Mark Coeckelbergh

Romanticism and technology are widely assumed to be opposed to each other. Romanticism—understood as a reaction against rationalism and objectivity—is perhaps the last thing users and developers of information and communication technology (ICT) think about when they engage with computer programs and electronic devices. And yet, as Mark Coeckelbergh argues in this book, this way of thinking about technology is itself shaped by romanticism and obscures a better and deeper understanding of our relationship to technology. Coeckelbergh describes the complex relationship between technology and romanticism that links nineteenth-century monsters, automata, and mesmerism with twenty-first-century technology’s magic devices and romantic cyborgs. Coeckelbergh argues that current uses of ICT can be interpreted as attempting a marriage of Enlightenment rationalism and romanticism. He describes the “romantic dialectic,” when this new kind of material romanticism, particularly in the form of the cyborg as romantic figure, seems to turn into its opposite. He shows that both material romanticism and the objections to it are still part of modern thinking, and part of the romantic dialectic. Reflecting on what he calls “the end of the machine,” Coeckelbergh argues that to achieve a more profound critique of contemporary technologies and culture, we need to explore not only different ways of thinking but also different technologies—and that to accomplish the former we require the latter.

The volume consists of nine essays distributed in three groups. The first group of essays engages in an exploration and understanding of the philosophical debate on human enhancement by eliciting the philosophical assumptions and metaphors that characterise this literature. In his essay “Enhancement and the Vulnerable Body: Questioning some Philosophical Assumptions” (chapter 1), Mark Coeckelbergh explores the current debate on human enhancement polarized between ‘bioconservatives’ and ‘transhumanists’ and articulates some significant philosophical assumptions shared by both positions. In pointing out the limitations of these approaches, his paper shows that there is space for a third more nuanced alternative that takes into account how technology transforms vulnerable bodies.

The development of social robots for children with autism has been a growth field for the past 15 years. This article reviews studies in robots and autism as a neurodevelopmental disorder that impacts socialcommunication development, and the ways social robots could help children with autism develop social skills. Drawing on ethics research from the EU-funded Development of Robot-Enhanced Therapy for Children with Autism project, this paper explores how ethics evolves and developed in this European project.

Like other teletechnological practices, drone fighting as remote fighting gives rise to a paradox with regard to the relation between ethics and distance: on the one hand, it bridges physical distance in the sense that it enables spying on people and killing people in other parts of the world. On the other hand, it seems to increase moral distance: if you are far away from your target, it becomes easier to kill. However, based on interviews with drone crew as published in the media, I show that the current surveillance tech­nologies used in drone fighting might mitigate this effect since they allow the viewer to build up a kind of in­timacy with targets. Then I argue that this moral proximity is only possible if we assume!hat in­terpretation and the construction of narrative play a key role in the·epistemology of surveillance. I compare military surveillance to surveillance in public spaces to elaborate this point and explore the relation be­tween automated surveillance, distance, and interpretation. I also argue that given the lack of shared soci­ality and communication, moral distance in surveillance and drone fighting can only partly be bridged by technology-mediated interpretation and narration. I conclude that we need more reflection on how technol­ogies could create the conditions under which moral metamorphosis and interpretative freedom is not only possible but also probable.

Philosophy: Technology is composed of fifteen chapters covering such topics as cyber warfare, designing children, video games and virtual reality, nanotechnology, and technology and the environment. The use of film, literature, art, case studies, and other disciplines or situations/events provide illustrations of human experiences which work as gateways to questions philosophers try to address. Chapters are written by eminent scholars, are peer reviewed, and offer bibliographies to encourage further exploration. Photos and line art help illuminate the text. The volume concludes with a glossary and a comprehensive index.

Robot-Assisted Therapy has successfully been used to improve social skills in children with autism spectrum disorders through remote control of the robot in so-calledWizard of Oz paradigms.However, there is a need to increase the autonomy of the robotboth to lighten the burden on human therapists and to provide a consistent therapeutic experience. This paper seeks to provide insight into increasing the autonomy level of social robots in therapy to move beyond WoZ. With the final aim of improved human-human social interaction for the children, this multidisciplinary research seeks to facilitate the use of social robots as tools in clinical situations by addressing the challenge of increasing robot autonomy. We introduce the clinical framework in which the developments are tested, alongside initial data obtained from patients in a first phase of the project using a WoZ set-up mimicking the targeted supervised-autonomy behaviour. We further describe the implemented system architecture capable of providing the robot with supervised autonomy.

This reply to Gunkel and Zwart further reflects on, and responds to, the following main points: the Heideggerian character of my view and the potential link to Kafka, the suggestion that we should become hackers, the interpretation of my approach in terms of the Hegelian Master–Slave dialectic, the lack of an empirical dimension, and the claim that I think that modern heroism entails overcoming vulnerability. I acknowledge Heideggerian influence, reflect on what it could mean to think about living with ICTs as a kind of hacking, comment on the Hegelian interpretation of my approach and its application to human–technology relations, bring novels and films into the discussion, and clarify that contemporary works of fiction are not necessarily entirely modern and that it has been a central claim here and in my book that although modern thinking and practice attempts to overcome vulnerability with the help of technologies, this is not successful, or it is illusory.

Usually contemporary technology is understood to belong to secular modernity. But how ‚secular‘ and ‚modern‘ are our technological practices and culture? In this essay I argue that if we want to better understand technology, thinking in terms of a rupture between modernity and pre-modernity is inadequate. I show that Judeo-Christian forms of thinking still pervade modern technological visions and could help us think about what I call the ‚delegated spirituality‘ of the artefact, but that our encounters with particular technological artefacts make possible other kinds of spiritual experiences which we can make sense of by referring to non-modern religion such as animism. I also argue that ‚transfigurations‘ are only possible if we assume the radical instability of meaning. I conclude that all cultures, including ours, can be described as ‚techno-religious‘ forms of life which have a spiritual-material history. The rather exceptional idea of secularization is itself part of such a particular history, and does not exclude breakthroughs of the sacred into technological worlds.

Risk analysis and risk management are ways for humans to cope with natural disaster risk. This chapter connects discussions about risk with reflections on nature, technology, vulnerability, and modernity. In particular, it raises questions regarding the natural/human distinction and how human societies and cultures cope with risk. How “natural” are hazards, given human interventions inand interpretations of events, and what are the limitations of “objective” modernapproaches to risk? The chapter argues that coping with risk related to naturaldisasters should be sensitive to the social and cultural dimensions of risk. For thispurpose it proposes the concept of “vulnerability transformations”. It focuses on the experience and phenomenology of natural hazards in relation to existential vulnerability, and, taking a cross-cultural perspective, shows that apart from modern scientific thinking there are also other, less modern ways to cope with natural hazards.

Like other teletechnological practices, drone fighting as remote fighting gives rise to a paradox with regard to the relation between ethics and distance: on the one hand, it bridges physical distance in the sense that it enables spying on people and killing people in other parts of the world. On the other hand, it seems to increase moral distance: if you are far away from your target, it becomes easier to kill. However, based on interviews with drone crew as published in the media, I show that the current surveillance tech­nologies used in drone fighting might mitigate this effect since they allow the viewer to build up a kind of in­timacy with targets. Then I argue that this moral proximity is only possible if we assume!hat in­terpretation and the construction of narrative play a key role in the·epistemology of surveillance. I compare military surveillance to surveillance in public spaces to elaborate this point and explore the relation be­tween automated surveillance, distance, and interpretation. I also argue that given the lack of shared soci­ality and communication, moral distance in surveillance and drone fighting can only partly be bridged by technology-mediated interpretation and narration. I conclude that we need more reflection on how technol­ogies could create the conditions under which moral metamorphosis and interpretative freedom is not only possible but also probable.