Narrative and Technology Ethics by Wessel Reijers & Mark Coeckelbergh

Author:Wessel Reijers & Mark Coeckelbergh
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030602727
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Technical Practice and Technological Emplotment

We now understand how technological configuration mediates practice and thereby how it mediates virtue. Crucial in this understanding will be the notions of ascending complexification and descending specification , capturing the movement that links practices through technological configuration with more or less distant ideals. Below, we will integrate these concepts into our theory of technological emplotment and show how they relate to its four central concepts of textuality, literacy, temporality and distancing. We will illustrate this by using the example of driving a car, incorporating the constitutive rules and ideals comprised by a policy called the “New Driving”. This policy was implemented in the Netherlands in 2006 and aimed at mediating the technical practice of driving a car to make it more environmentally friendly (de Goede and Hoedemaeker 2009). The policy was implemented by making students in driving schools aware of the importance of driving sustainably and integrating corresponding practical principles of “the new driving” in their driving lessons. Guiding principles that were adopted in this policy were for instance: (1) switch to a higher gear as soon as possible, and (2) when driving 80 kilometres an hour, drive in the 5th gear. This example is chosen because it is a clear illustration of the twofold movement that links basic actions to more or less distant ideals.

In conceptualising a particular practice, textuality shows us where to look. That is, when considering technical objects that are less textual, such as a bridge, we need to focus on the narratives recounted about a particular object to understand how it mediates our practices (mimesis 1 ). For instance, one could recount how a particular bridge has been crucial for starting a transportation company that delivers goods coming from one city to another city. Such a narrative tells us more about how the bridge mediates particular practices than about the design of the bridge as such. A car is different, in that its design to a much greater extent co-authors the narrative structures that mediate the practice of driving (mimesis 2 ). In our example, the gearbox in a car enables certain basic actions that can be linked in an action-chain, for instance shifting back gears when closing in on a junction with red traffic lights. These actions are understood according to certain constitutive rules that are considered to be standards of excellence, for instance the rule: switching down gears and pressing the brake in front of a traffic light counts as a valid response in traffic. The practice of driving a car links these basic actions and action-chains with more or less distant ideals, such as that of sustainability. Or another example: driving a car can be linked with the life plan of being a taxi driver, in which case the technical practice of driving is nested with regard to the narrative of a person’s professional life.

Literacy , then, shows us at whom to look, and to whom a particular process of technological configuration is accessible. The technical practice

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