Technology Moral Distance — Enablement vs. Permission Structure
- Technology and Moral Distance (technology enables distance but doesn't require it; the choice to use distance remains) - vs.
- Technology and Moral Distance (technology enables distance but doesn't require it; the choice to use distance remains) - vs. Authority Institutional Override (institutions that provide tools also provide permission structures that make refusal of the tool functionally impossible)
Keen argues that technology enables but doesn't require moral distance. A drone operator chooses to maintain distance; the drone only makes it possible. Therefore, the moral responsibility remains individual.
But this assumes a context where: 1. The institution provides the tool 2. The individual independently decides whether to use it 3. Refusal of the tool carries no institutional consequence
In actual institutional contexts: 1. The institution provides the tool 2. The institution defines the target 3. The institution defines success 4. Refusal of the tool is insubordination/dereliction 5. The individual's "choice" to use the tool is actually institutional requirement
The collision: Keen's distinction between "technology enables but you can refuse" assumes individual agency that doesn't exist in institutional contexts. Once an institution has given you the tool and defined the targets, "choosing" to use the tool is not a choice — it's compliance. The technology becomes not an enablement of a choice you make, but an enforcer of a choice the institution made.
Technology's moral neutrality only holds outside institutional contexts. Within institutions, technology is a permission structure. Giving a soldier a drone doesn't enable a choice; it enforces one. The institution can claim "we provided the capability; they chose to use it" while actually having structured the choice so refusal is impossible.
Testing: Do individuals outside institutional authority structures use distance-enabling technology differently than those within? Does distance in personal choice (hiring contractors at distance, firing employees by email) produce different moral outcomes than distance in institutional mandate?
- Technology and institutional authority together create permission structures that individuals cannot refuse
- The distinction between "enables" and "requires" collapses at the institutional level
- Individual moral responsibility in institutional contexts is partly fictitious — the institution has already decided
- Institutions use technology specifically because it obscures their decision-making within technological inevitability