From June 25-28, 2025, the Philosophy and Ethics Group of the Faculty Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences of the Eindhoven University of Technology will host the 24th biennial international conference of the Society for Philosophy and Technology.
Conference theme: “The Intimate Technological Revolution”.
Modern technology permeates every aspect of our lives: the technology nestles itself in us (for example through brain implants), between us (through social media like Facebook), knows more and more about us (via big data and techniques such as emotion recognition), and is continually learning to behave more like us (robots and software exhibit intelligent behaviour and can mimic emotions). We refer to this as the intimate technological revolution.
These intimate technologies have many (potential) benefits, e.g., regarding health, efficiency, safety, and human connection, but they may also entail undesirable developments. As it often affects people directly and personally, intimate technology sparks many social, ethical, and philosophical issues. The intimate nature of these technologies gives rise to new kinds of vulnerabilities and risks, affecting physical, personal, social, and societal aspects of our identity. They also create new roles and tasks for engineers, policy makers and other societal stakeholders and raise new questions for philosophers of sciences and ethicists. It is important that the opportunities, vulnerabilities and risks of technologies are picked up to direct the intimate technological revolution in a responsible way. At this conference, we aim to reflect on the societal and ethical issues of these technologies, which requires us to rethink and reformulate ethical frameworks and social practices, and maybe even requiring novel methods, concepts and values.
The conference will start on Wednesday, June 25, and will end on Saturday, June 28. In principle, SPT2025 will be conducted in person, all speakers will present their work on-site. Online sessions (live-streamed) will be set up for the keynote presentations and some of the panels and paper sessions in the main conference room. Furthermore, we will make use of a virtual conference environment where online participants (as well as on-site participants) can interact socially.
