A Covid-19 introduction to Morality by Design: Technology’s Challenge to Human Values
Morality By Design was published in November, 2019, about the same time as scientists in Wuhan, China, discovered a novel coronavirus that would come to be identified by the name COVID-19, and in coming months sweep the world as a pandemic. Had the book been published a few months later, this is the preface I might have written for it. • It is impossible to write about ethics in this chaotic time, without making some reference to the COVID-19 pandemic. Or to the massive social justice demonstrations that broke out in the midst of the global health crisis, provoked initially by the viral...
Read MoreA preface to Morality by Design
I have spent much of my working life toiling in various fields journalism, a craft that allowed me to indulge an obsessive interest in trying understand to the big, existential questions of our time, and then pass along whatever insight I’d gleaned. Decades of research into politics, media, corporate crime, energy policy, environmental pollution, climate change, and, most recently, the impact of technological innovation led me more and more frequently to wonder: “Why is this happening?” and “Why do we let it happen?” Those sorts of questions, it would eventually occur...
Read MoreAbout Wade Rowland
Ranked among Canada’s leading literary journalists, Wade Davies Rowland has written more than a dozen books on subjects ranging from television journalism, organized crime, and international environmental law to his current concerns, which include communications technology, the philosophy of science, and technology and human values. Full author bio.