Overview

Sheila Jasanoff charts society's embrace of technological solutions and technology's complex interplay with ethics and human rights. She dissects the ways in which we delegate power to technological systems and asks how we might regain control. From GMOs to gene therapy, biomedicine has challenged traditional definitions of life and death and raised difficult questions, such as who owns our genetic information. The Internet has redefined privacy with social media and search giants operating as new, all-powerful ""data oligarchs"", while cyber warfare has weakened the boundaries of the nation-state. Jasanoff shows that, far from being an amoral or apolitical force, technology has important consequences for government of, by and for the people. The Ethics of Invention challenges us to build a future in which we work in open, democratic dialogue to manage the risks and promises of technology.

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9780393078992

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... readable and absorbing book...A clear-eyed study of shiny and new inventions... -- Richard Joyner - Times Higher Education

""... readable and absorbing book...A clear-eyed study of shiny and new inventions..."" -- Richard Joyner - Times Higher Education

A remarkable book which brings government and technology into much-needed dialogue. Across disasters and designer babies, GMO crops and information technologies, Sheila Jasanoff expertly tracks the social and technological forces that shape our worlds. Drawing on the full range of her previous scholarship, she elegantly raises a number of profound questions concerning the possibilities for democratic control over technological forces which seem too fast, too complex and too unpredictable for our institutions to handle. Along the way, our very notion of democracy is extended, challenged and transformed. -- Professor Alan Irwin, Department of Organization, Copenhagen Business School Not bewitched by technological promises, The Ethics of Innovation reclaims the future for human creativity. Sheila Jasanoff opens our eyes to the fact that societies are governed by technical systems as much as by the rule of law. And if we want to govern ourselves well, we need collective imaginations of the world we want to live in. -- Professor Alfred Nordmann, Darmstadt Technical University

Author Information

Sheila Jasanoff is professor of science and technology studies at Harvard Kennedy School. She is the author of many books on technology, including The Ethics of Invention, Science and Public Reason and Designs on Nature. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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