(Hanna, 2025)
Digital ethics and AI ethics are of fundamental importance for humankind and its future. In his book, Digital Technology for Humans, Robert Hanna shows how specifically Kantian moral principles can be applied to the design, production, and implementation of digital technology, with a special focus on how these principles flow from the concept and fact of human dignity. Hanna’s core thesis is that digital technology is nothing more and nothing less than a tool created by humankind for the betterment of humankind, whose use should be constrained by Kantian moral principles grounded in human dignity. By now, we’ve all heard endlessly about digital technology and AI, both from the side of AI-advocates and from the side of AI-critics. And indeed, many of us are experiencing what might be called “AI Burnout,” which is the apathetic state of mind in which, exhausted by constantly hearing and thinking about it, we simply ignore the whole debate about digital technology and AI, and passively allow what Hanna has called called “the invasion of the mind-snatchers” to happen. But on the contrary, we should be actively resisting it, pushing back against it, and changing our lives accordingly, which is why Hanna wrote Digital Technology for Humans.
You can find an accessible but also fully detailed podcast on Hanna’s “Why Read Digital Technology for Humans?,” created by Scott Heftler and other friends of Philosophy Without Borders, HERE.
And you can also download and read or share a .pdf of the full text of “Why Read Digital Technology for Humans?” by clicking on the Download tab directly below.
Against Professional Philosophy is a sub-project of the online mega-project Philosophy Without Borders, which is home-based on Patreon here.
Please consider becoming a patron!
