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This paper aims to show how the production of meaning is a matter of people interacting with technologies, throughout their appropriation and in co-performances. The researchers rely on the case of household-based voice assistants that endorse speaking as a primary mode of interaction with technologies. By analyzing the ethical significance of voice assistants as co-producers of moral meaning intervening in the material and socio-cultural space of the home, the paper invites their informed and critical use as a form of (re-)empowerment while acknowledging their productive role in human values.

This paper presents an empirically informed philosophical analysis. Using the conceptual frameworks of technological appropriation and human–technological performances, while drawing on the interviews with voice assistants’ users and literature studies, this paper unravels the meaning-making processes in relation to these technologies in the household use. It additionally draws on a Wittgensteinian perspective to attend to the productive role of language and link to wider cultural meanings.

By combining two approaches, appropriation and technoperformances, and analyzing the themes of privacy, power and knowledge, the paper shows how voice assistants help to shape a specific moral subject: embodied in space and made as it performatively responds to the device and makes sense of it together with others.

The researchers show how through making sense of technologies in appropriation and performatively responding to them, people can change and intervene in the power structures that technologies suggest.

This paper aims to fill this gap (infra, originality) by providing a conceptual framework for discussing “technologies of the self and other,” by showing that, in most cases, self-tracking also involves other-tracking.

In so doing, we draw upon Foucault’s “technologies of the self” and present-day literature on self-tracking technologies. We elaborate on two cases and practical domains to illustrate and discuss this mutual process: first, the quantified workplace; and second, quantification by wearables in a non-clinical and self-initiated context.

The main conclusion is that these shapings are never (morally) neutral and have ethical implications, such as regarding “quantified otherness,” a notion we propose to point at the risk that the other could become an object of examination and competition.

Although there is ample literature on the quantified self, considerably less attention is given to how the relation with the other is being shaped by self-tracking technologies that allow data sharing (e.g. wearables or apps such as Strava or RunKeeper).

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the work of Mark Coeckelbergh into the field of management.

This is a conceptual paper with interviews.

The author suggests that Coeckelberghs’ considerations of an anthropology of vulnerability have the potential to provide a rich and insightful exploration of the machine-human interface, which is not afforded by many of the current approaches taken in this field. Their development of an anthropology of vulnerability suggests an approach to the machine-human interface that re-frames the machine-human interface in terms of human vulnerability, rather than machine’s performance, and sustains that the machine-human interface can be understood in terms of the transfer of human vulnerability.

This paper reveals some of the possibilities inherent in Coeckelbergh’s theories by providing an analysis of a specific event, the recent introduction of robo-advisors in portfolio management, from a Coeckelberghian perspective and by exploring some of the implications of this type of approach for the machine-human interface.

As far as the author knows, there is no previous paper on this topic.

This paper aims to better understand the cultural‐philosophical significance of microblogging. In this way it seeks to inform evaluations of this new medium and of the culture and society it co‐shapes and in which it is rooted.

Engaging in philosophical reflection inspired by philosophy of technology, political philosophy, and cultural history, this paper identifies and discusses some structural features of microblogging such as Twitter.

This paper discusses the following structural features of microblogging as a medium: an emphasis on activity, the rule of opinion, emphasis on the ordinary and on the self, blurring of the private/public distinction, the primacy of the present, and the paradox of distance and proximity. The discussion also suggests that microblogging remediates “older” media such as letters, e‐mails, texting, diaries, and newspaper writings. Finally, the paper explores some strategies to cope with the new medium, including “hacking” it in order to widen the spectrum of possibilities it offers.

The paper assists users and policy makers to reflect on how new media such as microblogging might change the way we live and think. It helps them to better understand the medium and to evaluate its use.

Although there are data available now on the use of Twitter and other microblogging technologies, there has been very little philosophical reflection on the phenomenon. This paper begins to bridge this gap and makes novel connections between ideas from different academic fields.

This paper aims to examine exceptionalisms in ethics in general and in the fields of animal and technology ethics in particular.

This paper reviews five sample works in animal/technology ethics it considers representative for particularly popular forms of “exceptionalism”.

The shared feature of the exceptionalisms exhibited by the chosen samples appears to be born out of the cultural and biological history, which provides powerful intuitions regarding the on “specialness”.

As this paper is mostly a critique of existing approaches, it contains only a limited amount of counter-proposed alternative approaches.

This is a discussion worth having because arguments based on (human or biological) exceptionalism have more chance of resulting in significantly altered theoretical conclusions and practical suggestions for normative guidance than non-exceptionalist perspectives.

The approaches critiqued in this paper have a significant effect on the way the authors approach animals, machines/technologies and each other.

The paper identifies intuitive notions of exceptionalism and argues in favour of a reformist, ethical expansionist stance, which views humanity as residing (and other biological organisms) on the same plane of ethical significance as any other entity regardless of its material composition.

Outer space has been described as a liminal landscape. As such, it appears to have an intricate connection to the concept of the monster, which is a powerful metaphor that reflects and demarcates the culture that constructs it. In this vein, the scientific search for extraterrestrial life has been previously argued to possess characteristics of monstrosity. Consequently, the object of this search, that is, alien life, also bears the mark of the monster, as it can effortlessly tap into the particular leitmotifs of the monstrous that are largely constant across cultures, despite the situatedness of the monster. This foreshadows a risk of monsterization of the parties involved in a future discovery of extraterrestrial life, that is, the monsterization of both the humans and the extraterrestrial life. In turn, this can adversely affect moral appraisals in future encounters with extraterrestrial life by rendering theoretical ethical approaches ineffective, as monsters are not only always outside the moral order but essentially defy and transgress it. Grounded on the intertwinement of moral imagination and anticipation and drawing on the inherent educational power of monsters, this chapter offers a theoretical exploration and a practical intervention in the form of a novel futures literacy workshop to help pre-emptively decrease the potential for the monsterization of humans and extraterrestrial life in the case of a future discovery. This contribution is in line with pragmatist ethics and is envisioned as a preparatory, complementary pedagogical approach to the traditional teaching of ethical theories and applied ethics to university students.