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The Cambridge Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics
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Book description

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have profoundly changed many aspects of life, including the nature of entertainment, work, communication, education, healthcare, industrial production and business, social relations and conflicts. They have had a radical and widespread impact on our moral lives and hence on contemporary ethical debates. The Cambridge Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics, first published in 2010, provides an ambitious and authoritative introduction to the field, with discussions of a range of topics including privacy, ownership, freedom of speech, responsibility, technological determinism, the digital divide, cyber warfare, and online pornography. It offers an accessible and thoughtful survey of the transformations brought about by ICTs and their implications for the future of human life and society, for the evaluation of behaviour, and for the evolution of moral values and rights. It will be a valuable book for all who are interested in the ethical aspects of the information society in which we live.

Reviews

"...This five-part work examines difficulties in the field of information ethics and offers practical applications and criticisms... Recommended..."
--B. G. Turner, Faulkner University, CHOICE

"...This is a rich and fascinating book, bringing to interpretative debates muchthat has been hitherto unknown. The chapters are long and complex, and theargument is multidimensional and far-reaching."
--George Lăzăroiu, PhD, Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, New York, Contemporary Readings in Law and Social Justice

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Contents

Contents
  • 1 - Ethics after the Information Revolution
    pp 3-19
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter discusses some conceptual undercurrents, which flow beneath the surface of the literature on information and computer ethics (ICE). It focuses on the potential impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) on our lives. Because of their 'data superconductivity', ICTs are well known for being among the most influential factors that affect the ontological friction in the infosphere. As a full expression of techne, the information society has already posed fundamental ethical problems, whose complexity and global dimensions are rapidly evolving. The task is to formulate an ethical framework that can treat the infosphere as a new environment worth the moral attention and care of the human inforgs inhabiting it. We have begun to see ourselves as connected informational organisms (inforgs), not through some fanciful transformation in our body, but, more seriously and realistically, through the re-ontologization of our environment and of ourselves.
  • 2 - The historical roots of information and computer ethics
    pp 20-38
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter examines some metaphysical assumptions of Aristotle and Wiener that can be seen as philosophical roots of today's information and computer ethics. It briefly describes Floridi's new 'macroethics', which he calls information ethics to distinguish Floridi's 'macroethics' from the general field of information ethics that includes, for example, agent ethics, computer ethics, Internet ethics, journalism ethics, library ethics, bioengineering ethics, neurotechnology ethics, etc. In his book, Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, Wiener viewed animals and computerized machines as cybernetic entities. Beginning in 1950, with the publication of The Human Use of Human Beings, Wiener assumed that cybernetic machines will join humans as active participants in society. In Moor's computer ethics theory, respect for 'core values' is a central aspect of his 'just consequentialism' theory of justice, as well as his influential analysis of human privacy.
  • 3 - Values in technology and disclosive computer ethics
    pp 41-58
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter focuses on the embedded values approach, which holds that computer systems and software are capable of harbouring embedded or 'builtin' values, and on two derivative approaches, disclosive computer ethics and value-sensitive design (VSD). Disclosive computer ethics focuses on morally opaque practices in computing and aims to identify, analyse and morally evaluate such practices. Many practices in computing are morally opaque because they depend on computer systems that contain embedded values that are not recognized as such. Therefore, disclosive ethics frequently focuses on such embedded values. Value-sensitive design is a framework for accounting for values in a comprehensive manner in the design of systems and software. The embedded values approach could benefit from more theoretical and conceptual work, particularly regarding the very notion of an embedded value and its relation to both the material features of artefacts and their context of use.
  • 4 - The use of normative theories in computer ethics
    pp 59-76
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Information Ethics is a recent alternative to traditional ethical theory to account for the moral phenomena and is the subject of further research to investigate how it can be made to bear upon the practical problems in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and to demonstrate that it has an explanatory and justificatory surplus compared to the traditional ethical normative theories. Floridi's Information Ethics provides a high-level value theory which applies to the ICTs domain, which at the same time allows for specification at the mid-level and lower levels of abstraction and specification. Mid-level theories may in turn be used as sources of moral arguments in the relevant empirical domains, where conceptual reconstructions have prepared the ground for their application. Reconstructed concepts, e.g. contestatory democracy, justice as fairness, privacy as data protection, function as high-level architectural principles for the design of information systems and ICTs applications.
  • 5 - Information ethics
    pp 77-98
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Information Ethics (IE) has come to mean different things to different researchers working in a variety of disciplines, including computer ethics, business ethics, medical ethics, computer science and information science. The chapter explores what IE is and what counts as a moral agent and moral patient according to IE. It questions our responsibilities as moral agents, according to IE and the fundamental principles of IE. The resource-product-target (RPT) model, summarized in this chapter, helps one to get some initial orientation in the multiplicity of issues belonging to different interpretations of IE. The chapter also gives an overview of Information Ethics understood as a macroethics. Since the early nineties, when the author first introduced IE as an environmental macroethics and a foundationalist approach to computer ethics, some standard objections have circulated that seem to be based on a few basic misunderstandings.
  • 6 - Social issues in computer ethics
    pp 101-115
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter concentrates on three important social issues in computer ethics: the question of intellectual property (IP), issues related to digital divides, and issues arising out of employment and work. It clarifies the philosophical underpinning of those social issues in computer ethics related to ownership and property in assets that have a form different from the physical entities for which the idea of property was originally developed. With regards to ethical issues raised by information and communication technology (ICT), two groups of intellectual creations currently constitute the main items of IP: software and content. The chapter addresses the ethically and philosophically interesting aspects of digital divides which develops the argument that digital divides share relevant aspects with other social issues of computer ethics. Work and employment issues are driven to a large extent by business interests, for example where ICT leads to a higher degree of employee surveillance or self-surveillance.
  • 7 - Rights and computer ethics
    pp 116-132
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter explores the philosophical theories that attempt to provide guidance when determining the best way to balance the rights of the individual user of Information and Computer Technologies (ICTs) with the legitimate public concerns of the societies impacted by these technologies. It looks at the philosophical justifications for free speech and privacy, as these play out in the use of ICTs where anonymous speech can exacerbate the conflicts regarding pornography, hate speech, privacy and political dissent. The Principle of Harm can be used to distinguish hate speech from the heated and vigorous debates that race and religion can both engender. The Gossip 2.0 phenomenon is a place where free speech and privacy collide head-on. This is antisocial networking, where the dark side of social interaction is leveraged by ICTs to gain a force and audience far beyond the restroom walls where this kind of communication is typically found.
  • 8 - Conflict, security and computer ethics
    pp 133-148
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter throws light on ethical concerns regarding cyber war or cyber terror. Computers have contributed to revitalizing the realm of conflict in three principal areas. First, in terms of conventional military operations, computers have completely revolutionized communications, making complex new modes of field operations possible. Next, computers have made it possible to analyse oceans of sensor data quite swiftly, enabling the military, intelligence and law enforcement communities to take action in ever more timely and targeted ways. This powerful new analytic capacity, it must be noted, can serve aggressors or defenders equally well, whether they are nations or terrorist networks. Last, the growing dependence of societies and their militaries on advanced information and communications technologies has given birth to cyberspace-based forms of strategic attack, designed to cause costly, crippling disruptions. In sum, whether nation or network, there may be sound ethical reasons for embracing cyber warfare and/or cyber terror.
  • 9 - Personal values and computer ethics
    pp 149-162
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter provides a means of thinking of inequalities in relation to the design and use of information and communications technologies (ICTs), arguing that equality is often expressed as a liberal value, which rests on a view of the relationship of technology and society that is determinist in inspiration. This is particularly important when the adoption of ICTs is increasingly bound up with identity, in making communities, in gender identity, in terms of the construction of disability and in terms of age. Hopes for virtual communities were initially often based on a utopian vision. The experiences of young people using social networking technologies, women in the IT industry and on the Internet, disabled people accessing ICTs and older users, particularly of the World Wide Web, demonstrate a complex picture of a world which is still unequal and where old inequalities prevail.
  • 10 - Global information and computer ethics
    pp 163-180
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter discusses three issues distinctively evoked by globally diffused Information and Communication Technologies (ICT): (i) the digital divide, (ii) online global citizenship and (iii) global deliberation and democratization. It explores ethical pluralism as a primary framework within which we may take up a global range of diverse ethical frameworks and decision-making traditions used to analyse and reflect upon characteristic issues of Information and Computing Ethics (ICE). In the course of the analysis the chapter uses the core issue of privacy as primary example. ICTs are a primary driver of globalization as they make possible trade, financial transactions and the relocation of labour into lower-cost labour markets. Ethical pluralism provides us with a way of understanding how a single norm may via the reflection and application of judgement apply in very different contexts in very different ways, with regard to notions of privacy in diverse Western cultures.
  • 11 - Computer ethics and applied contexts
    pp 181-198
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter explores the role computer ethics and its implications on all applied ethical fields, in particular on media ethics, business ethics, criminal justice ethics, medical ethics, bioethics and environmental ethics. It discusses in particular the role played by information and communication technology (ICT) in a variety of contexts. Freedom of speech and expression are of central importance to both computer and media ethics, and because of the decentralized and global nature of the Internet, pornography, hate language and various illegal activities are much more difficult to control than in more traditional media. The chapter concentrates on two aspects where computers have made a significant difference: monitoring and surveillance in relation to privacy and trust, and biometrics. This chapter focuses ICT in medical contexts particularly data protection related to medical records and online consultation. It focuses on the role of ICTs in bioethics with a special focus on modern genomics.
  • 12 - The ethics of IT-artefacts
    pp 201-218
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter provides an overview of the main approaches in the field of Science and technology studies (STS) with regard to technical artefacts. It describes various kinds of increasingly capable information technology (IT) artefacts as agents and discusses what kind of attributions (intentionality, selfrepresentation, attribution of intentionality to others by an artefact, etc.) might be meaningful. The chapter discusses the question of whether there is anything that sets IT-artefacts apart from technical artefacts. It argues that we might have to accept the idea that IT-artefacts possess some form of intentionality independent of humans in order to make sense of their behaviour and their moral status. The question of whether artefacts need mental states in order to count as moral agents focuses on what is required for moral agency and, in particular, on whether IT-artefacts need mental states in order to be able to act morally.
  • 13 - Artificial life, artificial agents, virtual realities: technologies of autonomous agency
    pp 219-233
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter discusses ethical issues arising in connection with artificial life (non carbon-based), artificial agents (physically embodied robots and software agents or 'bots') and virtual reality (VR). It gives a brief survey of the technologies involved, subdividing both artificial agents and virtual reality to produce a list of five different kinds of technology. The five kinds of technology are: anthropomorphic VR, machine-centred VR, virtual artificial agents (aka bots), embodied artificial agents, and ALife. The chapter begins by clarifying the kinds of technology to be discussed under the headings of artificial life, artificial agents and virtual reality. For artificial life, robots and software bots, there are ethical questions concerning the agency inherent in these systems themselves, whether they can be made to respect ethical boundaries, and the ways in which they may lead humanity down a path which reduces human freedom or autonomy.
  • 14 - On new technologies
    pp 234-248
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter considers prominent ethical concerns that have been raised about newly introduced technologies and about technologies that might be implemented in the future. It focuses on concerns about privacy, individual autonomy and threats to safety. A very prominent form of concern about threats to safety, in the discussion of possible future technologies, addresses catastrophic future scenarios. Concerns about autonomy have a tendency to become mixed up with concerns about the future of the human species. Examples of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV), Global Positioning System (GPS), Radio Frequency Identity (RFID) are discussed under the context of privacy. One of the more important arguments for respecting the informational privacy of individuals is that, if people's activities are unknown to others then they cannot be deliberately interfered with by others. The chapter also considers some famous novels that exemplify themes recurrent in much contemporary extemporizing about the dangers of future technology.
  • 15 - The foundationalist debate in computer ethics
    pp 251-270
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter gives a brief analysis of a model defended by Floridi and Sanders for examining foundational issues in computer ethics (CE).It proposes an alternative model, which frames CE's foundationalist debate in terms of three principal questions. The first question is regarding CE's legitimacy in the field of applied ethics. The second question is concerned with CE's uniqueness in a philosophically interesting sense. The third question is whether CE requires a new ethical framework. In analysing the questions, the chapter argues that CE qualifies as a legitimate field of applied ethics that warrants philosophical analysis and concludes that there were no convincing reasons to believe that computing technology has either (i) generated any unique or new ethical issues, or (ii) introduced any new ethical objects. It states that there are no compelling reasons to believe that a new normative ethical theory is required for CE.

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