A global information ethics that seeks to avoid imperialistic homogenization must conjoin shared norms while simultaneously preserving the irreducible differences between cultures and peoples. I argue that a global information ethics may fulfill these requirements by taking up an ethical pluralism – specifically Aristotle’s pros hen [“towards one”] or “focal” equivocals. These ethical pluralisms figure centrally in both classical and contemporary Western ethics: they further offer important connections with the major Eastern ethical tradition of Confucian thought. Both traditions understand ethical (...) judgment to lead to and thus require ethical pluralism – i.e., an acceptance of more than one judgment regarding the interpretation and application of a shared ethical norm. Both traditions invoke notions of resonance and harmony to articulate pluralistic structures of connection alongside irreducible differences. Specific examples within Western computer and information ethics demonstrate these pluralisms in fact working in praxis. After reviewing further resonances and radical differences between Western and Eastern views, I then argue that emerging conceptions of privacy and data privacy protection laws in China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Thailand in fact constitute a robust, pros hen pluralism with Western conceptions. In both theory and in praxis, then, this pluralism thus fulfills the requirement for a global information ethics that holds shared norms alongside the irreducible differences between cultures and peoples. (shrink)

Wie lässt sich der Bereich des Privaten heute genau beschreiben? Welchen Wert besitzt Privatheit in digitalisierten Gesellschaften für den Einzelnen und die Gesellschaft als Ganzes? Welche Werte und Lebensformen werden durch Privatheit geschützt, welche eingeschränkt? Entstehen durch die Informationsasymmetrie zwischen Technologieunternehmen, staatlichen Verdatungsinstitutionen und Verbrauchern/Bürgern möglicherweise neue Machtstrukturen? Welche rechtlichen Implikationen ergeben sich hieraus? Dieser Band geht diesen und anderen Fragen, die sich im Hinblick auf die etablierte Gleichung von Freiheit und Privatheit stellen, nach und versucht Antworten zu finden.

Intercultural Digital Ethics faces the central challenge of how to develop a global IDE that can endorse and defend some set of universal ethical norms, principles, frameworks, etc. alongside sustaining local, culturally variable identities, traditions, practices, norms, and so on. I explicate interpretive pros hen ethical pluralism ) emerging in the late 1990s and into the twenty-first century in response to this general problem and its correlates, including conflicts generated by “computer-mediated colonization” that imposed homogenous values, communication styles, and so (...) on upon “target” peoples and cultures via ICTs as embedding these values in their very design. I contrast different kinds of ethical pluralisms as structural apparatus for understanding what differences may mean and allow for, as these emerged in the 1990s forwards with EP. As interwoven with phronēsis, a form of reflective judgment and virtue, EP more radically preserves irreducible differences and so fosters positive engagements across deep cultural differences. I show how EP emerged in the context of empirical research on “Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and Communication” beginning in 1998, and then in specific applications within Internet Research Ethics beginning in 2000. I summarize its main characteristics and trace how it has further been taken up in ICE, IRE, Intercultural Information Ethics, and virtue ethics more broadly. I respond to important criticisms and objections, arguing that EP thus stands as an important component for a contemporary IDE that seeks an ethical cosmopolitanism in place of computer-mediated colonization. (shrink)

I describe the emergence of Floridi’s philosophy of information (PI) and information ethics (IE) against the larger backdrop of Information and Computer Ethics (ICE). Among their many strengths, PI and IE offer promising metaphysical and ethical frameworks for a global ICE that holds together globally shared norms with the irreducible differences that define local cultural and ethical traditions. I then review the major defenses and critiques of PI and IE offered by contributors to this special issue, and highlight Floridi’s responses (...) to especially two central problems – the charge of relativism and the meaning of ‹entropy’ in IE. These responses, conjoined with several elaborations of PI and IE offered here by diverse contributors, including important connections with the naturalistic philosophies of Spinoza and other major Western and Eastern figures, thus issue in an expanded and more refined version of PI and IE – one still facing important questions as well as possibilities for further development. (shrink)

Trust is essential to human society and the good life. At the same time, citizens of developed countries spend more and more time in virtual environments. This collection asks how far virtual environments, especially those affiliated with -Web 2.0-, challenge and foster trust? <BR> The book's early chapters establish historical, linguistic, and philosophical foundations for key concepts of trust, embodiment, virtuality, and virtual worlds. Four philosophers then analyze how trust - historically interwoven with embodied co-presence - may be enhanced through (...) online environments. Final contributions tackle the specific challenges of virtual child pornography and democratic deliberation online. <BR> This is the first collection devoted exclusively to the philosophical dimensions of trust and virtual worlds. It helps bring the reader up to date on the relevant concepts and issues, and on ways in which widely ranging insights and approaches may nonetheless cohere into a reasonably comprehensive account of trust.". (shrink)

The Internet has been used as a place for and site of an array of research activities. From online ethnographies to public data sets and online surveys, researchers and research regulators have struggled with an array of ethical issues around the conduct of online research. This paper presents a discussion and findings from Buchanan and Ess's study on US-based institutional review boards and the state of internet research ethics.

I approach the philosophical analyses of the phenomenon of trust vis-à-vis online communication beginning with an overview from within the framework of computer-mediated communication of concerns and paradigmatic failures of trust in the history of online communication. I turn to the more directly philosophical analyses of trust online by first offering an introductory taxonomy of diverse accounts of trust that have emerged over the past decade or so. In the face of important objections to the possibility of establishing and fostering (...) trust in online environments—objections that emerge especially from the perspective of virtue ethics and phenomenological approaches to how we know and navigate the world as embodied beings—I then take up three major arguments in recent work in favor of the possibilities of trust online, followed by three vicious circles that run counter to more optimistic views. I close with a summary of some additional reasons for optimism regarding trust online, followed by a final question that emerges out of recent CMC research on social networking sites that poses, I argue, fundamental challenges indeed to how we understand and may foster and experience trust online. (shrink)

We begin with our reasons for seeking to bring Kant to bear on contemporary information and computing ethics (ICE). We highlight what each contributor to this special issue draws from Kant and then applies to contemporary matters in ICE. We conclude with a summary of what these chapters individually and collectively tell us about Kant’s continuing relevance to these contemporary matters – specifically, with regard to the issues of building trust online and regulating the Internet; how far discourse contributing to (...) deliberative democracy online may include storytelling and appeals to the emotions; and whether or not search engine algorithms should be made public. We further highlight how certain chapters – especially as they incorporate more recent philosophical traditions such as phenomenology and cognitive psychology – develop a Kantian approach (or at least one that is both inspired by while simultaneously transforming Kant) to ethical issues in ICE, including the ethical implications of the on-going blurring of the border between the real and the virtual; designing software in light of distributed ethical responsibility; and trust-building in e-Science collaborations. (shrink)

I trace the development of an emerging global Information and Computing Ethics , arguing that ethical pluralism – as found in both Western and Asian traditions – is crucial to such an ICE. In particular, ethical pluralism – as affiliated with notions of judgment , reson-ance, and harmony – holds together shared ethical norms alongside the irreducible differences that define individual and cultural identities. I demonstrate how such pluralism is already at work in both contemporary theory and praxis, including in (...) development projects in diverse cul-tures. I conclude with a number of resonances between this global pluralism and African thought and tradi-tions that thus suggest that such a pluralism may also succeed in the African context, as diverse African cultures and countries seek to benefit from ICTs while maintaining their cultural identities. (shrink)

This special issue fosters joint exploration of personal identity by both philosophers, on the one hand, and scholars and researchers in Internet Studies, on the other. The summary of articles gathered here leads to a larger collective account of personal identity that highlights embodiment and thereby the continuities between online and offline senses and experiences of selfhood. I connect this collective account with other contemporary works at the intersections between philosophy and IS, such as on trust and virtual worlds, thereby (...) entailing further questions and debates. I close by exploring how these collective insights illuminate larger themes regarding technology—specifically, the debate between a distinctively modern Augustinian–Cartesian account emphasizing control, liberation, and immortality by way of escape from the body, vs. more contemporary alternatives in feminist, environmental, and information philosophies that highlight autonomy through, rather than against, embodiment. (shrink)

``The diversity of cultures in this world isreally important. It's the richness that wehave which, in fact, will save us from beingcaught up in one big idea''.Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the Web)addressing the 10th International World WideWeb Conference, Hong Kong.

The goals of a global liberal arts education, as conjoining both western and eastern sources, focus on ‘virtue first’, i.e. on pursuing human excellence . To determine whether such excellence can be taught online, I turn to contemporary research on Computer-Mediated Communication and online education. Among other factors, important cultural issues as well as the real costs of online education have moderated 1990s enthusiasm for online learning as ‘revolutionary’. I then take up Hubert Dreyfus’ pedagogical taxonomy as it emphasizes the (...) role of embodiment in learning. Expanding on his analysis, I argue that the most important goals of a global liberal arts education–precisely the goals of becoming excellent human beings capable of Aristotelian phroneØsis, a key form of judgment crucial to not only professional success but also ethical and political life–require human teachers who incarnate the skills and judgment students need to acquire. These analyses, finally, support what is in fact a recent turn in online education towards blended classrooms that seek to exploit the distinctive advantages of both embodied and disembodied teaching. (shrink)

I highlight several aspects of current and future developments of the internet, in order to draw from these in turn specific consequences of particular significance for the ongoing development and expansion of informa-tion ethics. These consequences include changing conceptions of self and privacy in both Western and Eastern countries, and correlative shifts from the communication technologies of literacy and print to a \secondary orality.. These consequences in turn imply that current and future information ethics should focus on developing a global (...) but pluralistic virtue ethics - one that may offset the anti-democratic dangers of such secondary orality. (shrink)

We highlight the important lessons our contributors present in our collective project of fostering dialogues both between applied ethics and computer science and between cultures. These include: critical reflexivity; procedural (partly Habermasian) approaches to establishing such central norms as “emancipation”; the importance of local actors in using ICTs both for global management and in development projects – especially as these contribute the trust essential for the social context of use of new technologies; and pluralistic approaches that preserve local cultural differences (...) alongside shared norms. May Thorseth then contextualizes our work vis-a-vis broader philosophical discussions of deliberation and democracy. (shrink)

E-games are a dramatically expanding dimension of contemporary exploitations of computing and computer network technologies - one that, thus far, has evoked much more heat among parents and politicians than light in the form of serious scholarly and philosophical analysis. We argue that e-games deserve such analysis in part because of their intrinsic philosophical interest as they raise primary philosophical questions of ontology, epistemology, human nature, the character of "gameplay," - and most especially, of ethics. We further suggest that such (...) analyses - exemplified by the articles collected here - may also contribute to resolving the larger social and political debates evoked by e-games. (shrink)

Mit der Entwicklung von Gen-, Nanotechnologie und Neurotechnolgie bekommt die Menschheit mehr und mehr die Mittel in die Hand, sich in Eigenregie evolutionär weiterzuentwickeln. Das ist gefährlich.

Background and ProcessIn February 2012, the European Commission launched “The ONLIFE Initiative—a Concept Reengineering Exercise” within the context of the Digital Agenda for Europe. Initiated by Nicole Dewandre of the EC and chaired by Luciano Floridi , scholars from various academic backgrounds were invited to discuss the impact of information and communication technologies on individual, social and public lives. Of particular concern were the policy-relevant consequences of ICT-related developments. Taking Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition To begin with, we took the (...) following from the prologue to The Human Condition as the opening motto of the Background Document. Arendt calls for “… a reconsideration of the human condition from the vantage point of our newest experiences and most recent fears”—vis-à-vis what she observed to be a prevailing thoughtlessness, “the heedless recklessness or hopeless confusion or complacent repetition of .. (shrink)

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to give an introduction to the special issue by providing background on the ETHICOMP conference series and a discussion of its role in the academic debate on ethics and computing. It provides the context that influenced the launch of the conference series and highlights its unique features. Finally, it provides an overview of the papers in the special issues. Design/methodology/approach – The paper combines an historical account of ETHICOMP and a review of (...) the existing papers. Findings – ETHICOMP is one of the well-established conference series focused on ethical issues of information and computing. Its special features include: multidisciplinary and diversity of contributors and contributions; explicit outreach to professionals whose work is to design, build, deploy and maintain specific computing applications in the world at large; creation of knowledge that is accessible and relevant across fields and disciplines; intention of making a practical difference to development, use and policy of computing principles and artefacts; and creation of an inclusive, supportive and nurturing community across traditional knowledge silos. Originality/value – The paper is the first one to explicitly define the nature of ETHICOMP which is an important building block in the future development of the conference series and will contribute to the further self-definition of the ETHICOMP community. (shrink)