ABSTRACT
Moral and political philosophers have thusfar shown remarkable little interest in the moral questions concerning socio-technological design, especially when compared to their efforts dedicated to socio-economic design. This general observation can be seen to apply to information technology (1). Langdon Winner has argued that we must repair this blind spot in contemporary normative theory and that we need to reflect upon ways of designing machines and systems which are responsive to our moral and political ideals, an activity referred to by him as ‘political ergonomics’. Taking Winner’s plea as a vantage point, I draw attention to some of the conceptual difficulties for a ‘political ergonomics’ of information systems in the public sector (2). One of the main difficulties is that information technology transforms our life-world and calls for the reconstruction of some of our central moral concepts, since the application of old concepts to new situations can be misleading and confusing (3). I suggest ways of reconceptualizing traditional conceptions of autonomy (4.1) and responsibility (4.2), privacy (4.3) and justice (4.4) in order to prevent them from misfiring in their application and to be able to specify mid-level principles for the design of public information infra-structures.
