Risk, disequilibrium, and virtue

This paper takes up the question of to promote a good society in a time where new environments such as smart cities are emerging as the result of unprecedented and intensive technological change. As an entry-point into this question, it proposes and explores the concept of post-normal engineering. Using the driverless car as a microcosm of the smart city, Part One of the paper explores two dimensions of post-normal engineering-the acceptance of negotiated risk and the dependence on open innovation-in order to bring out how these environments are associated with disequilibrium and uncertainty. The second part of the paper offers a comparison of two virtue-oriented approaches, one by Dale Jamieson and the other by Michel Puech, for living well under such conditions. Part Three argues that, under such conditions, virtues of the kind they identify as important to cultivate under these conditions need to be supplemented with virtues of a different, disequilibrating, order, and suggests attuned spontaneity and informal generosity as two examples. A brief conclusion traces some implications of the idea of “disequilibrating” virtue for technological design.