Conference Agenda

Although technological mediation is a nuclear conception in many theories, its stratification is not univocal. Don Ihde (1979) has notably distinguished it in terms of embodiment, hermeneutic, alterity, and background relations. While partially assuming this background, Peter Paul-Verbeek (2008) revisits Ihde’s conception of technological mediation as a single form of intentionality, which he complements with what he terms hybrid and composite intentionalities. My aim is not to examine or criticize their accounts, but to suggest that what I call technological immersion has been neglected or remained secondary in their analyses. As I conceived it, technological immersion refers to a situation in which technological artifacts establish a closed system of meanings, making it relatively independent of other systems while producing the illusion of being a definitive horizon. This independence tends to isolate one’s being-in-the-world, including one’s beliefs and values, which rely on this system, from other sources of information. It is thus an experience that remains immanent to a given technological system. In technological immersion, an artifact or a set of artifacts directs one’s attention to the phenomenon it produces, not in a way that this phenomenon adds to other phenomena of one’s lifeworld, but rather, severing it from concurrent systems. Considering this, I would like to examine three main aspects. The first one may be summarized as follows: does complex technology, which normally implies a system, tend to generate immersion? Technological systems provide a material ambience and internal coherence of meanings that impose themselves as a framework that conditions understanding and expectation. Therefore, it suggests that the more complex a technological system is, the more one tends to remain in its immanence. A second topic relates to the characteristic traits and the differences between distinct levels of technological immersion. Noise cancelling earbuds lead to some isolation, as the user may not be aware of dangers while driving a car, but this cannot be compared to the level of immersion provided by a VR device. Whatever the level of their isolation, it ceases eventually after their use. Another form of immersion occurs with fake news on social media, as its effects do not simply cease with its interruption. The interval between one message and another does not break the flow of information, as the impact of a given message lasts and links to the next one. Therefore, fake news provides an absolute worldview that underlies each opinion and behavior leading to a more encompassing form of immersion. The third aspect is the deliberate employment of technological immersion to engender automatism. Although the relation between materiality and alienation is an old topic, as studies on fascism or consumer behavior have shown, current technologies are able to create absolute immersion, detaching people from their lifeworld while predisposing them to some automatism, that is, to a practice that remains immanent to the underlying technological system. In sum, an understanding of technological immersion seems to be a valuable methodological key to examine the way technology shapes our practices.

Resilience of nuclear power plants (NPPs) could generally be calculated by measuring the potential compromised performance per dollar with the foreseen disruptions, be it in material supply chain, fuel supply, power plant design, and so on. Vulnerability is crucial in assessing grid resilience since when a grid is exposed to disruptions, i.e. vulnerable, its performance would more likely be compromised. This techno-economic way of addressing vulnerabilities is useful for engineers and business owners aiming to build a resilient grid, but is wanting for policymakers who consider adding NPPs into an energy mix.

For energy policymaking, the importance of addressing vulnerabilities expands beyond engineering a functioning NPP. A grid’s exposure to disruptions affects to its users’ vulnerability. Therefore, policymakers should regard a grid’s vulnerabilities beyond technical and economic characterisations by associating social vulnerabilities caused by NPPs vulnerabilities.

This paper proposes how social vulnerabilities affected by NPPs vulnerabilities should be addressed at the policy level via Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach. Within this frame, vulnerabilities directly correspond with capabilities as fundamental human condition and understanding the relation between both will facilitate just treatment to individuals. Capabilities have to be intentionally created, and by extension, vulnerabilities arise when one fails to create capabilities. Following this insight, the list of basic capabilities which Nussbaum herself thinks non-exhaustive exemplifies the importance of setting up a minimum well-being threshold particular to a community context to then be used as a parametre of resilient NPPs.

How to set up a minimum well-being threshold to increase capabilities while decreasing vulnerabilities is the insight this paper proposes to the problem of reducing social vulnerabilities via resilient NPPs. We contend that in making an NPP more resilient, social vulnerabilities lies beyond techno-economic vulnerabilities and should be prioritised. We do not intend on adding or reducing the list of capabilities, but rather apply the centrality of capabilities from Nussbaum’s account to the context-dependent social vulnerabilities created and reduced by the choice of NPPs' design.

This work is a contribution from nuclear energy ethics to politics of nuclear energy. It assumes that no grid is resilient to all disruptions and suggests that consideration on incommensurable social vulnerabilities plays an important role in choosing NPPs' design. This work discusses: 1) how social vulnerabilities are tied to and interact with grid vulnerabilities, 2) how understanding social vulnerabilities can NPP system design; and 3) what competence required of policymakers to make a priority order of different social vulnerabilities in building an NPP.