Techno-ethics: Dealing with ambivalence of advancements

Techno-ethics: Dealing with ambivalence of advancements

Yanuar Nugroho
Member
Board of ELSPPAT (Institute for Development
Studies & Technological Assistance)
Bogor, West Java

In the field of science and technology, globalization will
contribute significantly to mark 2003 as the year when
technological advancements would explicitly bring about ethical
problems regarding most aspects of humanity. The whole history of
human beings might be rerouted to new paths that we never would
have imagined before. At least three aspects would be affected
extensively, thus raising new challenges for this globalized
world.

First, the ability to change the molecular cell structures of
individual human beings to alter who we are, will raise the
knottiest questions of 2003, as Alun Anderson from New Scientist
has predicted. The Human Proteomics Organization (HUPO),
previously known as the Human Genome Organization (HUGO), was
reported to have nearly completed mapping the human genome.

In related news, Reuters ran an article (Nov. 28, 2002) on Dr.
Severino Antinori, an Italian fertility expert, who spoke at a
press conference in Rome on Nov. 26 and revealed that one of his
patients would give birth to a cloned baby in January 2003. He
said that the cloned fetus was healthy and weighed roughly six
pounds, and two others would soon follow. Many are skeptical of
this news, however, as Antinori has not produced any evidence so
that the case of these cloned babies remain entirely speculative.

Yet, let us assume that he is telling the truth and the cloned
baby would be born in January. What, then, will this bring to our
history as mankind? One of the problems starts here and
obviously, will not stop here.

Second, Bill Gates has indicated 2003 as the starting point
for the advancement of the so-called "ubiquitous computing era",
when humans will be surrounded by computers essential to almost
every part of our daily lives.

Gartner Dataquest has provided information that the world
computer industry shipped one billion PCs in 2002, and that
another billion are expected to be built in Indonesia over the
next six years starting next year. According to the World Bank,
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) expenditures
reached more than US$3.54 billion in 2002. Regarding the
Internet, more than two million of the Indonesian population are
Internet users, and this number will increase in 2003.

ICT is not just about PCs, though, and in 2003, the number of
mobile phones worldwide (1.47 billion) will outstrip the landline
(1.14 billion) for the first time. In Indonesia, the increase of
mobile phone usage over the past seven years was also dramatic,
with statistics rising from one mobile phone per 1,000 people in
1995, to more than 17 mobile phones per 1,000 people this year.
Clearly, developments in ICT will keep changing the way people
communicate and live.

However, the main ICT issue will stay the same: is it
computation or communication? It is the long-standing issue of
"privacy vs. piracy" -- something difficult to assess.

Table 1

Third, The Economist reports that the world's first crop of
genetically modified (GM) rice will be planted in paddy fields
across China in 2003. In addition, over 150 million acres of
transgenic crops will be grown worldwide in 2003 -- most
comprising soya beans, corn and cotton.

The beginning of genetically modified crops for general
consumption can be trace to May 19, 1994, when the U.S. Food and
Drug Administration (USFDA) gave its final approval to Calgene,
Inc. to put its genetically engineered tomato, the Flavr Savr, on
the market. Flavr Savr had a gene added from a foreign source, a
bacterium (or other), which is used to keep track of the genetic
changes. Organisms of this sort are classified as transgenic, an
organisms that contains gene(s) "transplanted" across biological
boundaries between species or even biological kingdoms, such as
the plant and the animal kingdoms.

Of course, as it can be foreseen even now, the progress in
transgenic crop-farming in 2003 would raise more controversy not
only among environmentalists and NGO activists, but also for bio-
ethicists, regarding the "natural" or "non-natural"
characteristics of such crops, especially when they are our
source of food.

In the arena of GM food, the transgenic crop is merely the
beginning: In 2003, milk from cloned cows will arrive on
supermarket shelves once it passes USFDA testing, and cloned pigs
will trot out in 2004, The Economist adds. This will escalate the
debate, for sure.

Table 2

What do these advancements mean? What do they imply? What are
the consequences?

First of all, we have reached the boundary at which we can no
longer believe that science is a neutral, value-free quest for
"Truth". In 1962, Thomas Kuhn opened science to scrutiny as a
social activity, but now the advancement of technology has become
ambivalent and caused controversies.

In modern biology, it has opened the Pandora's box of
bioethics as to whether or not humans are "playing God". Yet, the
implications might differ from one to another.

On the one hand, as MSNBC News put it, the confusion about
human cloning and its complicated ethical issues prompted the
U.S. National Academy of Sciences to organize an international
panel of scientists to discuss the technology and its possible
direction. The panel was aimed at helping to decide whether the
U.S. should impose a moratorium on human cloning, which the House
of Representatives had voted to outlaw. Under the House bill,
violations would be punishable by fines of $1 million or more and
up to 10 years in prison.

On the other hand, the U.S. and a few other governments
support the production of transgenic seeds, which can be argued
as being basically no different from cloning humans, since in
both cases, humans intervene in a natural process.

The market for GM crops will grow worldwide: $2.9 billion-
worth of the seed will be sold in 2003 and is projected to rise
to $3.8 billion by 2006. Once the USFDA gives its go-ahead for
cloned animals to be served as food, the combined market of
transgenic crops and cloned animals will grow even bigger -- and
the resistance to such foods would be seen instead as self-
indulgence.

The tension between the U.S. policy and European labeling
requirements for GM foods will clash when produce from GM crops
will have already entered the European food chain in 2003.

Here we come to question: How are we to understand these
contradictory stances to the same issues? Are the new genetic
objects (cloned organisms and GM crops) a fatal invasion or a
benign enrichment? Are they created for ill, or for good? They
are, of course, scientific inventions which are aimed at
improving our lives -- but let's not forget that they are also
gems of profit.

A similar juxtaposition exists in issues of communication
technology. With advancements in processor and computer
manufacturing technology, the problems of ICT in the next year
will, nonetheless, remain the broad arena of the "privacy vs.
piracy" issue, inclusive of derivative issues such as software
piracy, hacking, alternative operating systems (OS), wireless
networks and computer viruses.

The area of ICT is a veritable battlefield, which does not
look likely to clear any time soon: The fight between licensed OS
(e.g. Microsoft Windows) and free open-sourced OS (e.g. GNU
Linux) has become more salient; emulators (e.g. YahooPOPs)
emulates, or hacks, the webmail of Yahoo! so that users can
download e-mail free-of-charge; and peer-to-peer (P2P) technology
over the Internet (e.g. Kazaa, IMesh, Grokster and WinMX) have
replaced the well-known Napster. It is through such battles that
ICT will play a more and more important role in raising the
awareness and consciousness of society, particularly in terms of
a global culture, global identity and global lifestyle.

Yet, it is not a one-way process. As long as Linux is still
considered an enemy of Microsoft Windows, Advanced Micro Devices
(AMD) a competitor to Intel Corp, YahooPOPs a hacker of Internet
applications for Yahoo!Mail, and IMesh a thief of online
entertainment, there still exists another battle: It is the
battle between the mainstream and the alternative, and while the
latter is unlikely to be known to as broad an audience as the
former, it still provides more choices for us, the users.

Now we might confront one of the most intractable problems
since science & technology are being utilized, used and exploited
as it is incorporated into the pure logic of profit-seekers, that
is, business. If the power of business in this storm of neo-
liberalism is beset by the problem of democratic
unaccountability, then we can figure out why the issue on the
public accountability of science is more urgent than is admitted
by most false prophets of science. This is the center of techno-
ethics -- ethics for technological advancement.

Technological advancements must be subject to the criteria of
democratic accountability. Otherwise, what happens is precisely
disaster since technology is both a locus and an extension of
power. The issue of accountability concerns the ethical
implications of the exercise of knowledge, i.e., technological
knowledge as power. Thus, techno-ethics is not simply about
putting users before the experts, but rather in either the
experts or in the way technology has been exploited by business
power.

The notion of the "neutrality" of science and technology is
only true insofar as both are separated from their exercising
agents -- which is impossible. Science is neither about
demonstrations by experts nor is it for the sake of market
expansion for pure profit accumulation, but about dialogue among
stakeholders.

Welcome to the ambivalent advancement of technologies in 2003.
Don't be confused.

The writer is also a lecturer at Sahid University, Surakarta.