Peter-Paul Verbeek

Peter-Paul Verbeek is distinguished professor of Philosophy of Technology and scientific co-director of the DesignLab at the University of Twente, The Netherlands. He is honorary professor of Techno-Anthropology at Aalborg University (Denmark) and chair of the UNESCO World Commission for the Ethics of Science and Technology. His research focuses on the philosophy of human-technology relations, with a specific emphasis on ethics of technology and responsible design. His book publications include Moralizing Technology: Understanding and Designing the Morality of Things (2011) and What Things Do: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design (2005).

Values in Design: responsible design for changing values

Technologies are changing the world rapidly: we are living in ‘the Fourth Revolution’ which takes us into ‘Society 5.0’. This lecture will explore how designers can play a responsible role in this development, by expanding the ethics of design in several ways. First of all, it will address how design can take value dynamism into account. While ethics informs design, designs change ethics as well: what does this imply for responsible design? Second, it will approach ethics as a process of design itself: rather than leaving it to academic experts, ethics should be a process of co-creation between designers, products, users, and ethics itself. Designing is doing ethics, by other means.