Right/Wrong How Technology Transforms Our Ethics

A lively and entertaining guide to ethics in a technological age.

Most people have a strong sense of right and wrong, and they aren't shy about expressing their opinions. But when we take a polarizing stand on something we regard as an eternal truth, we often forget that ethics evolve over time. Many shifts in the right versus wrong pendulum are driven by advances in technology. Our great-grandparents might be shocked by in vitro fertilization; our great-grandchildren might be shocked by the messiness of pregnancy, childbirth, and unedited genes. In Right/Wrong, Juan Enriquez reflects on what happens to our ethics as technology makes the once unimaginable a commonplace occurrence.

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