From High Frequency Trading to Self-Organizing Moral Machines

Enframing

Many foundations of the current financial and social crisis lie in the unstoppable rise of technology and the use of technological applications during the past decade and mankind's inability to give sufficient meaning to these developments. The rise of the personal computer, the Internet and the mobile phone has been unstoppable during the past twenty years, as noticed by van Lier (2015). We can now conclude that a mobile phone is available for each average world citizen. Of all the mobile phones sold worldwide, more than 40% are smartphones with a memory capacity that exceeds that of a desktop computer from eight years ago. On the basis of the resulting networking, new technological applications were invented, which became a social and economic force. I am referring to developments also known as social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Whatsapp. Who would have thought twenty years ago that the largest companies in the world would be IT companies such as Google, Apple, Microsoft or Samsung. And that a small company such as Whatsapp with approximately 100 employees is able to show the global telecommunications giants that their existing business model based on modern elements such as calling and texting has come to the end of its life cycle. These telecommunications giants are now also forced to sit and watch how their crucial role, which arose in the middle of the previous century, is replaced with data bundles and devices that communicate with each other in networks of the postmodern society. Whether we like it or not, all of these changes have an unprecedented influence on our daily life and work and our experience of reality. The end of this technological revolution is not yet in sight and in the years to come we will be confronted with more technological developments and applications arising therefrom. We are on the brink of a new phase in technological evolution and, in addition to people, more and more objects are interconnected in these networks and enabled to exchange and share information mutually and with people. As van Lier (2015) states, apparently ordinary and traditional objects such as cars, televisions, passport, books, sports shoes and medical implants will be or have already been interconnected in these networks. We also want to use and wear more portable information elements such as Google glasses, smart watches, OMsignal t-shirts or Nike shoes so that we are able to share information about ourselves with others. And as if this is not yet enough, we are also confronted with new developments resulting from the convergence of nano-, bio- and cognitive technology with IT. This convergence has been possible because our understanding of nanoscience and nanotechnology and how to manipulate matter with this technology is growing. According to Bainbridge and Rocco (2005), these new combinations of technology will enable: