Ike Kamphof

A Modest Art: Securing Privacy in Technologically Mediated Homecare

This article addresses the art of living in a technological culture as the active engagement with technomoral change. It argues that this engagement does not just take the form of overt deliberation. It shows in more modest ways as reflection-in-action, an experimental process in which new technology is fitted into existing practices. In this process challenged values are re-articulated in pragmatic solutions to the problem of working with new technology. This art of working with technology is also modest in the sense that it is not oriented to shaping one’s own subjectivity in relation to technology. It emanates from human existence as relational and aims at securing good relationships. The argument will be developed in relation to a case study of the ways in which homecare workers engaged with the value of privacy, challenged by tele-monitoring technology that was newly introduced into their work.

Whose Art Are We Talking About

Jeannette Pols and Tamar Sharon kindly reviewed my case study of the art of living with technology as an engagement with technomoral change. I am indebted to them for their careful reading and critical suggestions to further elaborate the project. In my response I focus on the question whose art we are talking about, while further elucidating the reflexivity addressed in my essay. I conclude with some remarks on what we can learn from micro studies like the one presented for macro level thinking on the ‘art of becoming’ with technology in a surveillance society.

Sensoren en Verzorgenden. Kanttekeningen bij Technologie in de Zorg

SamenvattingTechnologie is koud, menselijke zorg is warm. Het is een clichébeeld dat onder zorgverleners veel opgang doet. Maar menselijke zorg kan ook koud en bureaucratisch zijn en technologie kan bevrijdend werken, aldus filosoof Ike Kamphof. Wel is het zaak mensen met dementie meer bij de invoering van nieuwe technologie te betrekken, want tot nu toe gebeurt dit slechts mondjesmaat, constateert onderzoeker Marijke Span.