This talk shows how technologies play an active role in our everyday lives, including in morality. Because technologies co-shape our perceptions and actions, they are not neutral tools but do something more than what they were designed to do.

Olya focuses on the moral side of this technological mediation, explaining how technologies help to form our moral inclinations, actions and even change our values, giving references to modern-day examples, such as voice assistants, Snapchat and Instagram, the sex selection technology and others. Olya Kudina (Ukraine) works in the ethics of technology to help ensure an informed design and use of technologies.

She received her PhD degree in Philosophy of Technology at the University of Twente (2019) on a project “Mediated Morality: Google Glass, Sex Selection, and the complex interactions between ethics and technology.”

She continues to examine the interrelation of values and technologies as a postdoctoral researcher at Delft University of Technology (the Netherlands), looking into how technologies induce value change.

In her research, Olya combines empirical explorations and philosophical analysis, which prompts her interest in digital ethnography. In general, Olya’s research interests span across the fields of ethics of emerging technologies, (post)phenomenology, hermeneutics, bioethics, and design. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx