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Capabilities lists vary. Nussbaum allows that others have different lists and that hers will certainly be modified as time passes and conditions change. Insofar as a technology plays the role of a conversion factor that transforms a capability into a functioning, then it is—-in the humanistic sense of the term—-appropriate. On the other hand, insofar as it thwarts capabilities and suppresses their expression it fails the test of appropriateness. When business and engineering professionals take a Human Development approach to their work, they broaden the design process and the development of new products and services to include a close examination of how the proposed novelty can either encourage or diminish the conversion of capabilities into functionings.

An advantage of the Capabilities or Human Development Approach over other approaches such as social contract theories of justice lies in its ability to extend the umbrella of justice to cover three challenges that have traditionally been ignored:

  1. The capabilities and ranges of action of humans operating under physical and cognitive disabilities
  2. Human individuals who have been born and live in nations of poverty, economic inequality, political oppression, and demeaning work and social roles and stations. In her book, Creating Capabilities , Nussbaum profiles a woman who is abused by her alcoholic husband, works longs hours in a demeaning job and returns home to the domestic responsibilities of being the primary care-giver to a family of four.
  3. Natural ecosystems as well as natural species including domesticated animals, wild animals, and the entities that populate the natural environment.

Social construction of technology

This branch of technology studies provides insight into how technologies are socially constructed. Pinch and Bijker provide a case history of how the current bicycle design emerged from a social process of construction. In an initial stage of “interpretive flexibility,” users interacted with different designs as they negotiated in public space whether bicycles were for leisure, racing, touring, basic transportation, or sporting activities. As design variations were set aside and user goals and interests focused, this stage of interpretive flexibility narrowed and closed. In the final stage, a dominating design emerges that serves as a black box. With interpretive flexibility a thing of the past, the black box, the dominant design, takes on the appearance of inevitably; it captures the meaning of bicycle that was earlier up for grabs. (Pinch and Bijker discuss social constructionism in their paper referenced below. This can be easily found in the Johnson and Wetmore anthology, Technology and Society. This account builds on their discussion of the process of social construction: interpretive flexibility, closing of interpretive flexibility, and technological black box.)

The paper “Manufacturing Gender in Commercial and Military Cockpit Design,” argues that it was necessary to reopen the black box of airplane cockpit design to reveal its instantiation of gender bias. Women were unable to fly airplanes because airplanes were not designed to accommodate their arm and leg reach, physical strength, height, and weight. This gender bias could only be removed through the restoration of interpretive flexibility. The gender biased design of airplane cockpits had to be revealed as a contingency rather than as a necessity.

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Source:  OpenStax, Engineering ethics modules for ethics across the curriculum. OpenStax CNX. Oct 08, 2012 Download for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col10552/1.3
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