The purpose of this lesson is to hold the modern technology to a moral account and to avoid the harmful effects of the existing technology.

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Is Technology Innocent?
Sami-ud-Din
Riphah International University
Islamabad
Sami.uddin@Riphah.edu.pk
00923335952403

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Technology robs children of their innocence in many overt and covert ways.

4. Technology in the 21st Century
Role and Importance
• Technology performs actions in the world that are part of the processes and outcomes of
human affairs.
• Some actions are optional for the operator; others are mandated by the technology, or
perhaps by other technical systems to which the system in question is answerable.
• Some human actions can be performed without the participation of technology, but for
pragmatic reasons are not. Other human actions require the participation of technologies.
• Technologies thereby respond to action, intervene with their own acts, make requests for
action, receive requests for action, make demands on others, and receive demands from
others. (as we observe in video games)
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5. Technology in the 21st Century
Role and Importance
• Technology might be held to account for its actions against instrumental criteria
which compare the technology’s actions with human will for instrumental
action.
• Where human will or human purposes are not faithfully executed by a
technology, the technology might be held to be deficient in some way – to be
slow, inefficient, faulty, costly, liable to error, difficult to use, and so forth.
• Technology not only acts to implement the will of the operator or the designer.
Rather, the technology facilitates the will of the operator and designer. 1
11/18/20151. B. Nardi, Ed., Context and Consciousness: Activity Theory and Human Computer Interaction. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1995, pp. 17-44. 5

6. Role of Clinical Technology
• Clinical technology can be declared as electronic version of the patient where
patient history, medical tests, previous prescription and other necessary documents are held
by it before the doctor. Clinical technology on one hand facilitates both the
doctor and the patient while on the other hand becomes hurdle and an obstacle between
patient and the doctor and may become an annoying factor that badly shape the behavior of
a doctor especially in the case where the doctor or the operator/ lab technician does not
know the proper use of the technology or where the available technology is outdated and ill-
functioning.
• Clinical technology can make the doctor a better doctor, by checking the varieties
of drug inter-actions, or suggesting the current best practice for a treatment.
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7. Being without technology
is unethical
• Indeed, it is now quite likely to be unethical as well as impractical for a
doctor to practice without a computer, an accountant to practice without a
spreadsheet, or a salesperson to practice without a mobile telephone, a lab
technician without a micro-scope, and a university teacher without
multimedia.
• The stronger claim that humans and technologies act and co-
shape one another’s actions in performance.2
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2. D.G. Johnson and T.M. Powers, “Computers as surrogate agents,” in Ethicomp 2004: Challenges for the Citizen of the
Information Society. Proc. Seventh Int.l Conf., T.W. Bynum, N. Pouloudi, S. Rogerson, and T. Spyrou, Eds. (Syros, Greece), Apr. 14
to 16, 2004. vol. 2. Syros, Greece: Univ. of the Aegean, 2004, pp. 422-435.
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8. Proponents’Arguments
1- Technology is not human:
Technology is not human. A priori, only humans may be held to be morally
accountable for their actions.
2- The dumb instrument argument.
The actions of technology may be the immediate cause of harm,
but the Technology is created and operated by humans. The creators
and operators are responsible for the action of the
Technology, not the Technology itself.
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9. 3- The free will argument
Technology is deterministic. That is, it has no will, and it is not free to choose its
actions. Without this freedom there can be no moral responsibility.
4- The right mind argument
Technology has no knowledge of the wider circumstances in which they act, or of
the consequences of their actions, and cannot reasonably be expected to have an
awareness of these contexts or consequences. To be held accountable for the
consequences of an action, a computer system must have the capacity to foresee
these consequences.
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10. 5- The dilution of responsibility argument
• Technology is ill-defined, is not a discrete entity, has no clear boundaries
in space and time, and its extensive constituent elements and boundaries
are not clearly evident. Responsibility that is located everywhere is located
nowhere.
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technology is an instrument that faithfully translates the instructions of its designers and operators into action

11. When there was no technologeeeeeeee…..
• In primitive societies, children learn from natural cycles of life.
• They watch adults manifest food from the ground, observe how usable
goods are fashioned from raw materials, and watch how other provisions are
made for basic needs and enjoyment.
• They listen to stories at mealtime and ceremonial gatherings, which are told
by elders who care about maintaining standards for the survival of their
community.3
11/18/20153. The Discovery of Self, page 125 11

12. Cartoons shape
our Children’s psychology
• Children who watch cartoons and other
programs on television, and who play
video games become enamored with fast
paced, highly stimulating, sexualized, and
violent material.
• Children become physically and
chemically addicted to excitement and the
hormones cursing through their brains
and bodies; they develop no realistic grasp
on the threat of danger.
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13. If parents and teachers
want to mend
• If parents and caregivers reinforce the notion,
children may come to understand on an
intellectual level that such forms of
entertainment are not reality but merely
fantasy. However, on a much more influential
emotional level, children do not comprehend
this difference.
• To bring them back from the distant place
sometimes becomes difficult for parents
and teachers.
• So do not let your children to go distantly
from the position you want by watching
fantastic cartoons and dramas.
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14. Consequences of taking children to unnatural
levels of stimulation
• At such levels, children lose or never develop their
own natural motivation and ability to create,
explore their personal and unique Inner Worlds.
• Children listen to the still soft voice within them,
and they surrender to a larger world of spiritual
mystery.
• Life for such children becomes a quest for
external stimulation, instant gratification,
entertainment, and sensual fulfillment, and the
more the better.
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16. Psychological
demerits of Cartoons Watching
• Cartoons, movies, sports, and news programs expose young minds to so
much violence, out-of-context sex, and a general lack of compassion.
• Winning for thrills, conquering, and annihilating become the coveted goal
and grand prize.
• Hypnotized by mass media, children learn to get one over on the next guy,
to win at the expense of all else, to conform to a projected image, to
consume, to manipulate, or retreat into their own shells.
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17. Excessive use of technology by children
• Through technology, children are given an
acceptable way to avoid contact with others,
further denying needed interactions that would
teach everyone involved how to handle their
emotions and energy, refine their communication
skills, and generally manage their energy.
• In the confines of their own little high-tech
worlds, safely buffeted from bothering mom and
dad, children are now being seen and told they are
good and well behaved for appearing docile and
compliant.
• Thus their social and coping skills are diminished.
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18. The world of
High Tech Children
• This loss of innocence, imagination, and skills lead to a
fragmentary understanding of love between man and
woman.
• Since people are attracted to others of parallel
consciousness and frequency, high tech children are drawn
to similar fragmented beings who have never developed
an understanding of who they are.
• Two half beings do not unite to make a whole being. They
just know they need something they do not have and want
to get it by any shortcut method at their disposal. Their
―love is in reality only an addiction, a need for
gratification from an external source. 11/18/2015 18

19. High Tech Leads to Social
Disintegration
• Without self-awareness, discipline, and skills, a man
and woman will not be able to live harmoniously
together in their full aliveness.
• Witness how so many couples begin with romance
and passionate love, similar to an enjoyable movie,
but after a few months, end up taking so much from
the other or taking their partner for granted.
• They are not acting out of love anymore, but out of
personal egotistic gratification. Love gives. Taking
sucks the vitality out of a relationship.
• Unconditional love must be the foundation and the
building blocks of daily living within any
relationship or it will disintegrate.4
11/18/20154. The Discovery of Self, page 125 19

20. Technology is Morally
not Neutral
• A technology is not morally neutral.
• It embodies a set of values, a framework and an
ideology.
• Technologies include intellectual technologies, such
as cataloging and indexing, and software
technologies, such as search engines, meta-searchers
and subject directories on the Internet.
• Search engines have intrinsic properties that make
them inherently and irredeemably flawed, because
they attempt to infer intellectual properties, such as
the meaningful content of a website, from physical
properties.
• Search engines rely primarily on query term location
and query term frequency, sometimes boosted by
other computable factors, such as link popularity.
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21. Technology is Morally not Neutral
• These pseudo-intellectual technologies,
such as search engines and meta-searchers,
are not morally neutral and how they
incline users to unethical use. We now
have new intellectual technologies coming
in ascendancy: information architecture,
knowledge management and usability
engineering. Now is the time to raise
questions about their (non-) neutrality.5
5. Thomas J. Froehlich: Implications of the Non-neutrality of such Intellectual Technologies as Information Architecture and
Knowledge Management 21

22. Kinds of Information Technology
1.Texting
2.Use of cell phones
3.Social networks such as Facebook and My Space
4.Twitter and related offshoots
5.Email
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23. Kinds of Information Technology
6. Gaming
7. Instant messaging
8. Internet
9. Virtual worlds such as Second Life
10.Web 2.0 to include items such as blogs and wikis
11.Skype and other offshoots
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Harmful Effects of
Information Technology

25. 1- Safety Concerns
• Little probably needs to be said about the safety concerns of electronic
media. The use of cell phones while operating a motor vehicle, for example,
has reached crisis proportions.
• Especially concerning is the use of texting while driving. The Capital Traffic
Police and NHA have banned using Mobile for texting or calling while
driving.
• The new research has found that when drivers text, they are 23 times as likely
to be involved in a crash or close call.
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26. 2- Privacy
• Through modern information technologies, we are indeed visible to the
whole world.
• How will this information about us be used? The question is that will it be
used to control or empower us? We know, for example, that advertisers use
information gathered about us to target products and services.
• What about the ethical status of Machine Readable Passport (MRP) and
Smart Card?
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27. 3- Environmental Pollution
• High speed Music on the roads and streets has polluted the healthy
environment of our surroundings.
• Similarly the use of loudspeakers in Masajid for un-necessary movements
except Azan and Juma Khutba has disturbed the quietness of our streets.
• The smoke emitting from the silencers of vehicles and from the huge
industries has polluted our healthy and natural environment.
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28. 4- The discourteous use of Electronic, Print
and Social Media
• We all have our own stories about being interrupted by others’ discourteous
use of Electronic, Print and Social media. It seems that no place is sacred
anymore from these distractions. You can go to restaurants, Masajids, sports
events, Wedding Ceremonies, and even public bathrooms, and see people
disrupt what used to be private occasions.
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29. 5- Relationships
• As we communicate more and more electronically, a related concern is that
we will lose valuable, face-to-face, communication skills.
• A new research study is found that face-to-face interaction skills are terribly
important to executive success. Using sensors to measure these interactions,
the researchers underscored their results with the following comment:
• “We think face time with colleagues is vital, as much as 2.5
times as important to success as additional access to
information.”
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30. 6- Electronic communication causes Losing
Face to Face skills
• The concern about losing face-to-face skills is especially true with young
people who may never have had the opportunity to have developed these
skills in the first place. Are we breeding a population of young people that
will feel more comfortable communicating electronically, and therefore, lose
the ability to be effective in face-to face encounters?
• Face Reading and concluding intentions of humans playing very important
role in organizational behavior…… what about electronic interaction in
which parties are thousands of miles away from each others? 6
11/18/20156. Peter S. DeLisi 2008, Santa Clara University: The Harmful Effects of Social Networks and Other Electronic Media 30

31. 7- High Tech vs. Low Tech People
• According to a new research studies, people who are heavy media
multitaskers do not pay attention, cannot control their memory or cannot
switch easily from one job to another as adeptly as low-tech people who
concentrate on one job at a time.
• An article in the September, 2009 issue of the Harvard Business Review, “Death
by Information Overload,” cites a study by Microsoft researchers indicating
that people took an average of nearly 25 minutes to return to a work task
after an email interruption.
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32. 8- Overloaded information causes anxiety
• Human beings have limited ability to absorb information before feeling the
effects of information anxiety. Therefore they should not be overloaded by
information…….. Overloading information causes different kinds of
anxiety.
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33. 9- Information Fatigue Syndrome
• According to Lewis, “This term refers to the data smog that we encounter
daily that ultimately interferes with our sleep, concentration, and even affects
our immune system.”
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34. 10- Internet Affective Disorder (IAD)
• Internet addiction generally include spending a lot of time on the Internet,
an inability to cut back on usage and symptoms of withdrawal that include
boredom, anxiety or irritability after a few days of not going online.
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35. 11- Facebook Users’ Survey
• a survey conducted on 4,000 Facebook users. Of this population, nearly 60%
reported that they checked posts in the bathroom, 15% checked it in Classes,
and 11% had hidden the fact that they were checking it from spouse or other
family member.
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36. 12- TV Dramas and Indian films
• The PTV dramas are not representing our culture. These dramas are
promoting elite class culture in the country. Similarly Indian/English films
have destroyed our culture. Our children are using Hindi words in their
conversations.
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