Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
considers research ethics with regard to both the outcomes, including those related
to research aims, and the process or the ethical conduct of research, including
working with human participants. Ethical issues relating to safety, good design,
gatekeeping and suppressing dissenting opinions and minority group researchers
and whistleblowing are also discussed.
5
Part II: Ethical Impacts of Advanced Applications
of Technology
Part II consists of two chapters on roboethics and ethical uses of outer space.
Chapter
3
on 'Roboethics' by Peter Kopacek, Austria, and Marion Hersh, Scotland,
considers the opportunities, threats and ethical issues in the fast-developing fi eld of
robotics. The chapter starts with defi nitions and statistics and a brief overview of
some of the main technological developments and current and probable future
applications of robots. This includes industrial and service robots, mobile robots,
cloud and ubiquitous robots and bioinspired robots. The ethical issues raised by
some of these types of robots are also discussed briefl y.
The concept of roboethics is then introduced, and the limitations of early approaches
focused on Asimov's (
undated
) laws of robotics are noted. However, the more general
defi nition (Veruggio and Operto
2008
) is able to cover the wider social implications of
the introduction of robots and could be extended to cover the impact on the environment
and other species. The ethical issues of current and future applications of robots are
illustrated by a number of examples covering a wide range of applications, including
health care, military robots and toy and companion robots. Some of the ethical theories
presented in Chap.
2
are then applied to the evaluation of some of the applications of
robots, and the reduction of their environmental impacts is also considered.
Chapter
4
on 'The Ethical Use of Outer Space' by Dave Webb, England, notes
the rapid increase in the commercial and military uses of the space environment and
that, whether we realise it or not, our lives are becoming increasingly infl uenced by
and dependent on the use of space technology. The thousand or more operational
satellites that currently orbit the Earth collect and broadcast enormous amounts of
information worldwide, making important contributions to mapping and com-
munications, environmental monitoring, agriculture, weather forecasting and an
ever-growing range of human activities.
However, competition for valuable geostationary orbits and the positioning of
military spy and other satellites has led to a situation where, rather than being
viewed as a global resource, space is subject to commercial exploitation by whoever
gets there fi rst and open to military exploitation by whoever can develop the
appropriate technology to dominate it. We have learned an astonishing amount
about the Universe through international scientifi c collaboration, and it is now
essential that we learn to cooperate further and develop global agreements on the
way we make use of the space environment. This chapter explores the reasons why
this is becoming increasingly necessary and important, why it is diffi cult to achieve
Search WWH ::
Custom Search