Technological progress is exponential: it has accelerated over the past few decades – and is picking up speed ever faster. Understandably, these developments also cause anxiety for many people. After all, how are we supposed to ensure that technologies are used for the benefit of humanity? On the other hand, some post-humanists are confidently looking forward to a singularity in which the biological evolution of humans comes to a technical conclusion…
A blind faith in technology would be just as absurd as a knee-jerk rejection of new technologies. Technology is just the tool: as always, our behavior as humans makes the big difference. As a society, we should not shy away from regulating or socially promoting their use. However, in order to make the right decisions, we must first inform ourselves, think carefully about the effects of individual technologies and enter into a social dialog. We should engage openly but critically with technologies such as artificial intelligence or digitalization, question schools of thought such as transhumanism and think about ethical issues such as those arising from autonomous driving. We would like to invite you to do so in this issue – and also to enter into an exchange with us, e.g. with a letter to the editor to redaktion@diesseits.de .
If you would like to read diesseits as a print magazine or as a subscription, simply send a request to abo@diesseits.de . The entire issue is also available (in low resolution) here for free download .
We wish you an interesting read!
