IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2015 - 47

Technology
as Moral Proxy
Autonomy and Paternalism by Design
Jason Millar

I

t is often said that technological artifacts are
morally neutral, that they are bereft of morality save for whatever we might say about
their designers and users. Designers and
users, being people, tend to be considered
the proper and exclusive focus of our moral attention in the designer-technology-user
trio, while technological artifacts, mere tools, cannot

ISTOCK/evryKa23

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2015.2425612
Date of publication: 19 June 2015

contribute anything morally. Technological neutrality,
a common term for describing this perspective, gives
rise to trite statements like, guns don't kill people, people kill people. According to technological neutrality,
whatever morality is pinned on the artifact is done so in
error. Instead, one must refer to the people surrounding an artifact to get an accurate read on the moral
claims that can be associated with its use. Thus, technological neutrality supports a strict kind of delineation
between people and things: people can be the subjects
of a moral analysis; things cannot.

june 2015

∕

IEEE TEchnology and SocIETy MagazInE

1932-4529/15©2015IEEE

47



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