Scandinavian And Nordic Perspectives

Technology Ethics

Parallel to the discussions in bioethics, a scholarly literature has evolved that is concerned with the relationship of technology and society. In this literature attempts are made to understand the interrelationships between technological change and social concerns. The concept of ethics also is important in this context, but it is not always used in the strict philosophical sense of the word. The Scandinavian and Nordic countries all have a tradition of social planning. All three countries were industrialized at a relatively late stage and at a slow pace. This has allowed for peaceful processes of industrialization with attention paid to the welfare state and social welfare.

As a consequence, labor unions, among other groups, have played a crucial role in social development and various traditions of democracy and welfare planning have evolved that have a strong influence on Scandinavian societies. This may explain why several issues in ethics, social policy, and technology have been formulated in a relatively constructive and formative rather than reactive way. In the initial stages two scholarly traditions seemed important: working life science and a critique of technology.

WORKING LIFE SCIENCE  This tradition began in the late 1960s. In 1971 the Norwegian Iron and Metal Workers_ Union initiated an important project with rested Niggard that dealt with planning methods for the trade unions (Fug sang 1993). The aim of the project was to strengthen the trade unions_ influence on new computer technologies. In 1975 the Swedish National Federation of Labor Unions (LO) sponsored a similar project, DEMOS, which dealt with democratic control and planning in working life. The aim of the project was to support workers_ influence on the new technology.

 In Denmark Project DUE, which dealt with democracy, development, and data processing, was initiated. Some of these projects were inspired in part by Harry Braver man’s work on the degrading and controlling
Aspects of work (Braver man 1976), but their aim clearly went beyond Braver man’s objectives. They were not limited to studying the negative consequences of technology but instead were intended to formulate an approach to a constructive development of technology.

One of the computer scientists who took part in those discussions, Pele Ehen, published a book explaining these aims (Ehn 1988). In that book the Scandinavian approach was seen as standing in opposition to the so-called social technical approach, a functional approach in which social and technical systems were understood as being interdependent. By contrast, in Ehn_s view workers should be able to participate directly in the development of computer systems.

CRITIQUE OF TECHNOLOGY This tradition evolved from a combination of philosophical and sociological approaches. In Norway, Arne Næss developed his ecophilosophy, which was concerned, among other things, with the inability of engineers to take into consideration the wholeness of humankind and nature in which they were situated (Noses 1976). Sigmund Kvaløy (1976) developed a critique of the complexity of industrialism. The sociologist Dag Østerberg (1974) was concerned with the way in which technology could be understood as materialized social relations interacting with human activity.

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