Science and Engineering Ethics Enters its Third Decade

During the last 20 years public discourse in the developed and developing worlds has changed radically. The terms ‘‘ethics’’, ‘‘morals’’, ‘‘rights’’, ‘‘safety’’, ‘‘privacy’’, ‘‘media’’, ‘‘genetic engineering’’, ‘‘information technology’’, ‘‘big data’’, ‘‘robots’’, ‘‘satellites’’, ‘‘environment’’, ‘‘climate’’, ‘‘fracking’’, and ‘‘security’’ have loomed large and are set to grow larger. How do these concerns, topics and technological developments affect the way people will think and behave in the years ahead? It is not possible to predict the future, but it is necessary to take a view of what the future might be, so as to head off imminent disasters. The dystopic depictions of George Orwell’s ‘‘1984’’, Aldous Huxley’s ‘‘Brave New World’’, Alvin Toffler’s ‘‘Future Shock’’, Arthur Koestler’s ‘‘Darkness at Noon’’ and Franz Kafka’s ‘‘The Castle’’ seem to forecast what is likely to arise rather than project imagined, fanciful futures. There are some indications that these less than idyllic possibilities are materializing when one examines recent debates about privacy versus security, engagement in conflicts in distant countries, the societal impact of computers, information technology and robots, war (‘‘defence’’) by remote control, and the effects of changing climate on the lives of citizens. Remembering the quotation attributed to Edmund Burke (1729–1797) that ‘‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing’’ it is clear that something must be done. But what? Science and Engineering Ethics is a tool, a component of a system whose properties are expressed in the dissemination, catalysis and stimulation of ideas that examine and seek to improve the way people and societies behave. To do this