Hermeneutics, History, and Technology

Armin Grunwald is Professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Technology and Director of the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany. His research fields include technology assessment and ethics of new technologies. He is author of multiple publications, including Technology Assessment in Practice and Theory (2018). Alfred Nordmann is a Philosopher of Science and of Technoscience at the Technical University of Darmstadt. His current interests concern working knowledge and principles of composition as epistemological and aesthetic foundations of technoscience. He published introductions to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and the Philosophy of Technology as well as Methodological Critiques of Technological Futures. Martin Sand is Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Technology at Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. He investigates digital utopias utilizing recent insights from political philosophy. He teaches various courses on engineering ethics and is co-editor of the book series, Futures of Technology, Science and Society.

Part I: Debating the Program 1. On the Road to Hermeneutic Technology Assessment – A Historic-Systematic Reconstruction; 2. Hermeneutic Technology Assessment – Why It Is Needed and What It Might Be; 3. Future Conversations – A Topical Exchange; 4. The Questions of Hermeneutic TA – Towards a Toolbox Part II: Theory and Context 5. Technology in the Imagination of Society – A Conversation; 6. On "Not Having a Future"; 7. On Profane Futures and Profane Futures Literacy; 8. Precautionary or Proactionary – A Debate Part III: Exemplary Explorations 9. Prototyping Futures – Towards a Hermeneutics of Artefacts and Technologies; 10. The Hermeneutic Perspective on Modeling in Technology Assessment; 11. Machine Hermeneutics