Right/Wrong How Technology Transforms Our Ethics

From the TED stage to the page, Juan Enriquez, author of As the Future Catches You and Evolving Ourselves, presents a lively and engaging guide to ethics in a technological age.

Most people have a strong sense of right and wrong, and many of us are not reluctant to argue with someone who disagrees. But when we take an unyielding stand on something we regard as an eternal truth, we forget that ethics evolve over time. What was once broadly acceptable is now completely unacceptable. For example, burning heretics is no longer considered a just punishment. Child marriage is not applauded as a family value. Many shifts in the right vs. wrong pendulum are affected by advances in technology. In Right/Wrong, Juan Enriquez reflects on the evolution of ethics in a technological age.

Juan Enriquez is the author of As the Future Catches You, Evolving Ourselves, and other books. A frequent speaker at TED and other conferences, he has contributed to such publications as Harvard Business Review and Foreign Policy. He is the Director of Excel Venture Management, a life sciences venture capital firm.

INTRODUCTION: WHY IS ETHICS SUDDENLY WHITE-HOT, FRONT-BURNER? 1 
1 REDESIGNING HUMANS 13 
The Ethics of New Sex 13 
Radically Redesigning Humans 30 
Renovating Our Brains? 42 
Pathologically Sick . . . and Imprisoned 48 
2 EXPONENTIAL TECHNOLOGIES: TODAY’S ETHICAL QUICKSAND 57 
So . . . You Warmed Up the Planet Just a Touch? 57 
Renewing Capitalism’s License? 65 
You Used Do WHAT to Animals?! 79 
Deliberate Extinctions: Gene Drives 84 
Technology, Truthiness, and the Demise of Institutions 89 
3 CAUGHT ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY 99 
Just Who Is Supposed to Teach Us RIGHT and WRONG? 100 
More Recent Ethical Quicksand: LGBTQIA 118 
Endangered and Extinct Religions 125 
4 THE IMMORTALITY OF TODAY’S MISTAKES 139 
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Google Are Electronic Tattoos 139 
And Then There Are Dating Sites . . . 151 
5 WHY DON’T WE FIX IT? 159 
Baumol’s Cost Disease 160 
Mass Incarceration 174 
Everything’s Disposable . . . 180 
6 DEAD WRONG: WE STILL DO IT; WE WILL BE JUDGED 185 
Papers, Borders, and Ethics 185 War Profiteering 194 
Can Being Precautionary Kill? 199 
7 CONCLUSION? 209 
Ethics 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 . . . 209 
POSTSCRIPT: GAME CHANGERS 223 
Universal Ethics? China . . . 223 
Artificial Intelligence 227 
Pandemics Have a Way of Focusing Your Ethics, Don’t They? 234 
SETI: First Contact 242 
Acknowledgments 247 
Notes 249 
Index 279