"... Dr. Ihde brings an enlightening and deeply humanistic perspective to major technological developments, both past and present." —Science Books & Films "Don Ihde is a pleasure to read.... The material is full of nice suggestions and details, empirical materials, fun variations which engage the reader in the work... the overall points almost sneak up on you, they are so gently and gradually offered." —John Compton "A sophisticated celebration of cultural diversity and of its enabling technologies.... perhaps the best single (...) volume relating the philosophical tradition to the broad issues raised by contemporary technologies." —Choice "... important and challenging... " —Review of Metaphysics "... a range of rich historical, cultural, philosophical, and psychological insights, woven together in an intriguing and clear exposition... The book is really a pleasure to read, for its style, immense learning and sanity." —Teaching Philosophy The role of tools and instruments in our relation to the earth and the ways in which technologies are culturally embedded provide the foci of this thought-provoking book. (shrink)

Modern technology is more than a neutral tool: it is the framework of our civilization and shapes our way of life. Social critics claim that we must choose between this way of life and human values. Critical Theory of Technology challenges that pessimistic cliche. This pathbreaking book argues that the roots of the degradation of labor, education, and the environment lie not in technology per se but in the cultural values embodied in its design. Rejecting such popular solutions as economic (...) simplicity or spiritual renewal, Feenberg presents a compelling argument for broader democratic participation in technological choices. This book will be of special interest to scholars and students of philosophy, sociology, contemporary Marxism, and Critical Theory. (shrink)

Health technology assessment consists of thesystematic study of the consequences of theintroduction or continued use of the technology in aparticular context, with the explicit objective toarrive at a judgment of the value or merit of thetechnology. Ideally, it is aimed at assessing allaspects of a given technology or group oftechnologies, including non-technical, e.g.socio-ethical, aspects. However, methods for assessingsocio-ethical implications of health technology arerelatively undeveloped and few mechanisms exist totake action based on the results of such evaluations.Still, the examples of cochlear (...) inplants and other cases illustratethat HTA is not a matter of merely collecting thefacts about a technology. The facts must beplausible and relevant from a particular framework,which is not always shared by different groups. It ishere that socio-ethical aspects are encountered. Ifhealth technology assessment aims to enhance theaccountability of the decision making processregarding funding and use of health technology, it isa major challenge to assessors of health technologiesto deal adequately with existing value pluralism. Inthis respect interactive evaluation may have somethingto offer. (shrink)

Diagnostic devices do more than just passively register facts. They intervene in the situations in which they are put to use. The question addressed here is what this general remark may imply in specific cases. To answer this question a specific case is being analysed: that of the blood sugar measurement device that people with diabetes may use to monitor their own blood sugar levels. This device not only allows the patients concerned to better approach normal blood sugar levels, but (...) alters what counts as normal in the first place. Using the device may shift people's attention away from their physical sensations towards the numbers measured, but it may also help them to increase their own physical self-awareness. Self-monitoring finally (something that the devices have made possible) makes patients less dependent on professionals, but it requires them to engage in self-disciplining and binds them to the outcomes of their measurement activities: their own blood sugar levels. (shrink)

This paper praises and criticizes Peter-Paul Verbeek's What Things Do. The four things that Verbeek does well are: remind us of the importance of technological things; bring Karl Jaspers into the conversation on technology; explain how technology "co-shapes" experience by reading Bruno Latour's actor-network theory in light of Don Ihde's post-phenomenology; develop a material aesthetics of design. The three things that Verbeek does not do well are: analyze the material conditions in which things are produced; criticize the social-political design and (...) use context of things; and appreciate how liberal moral-political theory contributes to our evaluation of technology. (shrink)

Assessment of evidence is becoming a centralpart of health policy decisions – not least inlimit setting decisions. Limit-settingdecisions can be defined as the withholding ofpotentially beneficial health care. Thisarticle seeks to explore the value choicesrelated to the use of evidence in limit-settingdecisions at the political level. To betterspecify the important but restricted role ofevidence in such decisions, the value choicesof relevance are discussed explicitly. Fourcriteria are often considered when settinglimits:1. The severity of disease if untreated or treatedby standard care2. The (...) effectiveness of the new technology3. The cost-effectiveness of the new technology4. The quality of evidence on (1)–(3)The production and assessment of evidence isimportant for each criterion, but severalpoints are identified where the practice ofevidence-based medicine could be furtherdeveloped to capture a broader spectrum ofethical and political concerns that suchdecisions naturally evoke among citizens. (shrink)

The current model of technology assessment treats ethics itself as just another problem‐solving technology. Ethics should resist this model to play a more critical role in technology assessment by better understanding the complex relationship between society, medicine, and technology—and by recasting how problems are defined.

This paper discusses the problematic and sometimes implicit nature of some central notions and criteria used in debates about inclusion (or exclusion) of health care services in the health care benefit package. An analysis of discussions about four health care services—lungtransplantation, statins, (sildenafil (viagra) and rivastigmine—illustrates a case-by-case approach and inconsistent use of criteria, which present a challenge to develop a decision-making procedure in which important criteria or central notions can be discussed explicitly.

The current model of technology assessment treats ethics itself as just another problem‐solving technology. Ethics should resist this model to play a more critical role in technology assessment by better understanding the complex relationship between society, medicine, and technology—and by recasting how problems are defined.

During the last decades several tools have been developed to anticipate the future impact of new and emerging technologies. Many of these focus on ‘hard,’ quantifiable impacts, investigating how novel technologies may affect health, environment and safety. Much less attention is paid to what might be called ‘soft’ impacts: the way technology influences, for example, the distribution of social roles and responsibilities, moral norms and values, or identities. Several types of technology assessment and of scenario studies can be used to (...) anticipate such soft impacts. We argue, however, that these methods do not recognize the dynamic character of morality and its interaction with technology. As a result, they miss an important opportunity to broaden the scope of social and political deliberation on new and emerging technologies.In this paper we outline a framework for building scenarios that enhance the techno-moral imagination by anticipating how technology, morality and their interaction might evolve. To show what kind of product might result from this framework, a scenario is presented as an exemplar. This scenario focuses on developments in biomedical nanotechnology and the moral regime of experimenting with human beings. Finally, the merits and limitations of our framework and the resulting type of scenarios are discussed. (shrink)