PhD Student

• Philosophy of Technology
• human factor engineering
• Human-Machine Interaction
• Subject-Object-Relation and Sobject Approach
• Machine Ethics, Social Robotics
• Phenomenology
• Critical Infrastructure

The Human Factor: A new focus due to the interactions between critical infrastructures and pandemic measures (working title)

The discourse on the human factor and the concept of the fallible human has come to a head as a result of the pandemic. Measures are being made to design infrastructures in such a way that humans are present as little as possible. Human fallibility, unreliability, and spontaneity increase the vulnerability of critical infrastructures and thus can jeopardize basic utility, communication, and transportation functions. This is another reason why the pandemic control is primarily to limit social contact between people, so the focus is on vulnerable people and contagion through social gatherings.

There will be two main chapters in the dissertation that examine and evaluate the changing human-technology interaction. The first chapter focuses on the human factor in the interaction of pandemic and critical infrastructures as such. It deals with the question how the human-technology-relation is thought & changed by the pandemic. And discusses the thesis that humans are in an ambivalence of asserting and withdrawing themselves. The social credit system of the pilot city Rongcheng in China serves as a case study here. There, the research examines how, on the one hand, technology is also used as an interaction partner and is no longer fully instrumentalized. On the other hand, technology becomes a major part of surveillance in social space and thus a techno-social surveillance tool.

Additionally, it shows what can and cannot be transferred to the technical sphere and why Zoom conferences cannot replace social interaction.

The second chapter is based on the first and deals with the evaluation and interpretation of the human factor. It deals with the thesis and the question of what kind of renegotiation and ritualization of social and technical orders emerges. For example, the following aspects are discussed: A possible objectification, reification and desocialization of humans, but argues for a shift in subjectivity. A progressive anthropomorphization of technology, while humans become more and more objectified, as well as the new ethical and techno-philosophical categories necessary for this. It is about the sobject approach and its extension to the techno-social in order to be able to investigate technical decision making, trust and responsibility.

• Ullmann, L. (2022): Das Sobjekt: Mögliche Beziehungen zwischen Mensch und Maschine aus einem phänomenologischen Blickwinkel. [The Sobject: Possible Relations between Humans and Machines from a Phenomenological Point of View]. Jahrbuch Technikphilosophie, vol. 8., Nomos, S. 195-213.
• Ullmann L. (2022): The quasi-other as a Sobject. Technology and Language, 3(1), p. 76-81. https://doi.org/10.48417/technolang.2022.01.08