ethics – Stephen Oram

I’m busy thinking about and planning my talk at the Goethe-Institut Indonesien’s Digital Discourses Science/Fiction conference. As always I find it interesting to stop and consider the what and why of this aspect of my work.

The conference is looking at how future-shaping technologies are changing the way we live, work, and eat. And, I’m talking about whether science fiction can influence / affect / predict the future and my experiences of writing near-future fiction to raise ethical issues in public engagement events with scientists and technologists.

If you want to know a bit more feel free to join me for some pre-event Q&A on twitter (5pm Jakarta time on Monday 24 October).

I’ll be speaking at the conference on Friday 28 October (1pm UK / 7pm Jakarta) https://goethe.de/digitaldiscourses]

In June this year I was invited to Oxford University by the International Neuroethics Society for a symposium on human brain organoids and other novel entities. As you can imagine it was a fascinating afternoon and another one of those moments when I felt as if science fiction could never be as strange as the real science itself.

There was talk of gastruloids, novel entities and chimeras. We discussed how to measure consciousness, the ethical valuation of moral status, developing a human brain inside an animal and that the closer we get to human brain surrogates the more pressing the ethical issues become.

You can read all about the symposium and watch some videos on the neuroethics society website.

Here’s a taster from the summary: Continue reading →

Tag Archives: ethics

Influencing the future?

Human Brain Organoids