Bioethics traditionally focuses on normative questions related to medical practice. The inquiry involves the moral permissibility of using new technologies for medical purpose and also existing medical technologies for non-medical purpose. While these inquiries probe into the ethical issues raised by the medical technologies, they take a rather reactive attitude towards the application of technologies.

Socially disruptive technologies have been described as technologies that disturb or significantly alter social practices. In terms of the social practice of ethical evaluation, new technologies can lead to misapplication or blurring of philosophical concepts. Consequently, ethics' function of practical guidance may be compromised, creating moral uncertainty.

How to understand new encounters between the living and the technological? Exemplary for such new encounters are the biotechnological creations of synthetic biology, where life and technology are related in increasingly complicated and intimate ways. This developing biotechnological field frames its new entities as ‘artificial life’, ‘living technology’, and ‘biohybrid systems’.