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Smart-Glasses: Exposing and Elucidating the Ethical Issues

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Abstract

The objective of this study is to provide an overview over the ethical issues relevant to the assessment, implementation, and use of smart-glasses. The purpose of the overview is to facilitate deliberation, decision making, and the formation of knowledge and norms for this emerging technology. An axiological question-based method for human cognitive enhancement including an extensive literature search on smart-glasses is used to identify relevant ethical issues. The search is supplemented with relevant ethical issues identified in the literature on human cognitive enhancement (in general) and in the study of the technical aspects of smart-glasses. Identified papers were subject to traditional content analysis: 739 references were identified of which 247 were regarded as relevant for full text examinations, and 155 were included in the study. A wide variety of ethical issues with smart-glasses have been identified, such as issues related to privacy, safety, justice, change in human agency, accountability, responsibility, social interaction, power and ideology. Smart-glasses are envisioned to change individual human identity and behavior as well as social interaction. Taking these issues into account appears to be relevant when developing, deliberating, deciding on, implementing, and using smart-glasses.

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Notes

  1. Although it is beyond the scope of this article to scrutinize to what extent the question-based axiological approach applied here is compatible with other established methods for assessing emerging technologies, this study indicates that there is substantial overlap.

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Acknowledgments

The research leading to these results has received funding from the Norwegian Financial Mechanism 2009–2014 and the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports under Project Contract no. MSMT-28477/2014, Project No. 7F14236. We are also thankful for wise comments and suggestions from the reviewers and the Editor.

Author’s Contributions

BH designed the study and performed the literature search. BH, DH, and LL performed the screening and the analysis of the literature. BH wrote the first draft of the paper. All authors have contributed to the revision of the paper and have approved the final version.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Gjøvik, Norway

    Bjørn Hofmann

  2. Centre for Medical Ethics, University of Oslo, PO Box 1130, 0318, Blindern, Oslo, Norway

    Bjørn Hofmann

  3. Man-Machine Interaction, New Technologies Research Centre, University of West Bohemia, Plzeň, Czech Republic

    Dušan Haustein

  4. Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences (HiOA), Oslo, Norway

    Laurens Landeweerd

  5. Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Laurens Landeweerd

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  1. Bjørn Hofmann
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Correspondence to Bjørn Hofmann.

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Hofmann, B., Haustein, D. & Landeweerd, L. Smart-Glasses: Exposing and Elucidating the Ethical Issues. Sci Eng Ethics 23, 701–721 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-016-9792-z

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