New Ethics Regarding Technology

“Take, for instance, as the first major change in the inherited picture, the critical vulnerability of nature to man’s technological intervention – unsuspected before it began to show itself in damage already done.” – Hans Jonas Page 125

I picked this passage from the Hans Jonas article because I found it extraordinary that in 1973 (and even prior to that) philosophers already observed and identified the effects of technology on nature, well before the population began to administer rules and laws to address the behavior causing these effects on nature. To have the foresight to detect damages and forecast additional damages in the future is a remarkable skill. The warning to the population not only brought forward attention to the subject matter but also provided ample reaction time to successfully adopt laws regarding the behavior before the behavior caused irreversible damage.

I believe that if not for these types of early warnings and pleas for change the population may not have acknowledge the damages until it was too late. The ideology that stood true in 1973 remains true in 2009.