVERSARY VOLUME

A FAUSTIAN EXCHANGE: WHAT IS IT TO BE HUMAN IN THE ERA OF UBIQUITOUS TECHNOLOGY?

Ethical issues in our times of technology: select exploration

Parthasarathi Banerjee

Received: 30 August 2013 / Accepted: 3 September 2013 / Published online: 8 October 2013

� Springer-Verlag London 2013

Abstract The age of technological society demands that

ethical concerns of the path are not forgotten. Technolog-

ical powering of a personal act shortens the gap between

organization and person, and personal ethical concerns then

face a dilemma. Indian’s thought suggests that if a mental

state of equanimity without contention prevails over as a

process, the evils and demerits disappear and ethical dis-

sonance reduces because there is no common evil. Further,

it is no longer necessary to translate potential consequences

of the choices in terms of risks. Liberty peace and love in

this technological time come through the state where the

approach is for hands-off.

Keywords Ethical choice � Mental state �Equanimity � Risks � Common evil

A mighty leader of commerce technology and power might

exhort his countrymen to make haste for the goal while

abandoning if necessary the ethical perils of the path

chosen. A much broader horizon of relentless search for

markets and profits has nearly abandoned considerations on

the path to be chosen. The power maniacs empowered by

unrestrained access to private information offered by the

cyber world and social networking sites now encroach

upon individual world with great impunity; the manipula-

tors of information in genetic codes are engineers using

techniques of biotechnology organisms whose relations

with the given world are never known and bio-paths are

untraced and are potentially dangerous to the world of

living; the medical specialists trade in human health and

human organs without any considerations on bioethics; the

agri-business happily trade in scarce foods jeopardizing life

and being of millions of people; and in the same vein, the

recent financial meltdown looted and parted with assets and

lifesavings of millions of workers rendering economically

vast prosperous areas wasteland! The private goal of power

and profit has colluded with other seekers of similar goals,

and they have all been thrown to wind the restrains on

values of path.

In the Adiparva (the prolegomenon, the first canto) of

the Mahabharata, the great Indian epic, contrarily, the

advice is not to ignore ethical concerns of the chosen path.

This path is a state of mind with equanimity, and the goal is

to rise beyond contention. The Mahabharata epic is full of

dramatic denouements leading to a war that completely

annihilated most of the then India, and this epic considered

as the first of Itihasa (the history) raised time and again

deep questions on the dharma (the ethics) and meaning or

dessert of life to discourse on the significance of judgment

about the path to be chosen. It is advised there in the

Mahabharata that dharma could not be forsaken for the

wished desserts at the goal. This epic recognizes the

impermanence and notes that a moment is sculpted at the

junction of being and its absence. A dessert at such a

fleeting moment is thus an inauthentic goal. Desired goals

often remain elusive, and the consequences further ahead

of the temporal appearance of the dessert and in the long

run go awry sometimes rendering choice of goal wrong or

at least ethically challenged. The Mahabharata takes up the

life in its full length and shows with great dexterity that

what appears to be preferred today could in the next period

appear as destructive. The future periods and respective

temporality cannot be seen from a current temporal van-

tage; what is preferred today could be disliked tomorrow.

P. Banerjee (&)

CSIR-NISTADS, Pusa Gate, Dr. K.S.Krishnan Marg,

New Delhi 110012, India

e-mail: psb_nist@yahoo.com

123

AI & Soc (2013) 28:383–388

DOI 10.1007/s00146-013-0514-7

Individual preference ordering is too shallow and too

greatly burdened with the present and the momentary. In

contrast, the Indian perspective exhorts an individual to

retain the calm and equanimity and to remain in a state.

This state transits through moments and as a process state

does not have contentions. The individual then can love

everything, be compassionate, and be at peace with her

hands off the passage of others.

Much to our discomfort what could be desirable path or

even goal for a person might not at all be compatible with

the path or goal that an organization that this person

belongs to take for instance. The undertaking of science

today is organized. Much of the contemporary sciences in

social areas or in the physical areas are about doing things

and about effecting on changes. We squarely face these

questions in all these organized worlds of our life. Com-

mand driven by hierarchy fails to overcome personal

opportunisms and shirking of information held privately.

The commander often, as in most banks that melted

recently, took away outrageously large pay and bonus by

giving assurances that the commander’s personal goal was

the best goal for all the stakeholders and that the com-

mander would unite all goals. In contrast to the previous

issue on inter-temporal paths here within the same socially

accepted period and the same temporal order, a collective

goal fails to emerge.

Wonder as another instance: What is the dharma of a

social scientist or of a scientist or an engineer? Rather often

a person addresses issues arising out of dilemmas of the

path chosen or on what ought to be undertaken somewhat

intuitively, though digging deep into a human foundation

of values. Alternatively, another person might dig into

what she thought as her professional values. The large

Dharmasastra (foundations of ethical knowledge) literature

of India differentiated dharmas often challenge with each

other. This canon of the Dharmasastra literature deals with

group and individual conducts and the oughts. Social

groups and professions in that literature took pride in their

pursuit of respective dharmas. One group or one set of

conduct takes up a hands-off approach to another mode of

conduct. Each mode is allowed liberty to pursue respective

processes. Do we then assume that instead of searching a

deep foundation of commonly human values to have an

ethical path, ought a person as well pursue own respective

path as ethical for herself. The earlier quoted epic, the

Mahabharata, for instance, narrates several events and

discourses on conducts and ought’s of differentiated groups

as well as of status positions. The question regarding paths

to be considered as preference options could then be sev-

eral, and doubtfully, there could be only one secular and

unique path for all.

In these two modes cited above, in the former, the plight

is because of both path–goal dilemma and the individual–

organization disjuncture, while in the second mode, the

caveat is a group or professional duties and ought pitted

against human or social-total ought, and there appears a

link. A case of methodological individualism lurks in. An

organization and the society share a degree of commonal-

ity, and the individual is obligated often to act for either.

Personally, ethical right may not often lead to the right act

for the organization or of a social group. In similar vein,

goals are embedded in temporal orders. Personal goals and

group goals are ordered in different temporal sequences.

No wonder that personal goals often lead to disastrous

group or social consequences. Most of us are facing this

problem in our daily living. In this article, we will discuss

select facets of such issues.

1 Is there an evil!

When we extend the respective dharma or what we may

describe as calling, perhaps, little will be left out as an evil

to be deserted by each and everyone. We come across

experimental scientists who believe in generating reality

and theories and reject nothing as impossible a priori. The

good if constructed upon a natural order is unacceptable to

these experimenters. Many Indians conjure experimentally

constructed realities and multiple forms of good, and they

hold that legitimately a person or a group of person can

wish dessert that is ‘un-natural.’ If we imagine a continuum

of desserts beginning with the natural kind and finally

tending toward the kind of ‘un-natural,’ then the Indian

society and thought would embrace them all. In this

thought, the good and absence of good or even counter-

good together constitute the real which is a continuum. Just

as in the number continuum where for a positive number,

there is a negative, so in Indian thought and practice for

any positive-kind dessert, there is a counter-dessert. As in

Agamben (1999), a shadow remains there always with a

bright spot; an evil is there with a good. Given many good,

we have so many shadows as we see in polka dots. To such

believers, consequently, reality is in multiplicities of

shadows of which none is perhaps an evil. A good brought

about by an experiment, these believers reckon, would also

conjure corresponding shadow images of counter-good.

Thus, in Indian thought, good is continuous over manifestly

bright to the un-manifest shadow, and one would wonder if

there is any evil at all. Shadows the non-Indian and several

dominant European thought believes are evil and weighty.

The polka-dot believers argue for the bright and positive

values and reject shadows that are evil and have negative

values. There will then be contention and conflict between

the differently valued desserts. The proponents of contin-

uum of desserts and values argue contrarily that all posi-

tive- and negative-valued desserts do exist, and the

384 AI & Soc (2013) 28:383–388

123

ultimate ethical good is in peace and love where there is no

contention. For the believers in the evil shadows, ethics

always struggles with the burden of removing and denying

evil shadows. For a neighborhood with the shadow of an

alternative good, there exists then ‘risks’ according to one

group, while for the other believers, the weights of shadow

are important constructive elements and such counter-

desserts do not pose risks.

Further, shadows resist traceability. A future good

insofar as it is causally related to an action now would

suggest the persistence of shadow in the future as resulting

from actions that ought to have been undertaken, but were

perhaps left out. Alternatively, personal action for the good

when compounded with personal actions of others with

dissimilar good might leave the shadowy evil. In the for-

mer mode, evil shadow is because of the absence of per-

sonal action, and the person is responsible. In the latter, the

person cannot be attributed to responsibility. Similarly, in

the former, causality and temporality remain present, while

in the latter, cause remains elusive and temporal order is

amiss. More importantly, causal traces are temporal, while

interpersonal traces cannot often be temporally ordered. In

the former, the person has agency is tied up with causality

and temporality, while in the latter, agency has been lost to

social interactions, and there is no causal attribution pos-

sible; hence, temporal order too remains missing.

An example might elucidate this above issue. Recall, in

Aeneid, we read about the God of ‘Rumour’ somewhere

from south of the contemporary North Africa. In the

Facebook or in similar social sites as it happens these days,

often a piece of cool and most casual opinion speeds up a

large swarm of opinions in no time and in a direction

completely unintended by the very first Twitter. This

unintended build-up might have been intended by a com-

pletely unknown character. Any fallout contentious in

nature arising from this rumor has ethical consequences

albeit the contentions are not attributable to the first

Twitter.

A calculus if proposed for evil avoidance would suggest

that all good as desired and all evils as undesired. The

problem would appear as soon as we recognize that good

for one could be evil for another. In similar vein, good that

is for now could be counter-good in a future. Given such

limits, it would be impossible to construct a single calculus.

A common will for common good then appears elusive.

Heterogeneous good as the general state of affairs, how-

ever, would not inform us whether the evil is absent. From

the previous argument, the personal good often co-existed

with shadow caused perhaps by nonaction or else, as traces

of incomplete action. Such a shadow is not an evil to the

person concerned. Instead, shadow reminds of traces.

However, once evil is considered as counter-good and in a

common where there are counter-good in plenty and where

causality is lost, as argued above, the common needs to

accept that common evil does not exist. A personal evil or a

personal shadow cannot be extended to the domain of

common. This surely leads to a position that common evil

is absent. We are not sure whether there is a common good

though. Further, in the absence of such common evil, a

common ethic of avoidance and shunning of evil too would

be absent. The common would allow freedom to undertake

actions considered personally desirable. Shrinking of evil

thus immediately reduces ethical burden. Multiple choices

and multiple paths for the common would appear equal and

none to be shunned and hence hands-off!

A close and remarkable parallel exists with the science

and technology where actions bring about changes in the

knowledge that is ever-flowing good. The practitioners of

science and even the implementers of changes are ignorant

of consequences of such changes. Establishing causal

relation between such scientific action and the changes,

typically measured through consequences, would draw data

from the fields nearby the locale of scientific changes.

Maps of causal links between near and distant phenomenon

spatial and temporal would be mostly intractable. A typical

practitioner would be ignorant of the implications while

translating the scientific or technological inquiries. One

cannot demand that this practitioner needs to have com-

plete foreknowledge. Typically, the scientist would posses

reasonable competence on her own field, and discipline of

inquiry and foreknowledge can only be predicated upon the

small aperture provided by the discipline-limited field or

subject of inquiry or of the problem. This ignorance or lack

of complete foreknowledge or of complete causal chains

cannot thus reasonably raise critical ethical issues. How-

ever, undeniably, the scientist’s actions would effect

changes for which responsibility resides albeit only in

limited sense with the actions in question. A close reading

indicates that less than experimental outcome the transla-

tion of outcome into socioeconomic power-horse causes

the long reach of effects. The limited dharma of scientist

cannot perhaps be attributed to great responsibility.

The above issue takes us to the residence of power.

Translation and bringing about a manufactured reality are

undertaken by the power-holder while a clue as to how

reality could be manufactured has been provided by the

experimental undertaking. Much of the ethical dilemmas

result from an instrumentalist perspective of science.

Experiments revealed only one facet, and the science’s

claim remained valid for that limited domain alone.

Translational power effects systemic churn going beyond

the limitations of science’s domain. Dilemma arises

because the investment that most modern societies are

making in S&T is with an expectation that science-led

technology will bring about changes for common in a

target direction, and such changes are not evil.

AI & Soc (2013) 28:383–388 385

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Contemporary knowledge system gains its force from

organized investment and organized undertaking. Large-

scale investments in manufacturing of knowledge have

transformed or have challenged the science in multiple

modes. Perhaps, the most important of such challenges is

rendering of knowledge progressively more instrumental.

Not least is the onus of imperatives that the instrumentality

of knowledge ought to be for common good in particular

for economic gains.

What often is lost sight of is that power-holder has its

own dharma and that is distinctly different from the dharma

of the undertaker of knowledge. Issues on choice for the

resident of power-holder are different from the questions

regarding choice of path of a scientist. In the same vein,

economic interests prevail over investments carried out on

knowledge manufacturing. Conflating the distinct choice

issues could lead one to cry for naturalism or just, in

contrast, that could lead to a close embrace of the world of

artificial. Degree of acceptance of experimental reality or

engineered world is the outcome of negotiations and con-

flict, and such acceptance is thus not related to choice

issues. Instrumental knowledge would necessarily fabricate

a version of the world that cannot be a clone of the natural

world. Nevertheless, the investing society expects knowl-

edge to engineer the natural world in order to get rid of

evil. In the absence of common evil, such a mission fails.

The utopian longing sets up mores and imperatives and

more importantly the ideology to back up an agenda for

ethical transformation of science or knowledge. Investment

having been made by the economic powers, while no

second person holding identical opinion on what consti-

tutes an evil, raises the power of economics to an ideo-

logical height. That ideology transforms the ethical

questions pertaining to knowledge as issues for consider-

ation under interpersonal world! This appears to be diffi-

cult. How can other regarding concerns affect and shape

the epistemic practice or the ontological subjects of

knowledge? Other regarding concerns are challenged by

that power who transforms economic and political inter-

relations by making use of newly availed knowledge.

Ethical concerns could then be directed to the use of

knowledge by the power in question. It does not seem

convincing enough that use of knowledge by power would

dislodge that knowledge from its foundation and translate

the foundation to interpersonal domain.

2 Translation to risk

Having failed to establish a clear causal link between

potential evil in interpersonal domain and the knowledge

availed, the evil would appear as only probable. Such a

calculus would then undertake measuring risk of the

probable appearance of evil shadow. Proponents of this

perspective recognize the evil, the goal as abiding, and

therefore take up risk as a price for both ignorance and

potential damage. Contemporary turn to translating

everything to a price and the dominance of finance have

together undertaken the transformation of ethical questions

to monetary residuals. The difficult but tractable shadows

might yield to calculation of risks. However, the temporal

causal chains would remain intractable to such calculus and

would throw up uncertain results that cannot be calculated

in terms of probability. This happens when in particular

systemic aggregation, clustering or clubbing of individual

pieces of knowledge is undertaken. Categorization of per-

sonal experience and knowledge, as for example of one’s

own body, situates one over on a simulacrum distanced and

observable (Baudrillard 1998). Personal inquiries on ethi-

cal issues then get translated into behavioral data of a

simulated existent as it were. The calculus of risk shifts the

burden from ethical underpinning to that of management,

and from personal questions to impersonal issue of the cost

of risk.

The risk proponents then give up completely the state

approach where indifference to contentions and respects to

counter-desserts allow tranquil equanimity. A risk theory

derives ultimately from a theory of duty and debt. A person

is as it were obligated to undertake an action, while the

ethical connotations and consequences of what remains

under a veil of ignorance. Dutta argued (1975) that ‘‘The

term duty means that which is due or claimed from me. It

presupposes the idea that I have borrowed … and am

obliged to you for something in the past and am compelled

to repay the debt …. But for the repayment of debt I am

compelled to do certain things’’ (p. 30) and in the Western

idea ‘‘The idea of duty… makes a man mere machinery…No choice, no freedom is to be found here’’ (pp. 30–31). In

Indian thought, Dutta argued ‘‘… that out of love or

emanation of divinity that you are working… This idea of

love carries more weight… ennobles a man’’ (p. 31).

Extending this line of thought—in Indian mode, a risk fails

to arise, while in the Western mode and especially under

complex organization, a risk might get introduced.

Such simple and instrumental approach to ethical issues

transforms questions regarding choice into system or

technology management, which is about managing risks

(Lassard and Miller 2001). Never forget that systems or

technologies in the images are remembered. The appar-

ently new and novel are reconstructed memories. Never-

seen novel and highly inventive technologies are perhaps

impossible. Assessing risk for completely novel technolo-

gies is well-nigh impossible; however, imagining risks of a

system that is in the images of things known is conceiv-

able. Alternately, a newly proposed system could be

incrementally different from things time tested. However,

386 AI & Soc (2013) 28:383–388

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newness even if that is creeping and incremental may open

up nonlinear paths with radically different outcomes. We

can rarely be certain about the exact technological out-

come. Such creeping probably introduces elements of risk.

The instrumentalist has the goal chosen beforehand. A

goal is not often a good. The ideologue too has the chosen

goal. The ideologue instrumentalist exhorts to an ordained

path. For such pre-choice, the calculation of risk appears

appropriate, and question of ethics is transformed in terms

of risks and ignorance or uncertainty. For a small world of

living greater dangers of external changes are buffered, the

ripples get attenuated largely at the borders of the small

world (Milgram 1967). With increasing disappearance of

buffers and with broken communities, the life-worlds have

been thrown open to multitudes of currents new and

powerful. The small world ethical concerns remain limited.

However, with breaking open of buffers, unprecedented

signals and choices and preferences come up to challenging

the beliefs conditioned so far to small milieus.

Challenges to previously lived lives and beliefs are now

being thrown up regularly by new technology products and

services. A typical social networking site opens up

immense variations on dialoguing and co-working. With

new flows of dialogical, the earlier norms of choice making

get thrown overboard making room for crazy selections. To

not forget that social organization and the dialogical had

preserved continuity and with break ups and disorganiza-

tions though choices get made the outcomes become non-

linear and unpredictable. To not forget as well that

ordinarily technology as condensed and form-shaped

memory has been preserving and guiding individual

interactions, expectations, and the expectations on expec-

tations. A dwelling as Heidegger (1954/1993) had descri-

bed or as even broadened by Tetsuro (1988) on climate

conditioning the culture, and the embracing technology has

been modes of being in dialogical flow. Dialogical as in the

Purana and the Smrti (a form of the early Indian literature

dealing with the universe as modes and process; one might

like to compare with Whitehead)—the memory and history

have been the technology in this broader sense. Technology

alone does not enframe but in turn gets enframed by the

memory and modes of living. Modes of acting toward other

beings and other times have been the technology. In short,

technology has been the climate for ethical living.

Ethical attitudes are then technological modes. Being in

technology offers comfort of protection from sudden

changes. It is habit and memory shaped up as technological

mode that directs ethical attitudes to others. In contrast to

the folk understanding of technology as machines and

systems, and further down, to add up technology experi-

ments and going further methods of undertaking experi-

ments, methods of designing, and of course the designs, we

identify methods and designs as constituents of technology.

We have thus implicated processes and practices as tech-

nology. Practice, however, is social. So, we appreciate that

technology implicates the social organization of practices,

and in organized activities as inside, an organization

practices organize how we line up our experiments or our

productions. While in the social setup, technology impli-

cated setting of diffused modes of practices, inside the

organization, and for most technology, there are very rigid

steps of practice setup by the organizational power. Fur-

ther, technology is also about a set of interactions between

several organizations or systems. Human desire of fur-

therance of good sets up a dynamic, and no interaction,

process, or even habit can remain unchanged for longer

than a period. Given that each change involves a juncture

where a choice needs to be made, and noticing the presence

of complex vortex of a plethora of choices and changing

the sense of causal query of a person gets immediately

truncated in both time and space. Habits of thoughts and

practice, the modes of technological being that a person is,

provide in such a case short steps and a small geography of

reckoning. The person, as in Kafka’s Great Wall of China

(Kafka 1991), maps out measured steps of her technolog-

ical being. She reckons causes, linkages, directionality in a

small personalized world of technological being or in other

words her ethical being. The Indian thought, in contrast,

took up the equanimity state approach. No risk could be

located in that state. Crossing the boundary of a small

world exposes one immediately to risks and uncertainties.

Beyond this world, the person faces ignorance and risks.

Precisely in order to control such risks, organizations

evolved. In cases, where organizations failed to provide for

enough buffers to the risks or organizations failed to reduce

risks in productive transactions, as happened in the USA

(Williamson 1993), professional associations came up

stronger (Garceau 1940). Such professional associations

held on to theoretical disciplines, and professional conducts

proved an assurance against departures from professional

norms. In parallel, business organizations grew larger who

in order to reduce risks in transactions grew even larger.

Within the organization, behavior, expectations, and

interactions can be controlled, and hence, technological

risks can be reduced to the minimum. However, an orga-

nizational person suffers from idiosyncratic predilections

and self-interests, and variously interprets the uniform

standards and the rules. Verbal dialogues and imputation of

intention subvert the very core of the organized formal

apparatus, and no wonder with size growing, the business

organization suffered increasingly from loss of predict-

ability. Divisions and groups within the business organi-

zation now became the new sources of a different type of

risk. As was narrated by Kafka, the Great Wall of China

was but a string of pieces providing little protection so has

now become the systemic and organizational great buffer.

AI & Soc (2013) 28:383–388 387

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Choice making is now straddled with the enigma of how

far a person as technological being enjoys an agency of

will.

3 Conclusion: limits to freedom or hands-off

Willing a good is enframed in the dialogical and in the

habits from the past, from the memorized. The will

claiming to be free remains emplaced within the temporal

cycle causal modes of what remain outside the simple

cognitive mapping of the dweller of a small world. The

willing person even while choosing within small frames

tastes the temporal orders of successions and disappear-

ances. However, as technological being, the willing agency

embraces less this order of passage. In the technological

mode, the vicinity of interactions with others appears

supreme. In contrast to the temporal, this latter is of spatial

dimension as it were. The willing in this case embraces

intentionality, pragmatics, or other regarding attitudes. The

technology is laid over society.

Undeniably, a person is technologically present in this

sense over and within the society. In contrast to method-

ological individualist’s stance, this person is both condi-

tioned by and conditions the milieu of its social living. In

times past when technological being used to enjoy small

world, living choices could be made using memories and

reasoning. In our time, small world has ballooned up, and

the smallness has been mirrored in the working of floating

memorabilia of changing worlds of living. Apparently,

large world indeed has been a series of worlds of small

living. Nonetheless, in contrast to the previous stable

mooring in small world, the contemporary technologically

lived worlds are fleeting, ever changing from one station of

small world to another small corner. Being in relation is the

mode of technological being. However, with fleeting rela-

tions, demands of reciprocity and obligations as well as of

faith have lost the authority. A small world existed on

reciprocal duties and obligations and was thus intensely

ethical. Contemporary technological being faces the chal-

lenges through loss of reciprocity. Ethical demands and the

problem of choice therefore are hopelessly lost to the social

relations.

To face the loss of social reciprocation, a person would

now need deeper grounding in own being with temporality.

Original question on ethics to recall was founded on this

temporal dimension of the being. The small worldly tech-

nological being then was riveted to the temporal call and

yearnings. Climate provided as depicted in the Purana lit-

erature or now as depicted by Tetsuro this grounding. The

socializing technology that began increasingly more

socialized snatched away the temporal grounding of sci-

ence from technology’s foundation. Freedom in willing

was now restricted first to ghettoized interpersonal recip-

rocations and increasingly later to fleeting ghettos of non-

obligatory interpersonal connectors. Social technologies of

yesteryears of organizations crumbled then through the

substitutive acts of replacing temporal being’s ethics with

risk-profiled calculations, and such calculi soon fell on its

own deadweight. The being as it were is now free poten-

tially from the clutches of ghettos.

Wonder whether such a person as lost in the woods

could indeed find out the lost foundation in its temporal

being and whether technology could be restored or else

track-changed to temporal and ethical foundations. The

willing was not free then as cosmic call restrained unre-

stricted freedom. Willing has not been free in socializing.

Perhaps now to be established mooring with temporality

once again ties the will. Hands-off is then the ethical mode.

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