Introduction
The keywords of my current research interests are surveillance and ethics. My academic background is in philosophy and I have studied logic, political philosophy, ethics, philosophy of science, epistemology, metaphysics, history of philosophy, and modern philosophy. The philosophers that I have studied intensively include Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Foucault.
Reading Heidegger’s famous lecture on the question concerning technology (Die Frage nach der Technik, 1954) inspired me to combine academic philosophy with a life-long fascination of technology. Besides all the wonderful gadgets of my childhood in the 1980’s, I have been fascinated by the wide-ranging themes that technology involves. I wrote my master’s thesis on philosophy of technology and discovered philosophers like Don Ihde, Albert Borgmann, Hubert Dreyfus, Langdon Winner, and Bruno Latour.
Working on my master’s thesis convinced me that I wanted to continue studying the many aspects of technology. Moreover, I learned that an interdisciplinary approach to the field is very fruitful. Inspired by reading the works of Bentham, Foucault, and Barthes I also developed an interest in the concepts of Panopticon and Panorama. This drew my attention to surveillance studies and I became aware of the manifold ways that research is carried out within this field.
I have found it to be fruitful to make surveillance studies and philosophy of technology come together. Technology plays a very important role for surveillance, and current trends have to do with surveillance technologies. Especially after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, the focus has been on developments and utilization of technologies for surveillance as a countermeasure against terrorism.
To me, these developments also call for ethical reflection. The ethical aspects of surveillance have often been discussed in public opinion, but research in the field is scarce. I find that philosophy of technology and philosophy in general can be of use in this context, since many similar and often overlapping ethical challenges as those concerning surveillance have been investigated thoroughly. Leaning on this tradition, I am occupied with identifying the ethical challenges concerning surveillance that we face today.