About the Technosophy Book Series:
Rapid contemporary technoscientific progress produces unpredictable epistemic and social side-effects. Dealing with both these side-effects and the hypercomplex nature of technological and scientific knowledge acquisition require novel ways of knowing and judging. The Center for Science and Thought (University of Bonn) deals with these issues on the basis of a bottom-up epistemology: Cutting-edge knowledge production at the frontier of of technology and natural sciences generates questions that can only be addressed by way of transdisciplinary cooperation. Such cooperation brings the humanities and social sciences to bear on problem spaces that are currently still mostly shaped without recourse to deep epistemological reflection. Yet, in order to move our knowledge deeper into the unknown, it is important to shift problem spaces so as to make visible the unpredictable, complex dynamics of the social conditions and realities associated with the academic practices of producing knowledge and the trans-sectoral implementation of knowledge and technologies.
In this context, the goal of the book series Technosophy is to feature interdisciplinary work that aims at contributing to both wiser uses of technology and interpretations of cutting-edge science that allow us to address the larger epistemological, metaphysical, ethical, and political questions that necessarily arise when one considers the broader framework within which technoscientific progress is possible and realized. We therefore not only interrogate contemporary natural and techno-sciences from different disciplinary standpoints, but intend to develop new forms of wisdom and social intelligence that allow us to envisage alternative uses of science and technology grounded in their very ontologies and epistemologies.
The editors of this book series are Markus Gabriel, Dennis Lehmkuhl, Aimee van Wynsberghe, Ana Ilievska, Christiane Schäfer und Jan Voosholz.
Contact: technosophy@uni-bonn.de
Our Publications:
Webfare: A Manifesto for Digital Well-Being
by Maurizio Ferraris
From time immemorial, humans have been making deals, consuming goods, cultivating interests, thereby manifesting specific forms of life. Now, these forms of life solidify automatically by transforming into data. Webfare, a form of digital welfare, seeks to initiate a Copernican revolution that places need instead of merit at the center of society. In 21st-century welfare, consumption and production will be considered as the two faces of the same reality. The possibility to create new value is precisely what sets Webfare apart from traditional welfare: it recognizes the new value created by the Web, and aims to use it for everyone's well-being.
Standardization of AI: Ethics Stakeholders, Values and Profit
ed. by Nicholas Kluge Corrêa and Julia Maria Mönig
The relationship between AI, ethics, societal values and standardization is complex. The contributors to this volume discuss the challenges and opportunities involved in standardizing AI ethics, including algorithmic audits, stakeholder participation and certification mechanisms. They offer a comprehensive and interdisciplinary approach to AI ethics governance, covering topics such as auditing auditors, deceptive robots, HR perspectives on AI in job hiring, and how existing citizen infrastructures can inform standardization processes for ethical AI applications.
Humanism in the Age of AI: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Social Critique
ed. by Ana Ilievska
What does it mean to speak of »the human« today, when it is increasingly invoked in the design, deployment, and regulation of artificial intelligence? This interdisciplinary volume attempts to rethink humanism. Across ethics, aesthetics, and social critique, the contributors explore agency and responsibility, freedom and labor, embodiment and cognition, practical wisdom, love and reciprocity, and the ways algorithmic systems reorganize meaning and worldhood. Humanism emerges not as a doctrine or defense of human exceptionality, but as a critical practice of care for a shared world under conditions of technological abstraction.