After COVID-19: Crises, Ethics, and Socio-Technical Change

Abstract

Crises like the COVID-19 pandemic accelerate social and technological changes and put new political and public demands on science, technology, and innovation systems. Their urgency clashes with the deliberate slowness of existing responsible innovation and technology ethics practices and processes, while many fast and ad-hoc changes and infrastructures brought about during a crisis become permanent fixtures. This special issue brings together work reflecting in different ways how COVID-19 as an exemplary crisis is creating new challenges for technology ethics. From epidemiological models to contact tracing, biometric recognition, and machine learning-based assisted diagnosis, the different articles show the quandaries of our increasingly datafied health systems.