Moral experimentation with new technology

By conceiving of new technologies as social experiments, attention is drawn to issues such as how to learn from such experiments while minimizing harm to society, and under what conditions we consider these experiments socially and morally acceptable. In terms of learning, I have argued in an earlier publication that social experimentation with new technology in society may result in three different types of learning, i.e., learning about the impacts of a technology in society (impact learning), learning about the institutions that are needed to properly embed technology in society (institutional learning), and learning about normative and moral issues (moral learning) (Van de Poel 2017).