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Technological component of STS
Technological component
Component Description Examples Frameworks More Frameworks
Technological Hardware: Machines of different kinds Door (with tasks delegated to it such as automatically shutting and being locked) Value Discovery (identifying and locating values in STS) Social Constructionism> : Restoring interpretive flexibility to reconstruct a technology to remove bias and realize value
Code that configures machines around human purposes Power generating technologies based on renewable and nonrenewable resources Value Translation (Operationalizing and implementing values in a STS by designing and carrying out a procedure) Identifying and mitigating complexity in the form of tightly-coupled systems and non-linear causal chains
Technology can constrain business activity by de-skilling Automobiles, computers, cell phones all of which have produced profound changes in our STSs Value Verification (Using methods of participatory observation to determine how effectively values have been realized.) De-centralizing control and authority
Technology, especially software, can instrument human action Microsoft Office, Firefox Browser, Google Chrome, Google Docs, Social Networking software Transperspectivity : discovering strands of construction of current STS; identifying possibilities for reconstruction Designing to avoid the technological imperative and reverse adaptation (where humans abandon ends and serve the ends of technologies
Ethical Environments of the socio-technical system
Table 2: ethical and social component
Component Description Examples Frameworks More Frameworks
Ethical Environment Moral Constructs : Spheres of justice where distribution takes place according to context-dependent rules (Rules) Basic Moral Concepts : rights, duties, goods, values, virtues, responsibility, and justice Utilitarianism : Happiness is tied to maximizing the satisfaction of aggregated preferences. Basic Capabilities : life, bodily health, bodily integrity
Social Constructs : Power and its distribution among groups and individuals Intermediate Moral Concepts : Privacy, Property, Informed Consent, Free Speech, due Process, Safety/Risk Rights : Capacities of action that are essential to autonomy, vulnerable to standard threats, and correlated with feasible duties Cognitive Capabilities : Sense, Imagination, Thought; Emotion; Practical Reason
Right : A right is a capacity of action, essential to autonomy, that others are obliged to recognize and respect. Privacy : If the information is directly relevant to the relation to the holder and the seeker, then it is not private. Virtues : Settled dispositions toward choosing the mean between extremes of excess and defect. (Courage is the mean between cowardice and recklessness) Social Capabilities : Affiliations, Other Species
Duty : A duty is a principle that obliges us to recognize and respect the rights of others. Property : That with which I mix my labor is mine. Intellectual property is non-rivalrous and non-excludable. Capabilities Approach : For Nussbaum, capabilities answer the question, “What is this person able to do or be?” For Sen, capabilities are “‘substantial freedoms,’ a set of (causally interrelated) opportunities to choose and act.” Capabilities that address vulnerabilities : Play and Control over one's environment

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Source:  OpenStax, Business ethics. OpenStax CNX. Sep 04, 2013 Download for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col10491/1.11
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