Environments for ageing, assistive technology and self-determination: ethical perspectives

Abstract

The development of information and communication technologies for design of environments for ageing is of great importance considering demographic trends in the future. There is a realistic hope for the preservation of self-determination and independence in the long term. However, some risks like a gradual lost of privacy should not be underestimated. The article discusses some ethical problems within this context. At the same time, the article demonstrates that the development and implementation of these technologies might be discussed for instance under some ethical assumptions of personal self-responsibility as well as social responsibility for the widest independence in advanced age.

Keywords:

• Health-enabling technologies
• assistive technologies
• pervasive health care
• ambient assisted living
• self-determination
• autonomy
• privacy
• protection of privacy
• fairness
• distributional justice

Acknowledgements

The Lower Saxony research network ‘Design of Environments for Ageing’ acknowledges the support of the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture through the ‘Niedersächsisches Vorab’ grant programme.

Declaration of interest: The author reports no conflicts of interest. The author alone is responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Notes

1. The meaning of justice, for example, is another one in the period of a feudal system with differences in social position and dignity compared with our modern democratic society. Cf. the excellent comparison in the work of Alexis de Tocqueville: De la démocratie en Amérique (1835). Another illustration would be the changing jurisdiction of the Federal Constitutional Court in Germany over the last decades.

2. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics [16], 1097b 10–12. With this presumption a connection between politics and ethics will be drawn. See also Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics: 1094b 6–10.

3. It is this insight, which Habermas [28] articulated in his bioethical debate not long ago, considering the anthropological facts of physical dependency and social reliance. On its own from a biological perspective it can be seen that humans are born unfinished and remain dependant on assistance, attention and recognition their whole lives – a fact which becomes drastically apparent in the case of age and ailment.

4. The argumentation in this and the following paragraph has indeed to acknowledge the fact, that health care services like the US are not a right but a commodity like any other in the market place.

5. I thank one of the reviewers of this article for this very valuable advice.