Does technology reduce vulnerability?

Coeckelbergh’s latest book: ‘human being @ risk’

29 March 2013

New technological developments often involve big promises while raising ethical questions. ‘Human enhancement’, using technology to boost the human condition, has been a recurring topic in recent years. It involves genetic alterations, electronic ‘enhancements’ and other measures. We seem well on the way to an existence as cyborgs: half human, half machine. But is this acceptable? And especially: what exactly do we expect to achieve? Dr. Mark Coeckelbergh, lecturer at the University of Twente, asks these questions in his latest book – Human Being @ Risk. Coeckelbergh says: “We must realize that new technology always creates new vulnerabilities; the world is in a constant state of flux.”

Transhumanists embrace the new technological potential, and promise that new technology will make us less vulnerable, perhaps even immortal. Coeckelbergh, the book’s author, is also convinced that technology will change humans (as it always has). Nevertheless, he refutes the idea that this change will make us less vulnerable – let alone immortal. Through his philosophical investigation of existential vulnerability and the effects of technology, he argues that our battle against vulnerability continually creates new vulnerabilities. In the process we transform ourselves and our environment over and over again.

New Achilles Heels
Information technology makes it seem as if we can escape to a risk-free world. According to Coeckelbergh, however, our involvement in digital networks and information flows actually makes us vulnerable to computer viruses and cyber attacks. And science may be able to alter our genetic code, but insofar as a ‘new human’ is the result, these new humans will have new physical and psychological vulnerabilities to deal with. Coeckelbergh explains: “We cannot simply wish away our existential vulnerability. Our very existence is an ‘exercise in exposure’ and coping with this exposure, and our attempts to create new shields give rise to ever new Achilles heels.”

The author therefore calls for thorough and deliberate ethical and political reflection on new technologies and the new risks and vulnerabilities that they potentially create. The future of humanity is at stake, after all. Such ethics are not about the ‘objective’ risks of new technologies and how we can factor them in. Rather, it is a question of how technology is changing human existence and its potential for future change. To the extent that we can control these developments, it is important to give due consideration to what kind of people we would like to be in the future.

About the author
Dr. Mark Coeckelbergh teaches philosophy at the University of Twente. He is involved in the Master’s programme in the Philosophy of Technology, among other activities. He conducts his research under the auspices of the CTIT research institute. Coeckelbergh is the managing director of the 3TU Centre for Ethics and Technology. Previous publications include Growing Moral Relations (2012), Imagination and Principles (2007) and other books and articles on humanity, ethics and technology. In 2007 he received the Dutch Society for Bioethics Prize. Click on the following link for more information on the book discussed here: Human Being @ Risk: Enhancement, Technology, and the Evaluation of Vulnerability Transformations (Springer, March 2013).

Contact person
Martine van Hillegersberg, mobile +31 6 2043 2674