One of the key insights from the philosophy of technology is that technologies are not value neutral but support or inhibit certain values. A blind spot is, however, the possibility of value change after a technological artifact or sociotechnical system has been designed. For example, when many of our current energy and transportation systems were designed, sustainability was not yet a central value, and we are now struggling to incorporate this value into these systems. This project derived from the observation that progress in the field was inhibited by the lack of a philosophical understanding of value change in sociotechnical systems. This project aimed to contributing to filling this gap. It has the following more specific objectives: 1) to propose a notion of value that is applicable to sociotechnical systems and that can account for value change, 2) to develop a taxonomy and mechanisms of value change in sociotechnical systems, 3) to extend philosophical analyses of the embedding of values in technological artifacts to sociotechnical systems, 4) to carry out empirical studies about value change in energy systems, and AI (Artificial Intelligence) and robot systems to support the development of a theory of value change, and 5) to develop strategies that can better deal with value change in sociotechnical systems than current value sensitive design approaches.
A main insight from the project is that to understand how values may change over time we may understand them as beliefs about what is valuable. Such beliefs may change over time due to new information or new experiences, or because a society is confronted with new moral problems, e.g. due to the operation of new technologies. Such changes in value beliefs may start individually or locally, but from that spread over time and society. So understood, five types of value changes may be understood in relation to technological design: 1) the emergence of new values, 2) existing values that were not yet relevant for the design of a particular technology may become so, 3) the priority of values may change, 4) the meaning of values may change, and 5) the way values are specified in technical or design requirements may change. To better deal with such value changes in design, three strategies may be employed: improving the anticipation of future value change so that one can timely prepare for them, 2) extend design to the full-life cycle to better deal with value change and 3) to apply particular design strategies that allow dealing with future value change (such as adaptable design).
