Hybrid Ethics

Abstract

Abstract This chapter expands upon the ethical orientation of Automating Empathy. It observes that for many people modern life is symbiotic with technologies that function by means of networks and data about intimate aspects of human life. It proposes ‘hybrid ethics’ as a means of considering the terms of connectivity with sociotechnical systems. With data ethics seen as less a matter of the right to be alone than interest in the terms of connectivity with systems and organisations, there is scope for controversy. The chapter accounts for this by discussing surveillance realism, overinterest in technology and usability, acceptance of dominance by major technology platforms, and seduction by marketing rhetoric. The hybrid view is argued to be mindful of these, instead purporting to rearrange and imagine alternative possibilities. The chapter progresses to simplify the chapter’s philosophically normative view for applied usage. This distils to questions of what sorts of technologies do people want to live with, on what terms, how do they affect the existing order of things, at what cost do the benefits of given technologies come, and how can the relationship be better?