INTRODUCTION
Facing digital futures does not mean that
everything
that can be digitized has per se a higher degree of rationality
and
social goodness and that therefore digitization should be considered as
the royal
road for better public and private life. There is no historical
determinism
that would impose on individuals and societies the obligation to
digitize their
lives without considering pros and cons and making a difference between
themselves and their digital persona. The ethical challenge consists in
unveiling
digital options for the res publica, or the political space,
with its
institutions and processes as well as for civil society, or res
privata.
As the US computer scientist Terry Winograd and the Chilean engineer,
entrepreneur and politician Fernando Flores put it in their 1986
foundational book Understanding Computers and Cognition: "in
designing
tools we are
designing ways of being" (1, xi). All technology arises within cultural
traditions, within historical, geographical and ecological settings.
Technologies
provide answers to problems faced by society in search of a better
life, enlarging
the freedom of its members within the premises of political liberty.
Societal
freedom and political liberty are based on an equitable access to
information
resources, educational institutions, labour opportunities and, last but
not
least, to positions of political responsibility in the res publica.
Information
ethics can be a catalyst for critical discourse and political action on
these issues in both
areas.
Information technology is, at a
foundational
level, grounded
in cultures and customs as well as in the spirit of the age. When
facing technological
challenges, the need for critical reflection arises when the interests
and
ambitions of public and private agents collide with an ethical vision
of a
holistically just and fair global society. Ethics, being at the core of
an
interdisciplinary discourse, aims at analyzing and evaluating the
goals, values
and rules of public and private agents, particularly on issues dealing
with
justice and prospects of the good life. Ethics can help unmask our
technological
obsessions, obsessions that often take the shape of an ersatz religion.
What
follows is an attempt to reconcile the tension between digital life, or
onlife,
and its counterpart offlife. Dystopian onlife phenomena
such as
digital surveillance, misuse of personal data and different kinds of
digital
addiction in everyday life are symptoms that call for a thorough
ethical, legal
and political analysis.
ON RES PUBLICA
AND RES PRIVATA IN THE DIGITAL
AGE
Political organization of the Res Publica,
particularly of its governmental, legal and administrative bodies,
often utilizes
a top-down approach with the state becoming entangled with private
agents in
what Dwight D. Eisenhower in his 1961 speech called "the
military-industrial complex" (2). In the present age, considerations of
digital
technology must be added to this technocratic complex in which the
state has
the power to either guarantee equality of access to digital information
and
communication or use it for societal control. Where society relies on
private agents
within a free-market neo-liberal economy, private companies will choose
either
to act as a fair and ethical player within established social
structures or
they will choose to profit off available data in detriment to the
privacy and
informed consent of individual citizens as well as national and
international
legal rules and agreements. In both cases, the centralized top-down
welfare
state and the bottom-up liberal model based on the private initiative
can be
liberating as well as oppressing. Between these two possibilities there
are
different ways by which interests and objectives are entangled,
including or excluding
different societal agents within a state as well as between states and
larger
political international bodies and global private companies. In liberal
as well
as in top-down organized societies, the power of private companies can
be dystopian
if they become instruments of state power. Algorithms can be a mask of
social
oppression, surveillance and manipulation by state and/or private
agents but
they can also open possibilities for society to become more just if
national
and international rules of fair play are set up and applied. This is
the reason
why a basic international agreement on rules and values concerning the
internet
is needed as was stated already in the documents issued by the World
Summit of
the Information Society (WSIS) in 2003 and 2005. Societies must think
also in localized
terms about how to develop a better life for less advantaged
individuals and
groups, about the protection of individual and social privacy, and as
well, the
contribution of information technology for the protection of the
environment
and cultural heritage.
In order to accomplish these tasks, it is
crucial that
not only is free access to information for all guaranteed but also that
citizens are free to express their own opinions on issues of private
and public
life by respecting the law as well as basic standards of civility. The
right to
communicate in different formats, including one-to-one, one-to-many,
many-to-one and many-to-many must become a human right, particularly in
the
digital age. However, such a right is endangered by different forms of
censorship and surveillance. Public policy must take the lead in order
to
implement measures that guarantee the privacy of citizens as well as
public
digital spaces in which citizens do not fear that their data is being
misused. Such
policy must be applied to both corporations and governments, and at an
international level to ensure other countries are not transferring the
data of
millions of citizens to marketing companies without any knowledge and
consent
of their citizens. In addition, such interventions must be transparent.
Policy
made in secrecy can lead to different forms of public and private
corruption.
The search for what is good for the whole of
society
should not rely mainly upon philanthropic projects, as legitimate and
important
as such projects are towards the free contribution of civil society to
the
common good.
Nevertheless, it is society itself as a whole,
represented and governed by democratically legitimated institutions and
processes, whose goals are open to public scrutiny by free media as
well as by
a free and fair interaction of the members of civil society, that leads
and
maintains the public dialogue, being always in search of what is good
for
common life. The fragility of human life and its fundamental openness
to the
unforeseen put into question any kind of unquestionable social utopias,
as much
as such utopian metaphors play an important role in art and literature
by unveiling
structures and situations of oppression and injustice. Constitutions
and basic
laws aiming to provide a fundament for the good life for society as a
whole are
rooted in traditions as well as in historical experiences. These
traditions and
historical experiences include felicitous moments of great achievements
in the
arts, science and culture. But they also include processes of
decay,
self-destruction and murderous wars and
ideologies of
exclusion and annihilation of other human beings because of their race,
language, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, political orientation
or social
status.
INFORMATION ETHICS FOR DIGITAL FUTURES
The vision of common values for all societies is at
best enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as
well in
other international declarations issued particularly by UNESCO such as
those dealing
with cultural heritage, multilingualism and universal access to
Cyberspace, and
the preservation of digital heritage, to mention just a few. UNESCO has been promoting international and
regional
conferences on information ethics since 1995. Among them, I would
like to highlight in particular, the first African Information Ethics
Conference that took place in 2007, a conference jointly organized by
the
University of Pretoria, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the
International Center for Information Ethics, sponsored by the South
African
Government and under the patronage of UNESCO. One of the outstanding
outcomes of
the conference was the Tshwane Declaration of Information Ethics in
Africa,
from which I quote:
"All people have equal rights
as set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. To exercise
their
human rights people need and should have access to information as well
as the
ability to benefit from it.
Information should be recognized as
a tool for promoting the goals of freedom, democracy, understanding,
global
security, peace and development and should be used as such.
Information should be made
available, accessible and affordable across all linguistic groups,
gender,
differently abled, elderly and all cultural and income groups.
World-wide, the centrality of
information is manifested as nations move towards Information and
Knowledge
Societies. To make the global Millennium development goals a reality,
Africa
should be a key player in this movement.
Policies and practices regarding
the generation, dissemination and utilisation of information in and
about
Africa should be grounded in an Ethics based on universal human values,
human
rights and social justice
Indigenous knowledge and cultural
diversity is a valuable contribution Africa can make to the global
Information
Society. It should be preserved, fostered and enabled to enrich the
world body
of knowledge." (3)
A basic issue of digital futures concerns the
development of digital identity as a basis for participation in public
and
private matters of social life. Its relevance has been recognized and
promoted
by the ID4Africa movement, co-founded by Joseph J. Atick in 2014, whose
aim is “to
promote legal identity for all in Africa (consistent with Sustainable
Development
Goal 16.9) and to empower individuals to claim their rights and to
benefit from
the fruits of development." (4). In order for digital identity to be a
tool for empowering people and not for their surveillance and
manipulation it
is essential to provide it technical and legal protection from misuse
by any
kind of private or public agent.
Today's information societies are in many
regards
disinformation societies where lies, fake news, and misinformation of
all kind
are perpetually sent and received around the globe. It can be said that
such was
already the case in all societies. In fact, the ethical and legal
issues
brought about by the invention of writing, and later on of printing,
were no
less ambivalent for human communication. However, new and emerging
technologies
can change human life at a foundational level, marking substantial
differences in
social life, differences that have become apparent with each new
technological invention.
It is in this basic sense that it can be said that technologies are not
neutral,
although it is no less true that they can be considered as having the
possibility of a dual use. Digital technology has changed the
structure
of human communication at a global level and brought about
possibilities of
social action that are unprecedented. At the same time, disruptive
possibilities
are apparent and give rise not only to an academic debate which started
some
seventy years ago – the mathematician Norbert Wiener published his "The
Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society" in 1950 (5) – but
also
to a broad social and political discussion on ethical issues that has
reached
mass media and the Res Publica with the creation of ministries
of
digital affairs.
This discussion concerns not only the debate on
the possible
use or misuse of digital technologies but also on how far we – but who
is meant
by 'we' ? – want these technologies to infuse our private
and
public life and, in fact, our bodies. In order for this discussion to
be
productive it is crucial that we as individuals and as society pay
attention to
the difference between onlife and offlife in the public
as well
as in the private realm
Mounting
obsessions with digital technologies leads to all kinds of addictions
and
different forms of oppression and exploitation, particularly in the
working
world but also in the educational and family environment. Learning to
live in
the digital era is not an easy task and should not be relegated to the
marketing departments of private companies or to quick decision making
of
politicians. The more digital devices are intertwined with our lives
and our
bodies, the more we must learn to take a temporary or local distance
from them
in some places and situations. This is an important task for educators
no less
than for parents. We can learn from the history of other technologies
such as,
for instance, cars. The more we transform our cities into car friendly
cities
the more we became aware that cities are a complex habitat whose core
are
people, not cars. This is becoming more and more apparent with the
increasing
creation of pedestrian areas and the development of infrastructure for
mass public
transport on one hand and on the other hand, the use of less impactful
individual means of transport, such as bicycles. Face-to-face and
interface
communication is not an either-or alternative but a difference that
must be
perceived and integrated into everyday life. Issues arising from
digital
futures are optional, open to free weighting based on different kinds
of values
that are context dependent (6). This makes apparent the responsibility
of
governments to provide digital spaces of public communication instead
of
relying alone on private entrepreneurs. Communication is the bond of
human
society and should therefore be an issue of the Res Publica
Digitalis.
This is evident in the case of non-digital spaces as spaces of public
transportation and relaxation in our cities.
CONCLUSION
Dealing ethically with digital futures means to
face
an open field of possibilities that are unveiled when we are open and
free to
think about them instead of following hypes and marketing
slogans of the
IT industry. The capacity and the right to say 'yes' or 'no' must be
cultivated
and legally guaranteed not only with regard to oneself but also and
originally
to all kinds of social interactions where possible and in many cases
should
also take care of the welfare of others, particularly of those that
need our
support in different areas and situations, permanently or temporarily.
Facing
digital futures, we must be able to imagine different forms of public
and
private life in specific cultural contexts in which the life-work
balance is
perceived with regard to the possibilities and constraints inherent in
digital
technology. From this perspective, digital enlightenment has a double
meaning:
it addresses, on the one hand, what is called digital literacy,
that is
to say, the task of empowering people in their knowledge and use of
digital
devices. It might be more useful to talk about digital literacies
(plural)
since there are different contexts in which digital devices are used or
might
be developed for becoming more useful for the people. On the other
hand,
digital enlightenment means a critical appraisal of the digital as such
not
only with regard to issues related to possible misuses but also to the
possibilities of not using this or that device at all, either
permanently or
from time to time.
REFERENCES
1. Winograd, Terry and Flores, Fernando (1986).
Understanding Computers and Cognition. A New Foundation for Design.
Norwood,
NJ: Ablex.
2. Eisenhower, Dwight D. (1961).
Military-Industrial
Complex Speech.
Available
at: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/eisenhower001.asp
3. Tshwane Declaration on Information Ethics in
Africa
(2007).
Available at: http://www.africainfoethics.org/tshwanedeclaration.html
4. ID4Africa.
Available at: http://www.id4africa.com/
5. Wiener, Norbert (1989). The Human Use of
Human
Beings: Cybernetics and Society. London: Free Association Books (1st.
ed.
Boston, 1950).
6. Nissenbaum, Helen (2010). Privacy in Context.
Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life. Stanford:
Stanford
University Press.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The
author thanks Christopher Coenen (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology,
Germany) and Jared Bielby (Chair, International Center for
Information Ethics, Canada) for critical remarks and polishing the
English.
Last update: July 9, 2018