INTRODUCTION
The concept of ethics as
reflection
on morality is widely accepted among philosophers going back to
Aristotle as
the founder of ethics as an academic discipline. Today’s
constructivists such
as Niklas Luhmann underline the critical function of ethical theory
with regard
to morality (Luhmann 1990). The Aristotelian techne ethike
is in fact oriented towards the formation of an
individual character. It belongs together with the techne
oikonomike, that is the science of house administration, and
the techne politike, that is the
science of the polis, to what he
calls philosophia praktike
or practical philosophy (Bien 1985).
Aristotle’s conception of practical philosophy is concerned with the
reflection
on the ways human beings dwell in the world, with their ethos,
and their search for good life (eu zen). According to
Luhmann (1990) the ethical discourse should
not provide a given morality with a kind of fundamentum
inconcussum or even become a meta-perspective beyond all other
societal
systems but, quite the contrary, it belongs to the self-referential
process of
morality itself. As a self-referential process ethics is an unending
quest on
explicit and implicit uses of the moral code, that is to say of respect
or
disrespect, with regard to individual and social communication. In
other words,
ethics observes the ways we
communicate with each other as moral
persons and the ways this moral identity is understood. There is,
indeed, no
unbiased ethical observer.
The German philosopher
Hans
Krämer has remarked that Western moral philosophy follows
basically two lines,
the older one which was predominant until the 18th century
and which
deals with “striving for the good" (“Strebensethik”), and the modern
one
beginning with the Enlightenment which tries to determine what we ought
to do (“Sollensethik”)
(Krämer 1992). If we restrict moral philosophy to the second view
most of the questions
about the ways we construct the social world, that is to say human
culture, do
not belong to the realm of ethics. This narrow view puts also aside the
ancient
meaning of philosophy as a practice of “care of the self” (Hadot 1993,
1995;
Foucault 1984, Capurro 1995). Both traditions, the striving for
universality
and the care for locality, are intertwined in an open-ended process of
self-reflection
Our present life-world is
shaped
by information technology. The Oxford
philosopher Luciano Floridi has coined the term “infosphere” to capture
this
point (Floridi 1999). I use instead the term digital
ontology in the sense that this world view of the digital
embraces today all dimensions of our being-in-the-world (Capurro 2001).
This
predominant digital world view is not the cyberspace or “the new home
of mind” proclaimed
by John Perry Barlow in 1996 (Barlow 1996) but the intersection of the
digital
with the ecological, political, economic, and cultural spheres. Intercultural information ethics addresses
questions concerning these intersections such as: How far is the
Internet
changing local cultural values and traditional ways of life? How far do
these
changes affect the life and culture of future societies in a global and
local
sense? Put another way, how far do traditional cultures and their moral
values
communicate and transform themselves under the impact of the digital
“infosphere” in general and of the Internet in particular? In other
words,
intercultural information ethics can be conceived as a field of
research where
moral questions of the “infosphere” are reflected in
a comparative manner on the basis of
different cultural traditions. The Internet has become a challenge not
only to
international but also to intercultural information ethics as I will
show in
the second part of this paper. But, indeed, intercultural information
ethics
suggests a paradigm shift not only within traditional (Western) ethics
but also
within (Western) philosophy itself to which I will first briefly refer.
1.
INTERCULTURAL PHILOSOPHY
Is there a European
philosophy?
This question sounds strange not just because we speak about, for
instance,
Indian, Chinese, Latin American or African philosophy, but also because
Europe is anything but a
homogenous cultural phenomenon. But
even in case we would answer it positively, it sounds chauvinistic and
finally
irrational because it presupposes that universal rationality could be
the
specific property of a local culture, or even that other similar
cultural formations
of human rationality should not be addressed as philosophical.
Philosophy would
be then a mono-cultural property of
Europeans or even only of its name givers, namely the ancient Greeks.
This
Eurocentric or Hellenic-centric view of philosophy has been criticized
particularly in the last years by what is being called intercultural
philosophy (Wimmer 2004).
1.1 Is
There a European Philosophy?
Is there a European
philosophy?
One prominent philosopher of the last century, namely Martin Heidegger,
has
apparently given an affirmative answer in his book “What is
Philosophy?” by
saying that only the “Western world and Europe” (“das Abendland und
Europa”) as
heirs of the Greeks have developed on the basis of Greek philosophy
modern
sciences that now pervade the whole planet (Heidegger 1976, 7). This
Eurocentric
thesis has been criticized for instance by the Indian philosopher Ram
Adhar
Mall (1996, 12) who at the same time remarks that although Heidegger
does not
seem to see the difference between the Greek word philosophy
and its subject matter, he also remarks in the
“Conversation on language” that the different answers given by Western-European and Far-East traditions to
the call of language, that is to say to the hermeneutic shaping of our
being-in-the-world, might be able to converge on the basis of a
dialogue (“Gespräch”)
that would then come out of a common and single source (“einer einzigen
Quelle”) (Heidegger 1975, 94). In other words, Heidegger would be
considering
what we could call not just an intercultural
but a transcultural philosophy.
According to Heidegger the
word “philosophy” points to a specific way of questioning of the kind
“what
is?” (ti estin), and more
precisely
“what is being?” (ti to on) that
arose within Greek culture (Heidegger 1976, 9). But already Plato and
Aristotle,
no less than Kant or Hegel, gave different answers to what is meant by
the word what in the sense of what is meant
when we ask for the essence of something. In other words, the original
Greek
question opened different paths of thinking in such a way that,
according to
Heidegger, the answers do not build a kind of dialectical process but a
“free
sequence” (“freie Folge”) (Heidegger 1976, 18). This means that
philosophy from
its very beginning and in its further development in Western culture is
not
restricted to the Greek origin or that it is not mono-ethnic. Moreover,
it
opens, on a first step, an inner-cultural
dialogue in which those who share this questioning, are already
embedded
without the possibility of an immediate
liberation.
But the fact of asking the
question ‘what is philosophy?’ already points to a situation of
distance with
regard to what we are asking for (Heidegger 1976, 11-12). According to
Heidegger the different answers given to the question of what things
are, have
something in common, namely the conception of language (logos)
as a gathering of the whole of reality which is what the
Greek called science (episteme). We,
as human beings, are responsible or in charge of this gathering which
means no
less that the possibility of giving grounds or reasons for what is
(Heidegger
1976, 16). Philosophic questioning is of the nature that it binds
questions
with the essence of the questioner. To answer the question ‘what is
philosophy?’ is then by no means possible by referring to one of the
possible answers
alone, nor is it the result of looking for what is common to all of
them as
this would provide just a “void formula” (“leere Formel”) (Heidegger
1976, 19).
It is also not sure that our answer, or Heidegger’s own, will be a
philosophic
one. In fact, this situation of disturbance or insecurity may be a hint and even a “touchstone”
(“Prüfstein”) that we are on a philosophic path (Heidegger 1976,
19). What is
basic for grasping the differences among philosophic answers is their
corresponding mood, including the sober mood of planning and
calculating which
is a characteristic of modern science and with it of what we use to
call
‘modernity.’ In fact, as Heidegger states, it is not possible to be
able to
ever go back to the original Greek experience of logos
and it is of course not possible just to incorporate it. We
can only get into a historical or creative
dialogue with it (Heidegger 1976, 30).
1.2 The
Path of Comparative Philosophy
This dialogue is thus not
only an inner one but also an intercultural and finally a transcultural
one that
goes beyond the local tradition of Western philosophy as well as beyond
any
mono-cultural foundation of philosophy but remaining attached to it at
the same
time in the different voices that articulate it. When Heidegger states
that we
can only get into a historical or creative dialogue with the original
Greek
experience, “we” is then of course not restricted to Europeans who must
overcome their own tradition starting with an inner-cultural dialogue.
This
dialogue changes the meaning of the word “we” that is to say, the
matter of philosophy.
The concept of comparative or intercultural philosophy fosters this
paradigmatic change. It makes explicit the difference between
traditions of
theoretical and practical thinking that arose and were developed more
or less
independently from each other, on the one hand, and the dialogical
appropriation of Western philosophy by non-European traditions and vice versa, on the other (Elberfeld
2002, 11). This intercultural appraisal gives rise to a new kind of
philosophic
thinking, particularly of ethical thinking. An outstanding example of
an intercultural
philosophic dialogue between Western and Chinese thinking tradition(s)
that
does not level the differences by looking for some kind of universal
human rationality
lies the work of François Julien (1998). When this intercultural
philosophical
dialogue deals with information technology as the pervasive medium of
today’s
being-in-the-world, we speak of intercultural
information ethics as well as of intercultural
philosophy of information.
The journal polylog:
Forum for Intercultural Philosophy
(polylog 2004) addresses the prospects of the field in this way:
We understand intercultural philosophy as
the endeavor to give expression to the many voices of philosophy in
their
respective cultural contexts and thereby to generate a shared, fruitful
discussion granting equal rights to all. In intercultural philosophy we
see
above all a new orientation and new practice of
philosophy – of a
philosophy that requires an attitude of mutual respect, listening, and
learning. It entails a new orientation because, in
acknowledgment of the cultural situatedness of philosophy, claims must
prove
themselves interculturally, and culture and cultures must be
consciously kept
in view as the context of philosophizing. It entails a new practice
because
this consciousness demands a departure from an individual,
mono-cultural
production of philosophy and seeks instead a dialogical,
process-oriented,
fundamentally open polyphony of cultures and disciplines.
Following Ernst Cassirer’s
insight about the historical construction of reality on the basis of
“symbolic
forms” we can say that culture is the shaping or in-formation
(“Formung”) of human self-consciousness as well as of
the material world. The “philosophy of symbolic forms” and the
“philosophy of
technology” are two sides of the same coin or different forms of sense
production (“Sinngebung”) (Cassirer 1994, Vol. 2, 258-259; 1985). Both
processes are based on the processes of selection, conservation, and
reconstruction of meaning being accomplished by a plurality
of actors and leading to what Jan Assmann calls “cultural
memory” (Assmann 2003, 2000). Cultural identity is a relative concept
as it
points to a permanent exchange of messages between social actors
(Capurro 2003).
Today’s digital globalization has accelerated the process of cultural
hybridization
leading to glocal cultures, to use
this neologism suggesting the merging of the global and the local
suggested by
the sociologist Roland Robertson (1992). Although the outcome is not
just homogenization
or MacWorld new forms of
ghettoization, marginalization, and social exclusion might also arise
even within
democratic societies (Agamben 2002).
The path of comparative
philosophy has several important landmarks in the last century. The
first
East-West Philosopher’s conference took place 1939 in Hawaii and was
followed by subsequent
meetings since 1949. Günter Wohlfart and Helmut Pape have
organized similar
meetings of the Académie du Midi
starting in 1989 one of which was particularly concerned with the
question
of “comparative ethics” (Elberfeld
2002). What does “comparative” mean? It does not mean the mere
juxtaposition of
different ethical theories, a sort of mere relativism or
multiculturalism. It
means, in contrast, a dialogue between them following Nietzsche’s
aphorism that
we live in the “age of comparison” (“Zeitalter der Vergleichung”) in
which
cultures, customs, and world views that were in former times mostly
isolated
are being compared and can be “lived through” (“durchlebt”) leading to
an epoch
beyond the “culture of comparison” (“Cultur der Vergleichung”)
(Nietzsche 1988,
44). We may speak of multicultural ethics
in which case we just juxtapose ethical views instead of comparing
them. A mono-cultural view of ethics conceives
itself as the only valid one. In order to avoid this kind of ethical
chauvinism
and colonialism it is necessary that transcultural
ethics arise from an intercultural
dialogue instead of thinking
of itself as universal without noticing its own cultural bias. In
contrast, a
mere meta-cultural view is eventually metaphysical or essentialist as
it
pretends to have a definitive true knowledge on human nature and human
reason.
But, indeed, human reason
is genuinely plural. We constitute a
common world on the basis of exchange practices. This is indeed the key
question
with regard to the discussion on the theoretical foundation of human
rights. This
foundation cannot be provided by methodological or meta-cultural rules
alone, i.e.,
by formal-logical principles or so-called anthropological constants.
Not just
because such principles and constants are the object of interpretation
and
evolution but also, as Gregor Paul himself in his final statement to a
comprehensive project sponsored by the VolkswagenStiftung
remarks, because the foundation of, for instance, such a basic human
right as
the respect for human dignity, for instance, remains problematic in
either of
the following foundational possibilities, namely: on authority, on a
pure methodological
or empirical basis, or on positive law (Paul 2001). In other words,
universal
principles can only be founded on a permanent
critical and, I would add, intercultural exchange. This hermeneutic
circle
between morality, ethics, and law builds also a condition for political
legitimacy from the beginning Modernity in opposition to its foundation
in
natural law or in metaphysical or religious presuppositions. But it is
indeed
an open question whether modern nation-state oriented political
theories can be analogically expanded to include the
present
digital globalization. Intercultural ethics can provide a ground for an
intercultural
and not just international dialogue on these matters.
2. BEYOND META-CULTURAL UNIVERSITALITY: INTERCULTURAL
ETHICS
The UNESCO Universal
Declaration on Cultural Diversity defines the concept of culture in
line with
the conclusions of three world conferences: the World Conference on
Cultural
Policies (Mexico City, 1982), the world conference of the World
Commission on
Culture and Development (1995), and the
world conference of the Intergovernmental Conference on Cultural
Policies for
Development (Stockholm, 1998) as follows:
Reaffirming that culture should be regarded
as the set
of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features
of
society or a social group, and that it encompasses, in addition to art
and
literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems,
traditions and
beliefs. (UNESCO 2003)
The question of culture is, as this Declaration also
stresses, at the heart of contemporary social and political debates
particularly
since the appearance of Samuel P. Huntington’s influential book “The
Clash of
Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order” (1997) and the events of
September 11, 2001 and March 11, 2004. The current discussions in the
field of
intercultural philosophy and sociology (Hoffmann 2003) show that there
are no clear
borders among cultures and that cultures are not homogenous and static.
A
closed and static vision on cultures as largely presupposed by Huntington,
argues with
clichés and does not pay attention to the complex diachronic and
synchronic
hybridizations or “polyphonies” inside as well as between cultures
(Jammal
2004). Even the idea of humanity that lies behind universalistic
approaches to
ethics, rests on an essentialist paradigm and can be considered only as
a
regulative one, as I will show (Merwe 2000). When we speak about
cultures we
deal, as the UNESCO Declaration stresses, with fuzzy and
contingent sets of life styles, value systems, and
beliefs that are themselves the product of hybridization.
Michael Walzer
distinguishes between “thick” and “thin” morality, i.e., between moral
arguments as rooted or located in a culture as opposed to disembodied
ones (Walzer
1994). It is a misunderstanding to envisage the intercultural “thick”
ethical
dialogue for instance in relation to the validity of human rights as a
kind of
moral relativism (Paul 2003). Universality is, in Kantian terms, a
regulative
idea that can only be perceived and partially achieved within the
plural
conditions of human reason, i.e., through a patient intercultural
dialogue on
the maxims that may guide our actions. The fixation of ethical
principles in a
moral or quasi-legal code such as the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (UDHC) has highly pragmatic
and indeed political
significance, namely as a global strategy for global survival and well
being.
But the idea of a universal code of morality remains problematic
in the Kantian sense of the term. According to Kant problematic
concepts are those whose object we cannot know about. For the kind
of
questions arising from them there is no solution ("Lösung"), but
only
a dissolution ("Auflösung") of the problem on the basis, for
instance, of the difference between the empirical and the
transcendental (Kant
1974, A 339). The concept of humanity and consequently the concept of
human
rights are problematic concepts. In order to deal with them we need a
permanent
intercultural ethical dialogue, on the one hand, as well as a pragmatic
and
contingent transcultural consensus, on the other, by retaining
universality
only as a transcendental or regulative idea. The insight into the
theoretical
contingency of universal moral codes and
their practical utility is not in
the same sense valid, I believe, for projects like the one of a “world
ethos”
(Küng 2001) as far as such a distillation of theological norms
retains a
religious dimension that is deeply rooted in different “thick”
moralities. Thus
the real challenge is intercultural theology which is not the same as
the question
of theological inculturation (IIMO 2004, Wijsen 2001).
Charles Taylor (1993) has
pointed to the tension between the modern idea that all human beings
are equal
with regard to their dignity as stressed by the Enlightenment, and the
idea of
respect of the uniqueness of human life in its particularity. This
tension has less
to do with the so called Eurocentric origin of the human rights as
stated in
the UDHC (Wimmer 2004, 171) as with the fact that for instance Article
27 of
the UDHC explicitly protects “the right freely to participate in the
cultural
life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific
advancement
and its benefits.” This right to individual and social cultural
identity or
autonomy has been also stated by the UNESCO Universal Declaration on
Cultural
Diversity as follows:
The defence of cultural diversity is an
ethical imperative, inseparable from respect for human dignity. It
implies a
commitment to human rights and fundamental freedoms, in particular the
rights
of persons belonging to minorities and those of indigenous peoples. No
one may
invoke cultural diversity to infringe upon human rights guaranteed by
international law, nor to limit their scope. (UNESCO 2003)
It is a permanent task of
intercultural ethics to reflect on these principles as well as on their
factual
collisions. There are two dangers that may affect this reflection. One
is the
use of mono-cultural or multi-cultural
arguments in order to
undermine the ethical imperative of universality. This is the danger of
moral
and cultural relativism. The other one is a one-sided plea for
meta-cultural universality that does not
open itself to an intercultural dialogue. This is the danger of moral
universalism. In both cases ethical thinking does not meet the
challenge of grasping
and holding the tension between universality and particularity. The
search for good
life and the imperative of universality need a permanent work of
translation or
exchange that with regard to information society can be called
intercultural information ethics. This
concept of intercultural ethics is prima
facie related to Jürgen Habermas “discourse ethics” (Habermas
1991) But
intercultural ethics does not address the question of consensus as a
transcendent or counter-factual goal of the evolution of human society.
It aims,
as already stated at the beginning of this paper, at observing or
working out
the differences in the uses of the moral code within and between
societies in
order to keep the process of communication between different cultural
systems
going on (Rombach 1996). Luhmann’s idea of ethics as a critical
reflection on
morality means nothing else than the opposition against moral
fundamentalism
that could even become worse if ethics would provide an apparent solid
foundation.
In other words, one main
task of intercultural ethics is to foster cultural identities not
through their
isolation or mere addition or even collision but through a process of
communication being held more and more on the basis of the digital
“infosphere.” This process concerns not only the pragmatic level of
everyday
life but also the theoretical level of reflection on their implicit and
explicit philosophic traditions. When this reflection refers to the
communication
process itself between cultures we speak of intercultural communication
ethics
in a broad sense or of intercultural
information ethics in case communication is conveyed via digital
information technology.
2.1
Intercultural Information Ethics
Digital information
technology has at first sight changed the horizon of human thinking and
action
in such a way that we have to deal with many problems for which classic
ethical
theories do not have only any answers but they cannot even provide a
sufficient
basis to deal with them. This insight into the somehow unique ethical
challenges of the technological civilization was clearly seen by Hans
Jonas
(1979). But, as Rolf Elberfeld remarks, Jonas dealt with this question
only
within the horizon of European philosophy (Elberfeld 2002, 16). It is
indeed
necessary to undertake an intercultural dialogue on information
technology which
means not only to become aware of the conditions under which different
life
styles and life projects can coexist within the new digital environment
but
also in order to explore how it affects and is being appropriated by
different
cultures particularly as they are conditioned by this new environment.
As far
as information technology pervades our being-in-the-world itself on a
global
scale and influences all aspects of life including philosophical
thinking
itself (Floridi 2004), the question about the uniqueness of computer
ethics can
be discussed (Tavani 2002). As far as I can see, the impact of
information
technology on a global scale and on all aspects of human life gives, on
the one
hand, a plausible argument in favour of the uniqueness approach not
only with
regard to the subject matter but also to the theoretical approaches so
far. But
this does not mean that, on the other hand, the moral code itself and
its
ethical reflection will be superseded by another one. The basic
question
concerning the status of moral persons, their respect or disrespect,
remains
unchanged although we may discuss as to what are the candidates and
what this
respect means in a specific situation. We may also discuss as to how
this code
has been interpreted (or not) within different ethical and cultural
traditions
and how it is being conceived with regard to the challenge of
information
technology.
Cultural reflection
on information technology, with particular emphasis on the Internet,
has
already a history. Charles Ess (Drury University,
USA) and Fay Sudweeks (Murdoch University, Australia)
have been organizing biennial conferences on cultural attitudes towards
technology and communication since 1998 (CATaC 2004, Ess 2001). Other
important
meetings in the field are: Computer Ethics: Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE
2005),
Computing and Philosophy (CAP 2004), Ethics and Computing (ETHICOMP
2005), Ethics
of Electronic Information in the 21st Century (EEI21 2004) as well as
the ICIE
Symposiums (ICIE 2004). The leading journals in
the field are Ethics and
Information Technology (ed. by
Jeroen van den Hoven, Lucas D. Introna, Deborah G.
Johnson and Helen Nissenbaum), the Journal
of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society (ed. by Simon
Rogerson
and N. Ben Fairweather), the Journal of
Information Ethics (ed. by Robert Hauptman) and the International
Journal of Information Ethics (ed. by Rafael Capurro,
Thomas Hausmanninger and Felix Weil) (ICIE 2004). Particularly since
the
question of information ethics was addressed by the United Nations that
it
became part of the international political agenda. But, how did we,
Europeans,
get there where we are now?
2.2
Spherical Projects in European
History
There are at least three
major global or spherical projects in
European history (Sloterdijk 1998ff). The first
one is the globalisation of reason in
Greek philosophy. Reason conceives itself – from Aristotle until Hegel
– as
global thinking that goes beyond nature into the realm of the divine as
the
eternal, infinite or metaphysical sphere. Such a sphere bursts with the
rise of
modern science. Metaphysical claims are criticised by modern empirical
science.
In this unequal fight, David, modern empirical science, is the winner
over the
metaphysics of Goliath. The second
globalisation is the earthly one. It
begins in Europe in the 15th
Century and bursts in the 20th Century. The idea of a
spherical
earth and the attempts to circumnavigate it are indeed older, but the
totalitarian ambitions of modern subjectivity are paid off, at least
for a
while. The third globalisation is the digital
one with predecessors in the
late Middle Ages (Raimundus Lullus, Nicholas of Cusa) as well as in
Modernity
(Pascal, Leibniz). Today we are confronted with the digital formatting
of
mankind. The digital globalisation not only reinforces and expands upon
the
divide between the digital haves and have-nots but also makes more
explicit and
even deepens existing inequalities (Warschauer 2002).
Philosophical, earthly,
and digital universalisms are intertwined with other kinds of global
projects
such as modern science with its view of nature as a system of laws that
underlie and determine in a partially foreseeable way at least the
process of
natural evolution, or the project of modern economy with the spread of
global
capitalism including a universal currency, identical goods for
everybody,
global marketing, global production and management processes etc., or
the
process of universal politics and universal values (United Nations,
“Universal
Declaration of Human Rights”), or the project(s) of universal
cataloguing of
and accessibility to scientific literature (“Universal Decimal
Classification”,
bibliographic databases accessible for instance through DIALOG, the
Internet as
a distribution medium for all kinds of digital material, etc.). The
ecological
movement has made aware of the global effects of industrialisation on
nature
and society. Two world wars had deep effects on the physical and moral
life of
millions of people all over the planet.
What is new in the present
situation is the fact that such global perceptions become at least
partially
transformed by digital media. This new situation is basically
characterized by
a system of world communication that allows different kinds of social
systems
to better interact (this is the optimist hope) with each other beyond
the
top-down vs. bottom-up alternative as well as beyond different kinds of
cultural homogenization which is mostly nothing more than cultural
colonialism.
Although digital communication may not bring a solution either for
single
societies nor for their global interaction it can contribute to find
new ways
of interaction between the local and the global creating glocal
cultures (Castells 1996).
3.
INTERCULTURAL INFORMATION ETHICS AT THE WSIS
In the first phase of the
World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS 2004) the question of
bridging
the so-called digital divide (Scheule
et al. 2004), a concern that was and is at the core of the Summit, has
been
addressed from two ethical viewpoints that are closely linked, namely
the
question of a human right to communicate and the question of cultural
diversity
to which I will now briefly refer.
3.1 Is
there a Human Right to
Communicate?
The issue
concerning the
human right to communicate has now raised a new dimension based on the
discussions of a New World Information and Communication Order
that led
the United States to leave UNESCO some twenty five years ago (UNESCO
1980). In
the meantime, since the rise of the Internet, a paradigm shift in human
communication has taken place as the classic structure of still
dominant mass
media, namely a one-to-many message distribution has been superseded by
a
structure in which everyone having access to the Internet can receive and
send digital messages not only on a one-to-one basis, but also in
the forms
of one-to-many, many-to-one and many-to-many. This is indeed a cultural
evolution in communication that occurs for the first time in the
history of
mankind on a global scale and within a short period of evolution. It is
not
surprising that many participants of the WSIS considered as necessary
to think
about the significance of Article 19 of the UDHR.
Everyone has the right to
freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold
opinions
without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and
ideas
through any media and regardless of frontiers.
This article was based on
an understanding of the communication situation before the advent of
the Internet. It is not clear whether the formulation “to seek, receive
and
impart
information” can be applied to the possibilities of communication
created by
the Internet. Do we need a specific right
to communicate or communication
rights in order to underline the new possibilities of writing
(right to
write = r2w) and reading (right to read =r2r) as building together the
right to
communicate (r2c) (Kuhlen 2003)? The discussion of these issues is
extremely
controversial and even polemical. The final text from December 12, 2003
of the Declaration of Principles begins with a
formulation that mirrors at least partially, this new perspective
without using
the formula right to communicate:
We,
the representatives of the peoples of the world, assembled in Geneva
from 10-12
December 2003 for the first phase of the World Summit on the
Information
Society, declare
our
common desire and commitment to build a people-centred, inclusive and
development-oriented Information Society, where everyone can create,
access,
utilize and share information and knowledge, enabling individuals,
communities
and peoples to achieve their full potential in promoting their
sustainable
development and improving their quality of life, premised on the
purposes and
principles of the Charter of the United Nations and respecting fully
and
upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (WSIS 2004)
3.2 The
Issue of Cultural Diversity
Point 8 of
the Declaration
of Principles deals
explicitly with „Cultural diversity and identity, linguistic diversity
and
local content” as follows:
52. Cultural diversity is the common
heritage of humankind. The Information Society should be founded on and
stimulate respect for cultural identity, cultural and linguistic
diversity,
traditions and religions, and foster dialogue among cultures and
civilizations.
The promotion, affirmation and preservation of diverse cultural
identities and
languages as reflected in relevant agreed United Nations documents
including
UNESCO’s Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, will further
enrich the
Information Society.
53. The creation, dissemination and
preservation of content in diverse languages and formats must be
accorded high
priority in building an inclusive Information Society, paying
particular
attention to the diversity of supply of creative work and due
recognition of
the rights of authors and artists. It is essential to promote the
production of
and accessibility to all content – educational, scientific, cultural or
recreational – in diverse languages and formats. The development of
local content
suited to domestic or regional needs will encourage social and economic
development and will stimulate participation of all stakeholders,
including
people living in rural, remote and marginal areas.
54. The preservation of cultural heritage
is a crucial component of identity and self- understanding of
individuals that
links a community to its past. The Information Society should harness
and
preserve cultural heritage for the future by all appropriate methods,
including
digitisation. (WSIS 2004)
The Plan of
Action of the WSIS foresees corresponding policies. The
global and local challenge of WSIS is to develop an inclusive
digital information society, that is to say to bridge the
digital divide by fostering cultural diversity. A prima
facie similar wording of the cultural article can be found in
the Civil Society Declaration to the
World Summit on the Information Society “Shaping Information
Societies for
Human Needs” (Civil Society 2004). But, in fact, this
Declaration
stresses under “2.3 Culture, Knowledge and the Public Domain” the role
of “oral
tradition” as well as a “variety of media” as means through which the
diversity
of cultures and languages enrich “information and communication
societies.” It
binds the concepts of communication and information by using the plural
form
“information and communication societies.” This Declaration
is as a whole and in each of its paragraphs a plea for
pluralistic, interactive, and glocal-oriented communication rights. It
is not
astonishing that the media establishment was not happy with it (Kuhlen
2003,
396). This indeed makes a difference to the official Declaration of the
WSIS, explicitly
stated in the following footnote to the Preamble:
There is no single information,
communication or knowledge society: there are, at the local, national
and
global levels, possible future societies; moreover, considering
communication
is a critical aspect of any information society, we use in this
document the
phrase “information and communication societies.” For consistency with
previous
WSIS language, we retain the use of the phrase “Information Society”
when
directly referencing WSIS. (Civil Society 2004)
The concept of
“information and communication societies” underlying this Declaration
is not only plural but also historical or dynamic. The Preamble
underlines also gender and
culture perspectives as follows:
We, women and men from different
continents, cultural backgrounds, perspectives, experience and
expertise,
acting as members of different constituencies of an emerging global
civil
society, considering civil society participation as fundamental to the
first
ever held UN Summit on Information and Communication issues, the World
Summit
on the Information Society, have been working for two years inside the
process,
devoting our efforts to shaping people-oriented, inclusive and
equitable
concept of information and communication societies. (Civil Society 2004)
Under 2.3.1.3 the
Declaration asks for the establishment of an International
Convention on Cultural Diversity as well as for a
review of existing copyright regulation instruments.
During the WSIS meeting a
World Forum on Communication Rights took
place, which was organized among others by the campaign on
Communication
Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) and the
German Heinrich-Böll-Foundation. This
last institution published a Charter of
Civil Rights for a Sustainable Knowledge Society as a contribution
to the
WSIS (Charter 2003). The Charter
states the following fundamental right:
1.
Knowledge is the heritage and the property of humanity and is thus free. Knowledge represents the
reservoir from
which new knowledge is created. Knowledge must therefore remain
permanently
accessible to the public. Limitations on public access such as
copyrights and
patents must be the exception. Commercial exploitation of knowledge
conflicts
with the interest of society in knowledge as a public good. Knowledge
as a
common good must have a higher status in the hierarchy of social values
than
the protection of private claims.
It also mandates a special
right with regard to cultural diversity and it explicitly fosters
intercultural
dialogue on the basis of common rights and values:
6.
Cultural diversity is a prerequisite for individual and social
development.
Culture is realised in languages, customs,
social behavior patterns, norms and ways of life, but also in human
artefacts
(such as arts, crafts and technology). The emergence of the global
knowledge
society must not be allowed to lead to cultural homogenisation.
Instead, the
creative potential of current information and communication
technologies must
be used to preserve and promote the heterogeneity of cultures and
languages as
a precondition for the individual and social development of present and
future
generations. A dialogue of cultures can only be realised in a climate
of
diversity and equal rights.
4. CASE STUDIES AND BEST PRACTICES
In
his book "Code and Other Laws of
Cyberspace" Lawrence Lessig (1999) envisions a situation in which
the
universality of the cyberspace is endangered by the local codes of the
market,
the software industry, the laws of nation states, and moral traditions.
He writes:
Nature doesn’t
determine cyberspace. Code does. Code is not constant. It changes. It
is
changing now in a way that will make cyberspace more regulable. It
could change
in a way that makes cyberspace less regulable. How it changes depends
on the
code writers. How code writers change it could depend on us.
If we do nothing,
the code of cyberspace will change. The invisible hand will change it
in a
predictable way. To do nothing is to embrace at least that. It is to
accept the
changes that this change in code will bring about. It is to accept a
cyberspace
that is less free, or differently free, than the space it was before.
(Lessig
1999, 109)
One
way of keeping the cyberspace more free and to foster cultural
diversity in it is
indeed intercultural dialogue as taking place in the context of WSIS as
well as
in the UNESCO INFOethics congresses on ethical, legal and societal
aspects of
the information society since 1997 (UNESCO 1998). Intercultural
information
ethics matters not only in order to overcome the isolation of moral
traditions
with regard to the Internet but also in order to provide a platform for
pragmatic
action, for the kind of declarations and (quasi-) legal agreements that
can be
used as a framework for preservation and fostering of cultural
differences in
the new digital environment. It is still an open question how far these
activities could and should be coordinated by an international agency
or by one
of the existing UN bodies or by some other kind of institution. Ethics,
law and
pragmatic actions are needed in order to keep the net as free as
possible,
avoiding ghettoization of group morals and encouraging intercultural
dialogue (Hausmanninger
2004). But, indeed, the good is not necessarily on the side of the
universal
and the bad on the side of the local at least when we understand these
concepts
not only, as Lessig does, within a normative context but within a
cultural one.
In this last case the question of localizing the Internet does not mean
maintaining
or even creating normative ghettos or imposing the norms of one ghetto
to the
rest of them even with the best
intentions in a kind of paternalist
communitarianism. Rather it is a matter of giving
communities the
possibility of appropriating the Internet according to their own
cultural
traditions. I call this view bottom-up
communitarianism (Capurro 2004). The Latin American virtual
community
MISTICA (“Metodología e Impacto Social de las Tecnologías
de Información y
Comunicación en América”) has published a document with
the title “Working the
Internet with a Social Vision” that clearly shows how the
ethical
question of justice
and the Internet can and should be reflected within a specific
economic,
social, and cultural setting such as the Latin American one (MISTICA
2002).
The
German sociologist Ulrich Beck opposes a totalitarian view of
globalisation,
which he calls “globalism”, to a view in which the cultural differences
are
preserved and that he calls, following Robertson (1992),
“glocalisation” (Beck
1997). This implies a view of “networked justice” (Scheule 2004) that
is not
identical with the classical conceptions of commutative or distributive
justice
but is more related to what Tomas Lipinski and Johannes Britz call
“contributive justice”:
that an
individual has an obligation to be active in the society (individual
responsibility), and that society itself has a duty to facilitate
participation
and productivity without impairing individual freedom and dignity.
(Lipinski/Britz 2000, 65)
This obligation implies
the society’s responsibility to enable cultural appropriation for
instance
through an equal right of access to (digital) information which implies
a right
to read (r2r) and a right to write (r2w) within the new interactive
digital
environment, as already said. Modern political philosophy is based on
nation oriented
conceptions of justice and mostly does not deal explicitly with the
question of glocal cultures intertwined with
cyberspace. But, as Soraj Hongladarom remarks:
[...] justice and culture are linked in
many ways. Firstly, justice, if it is to be workable in a cultural
entity, must
be integrated to the tradition or the normal practices of that entity.
Secondly,
when cultures interact as closely as they are now due to globalization,
one
finds many cases of cultural intermingling, a result of which is that
systems
of practices born in one culture become “exported” to other cultures
when the
latter find such systems appealing and useful to them. (Hongladarom
2001)
Justice is, according to
Hongladarom, both cultural and intercultural. Following Michael Walzer,
Hongladarom argues that moral arguments are “thin” when they are not
embodied
in culture and history(ies), that is to say, if they are not
contextualized or
localized (Hongladarom 2001a, 318). But, on the other hand, “thick”
moral
arguments must overcome their “thick” mono-cultural horizon as they
interact
with other cultures, a process that does not start with the Internet.
Thus,
Hongladarom’s terminology corresponds only partially to what I call
mono-cultural, intercultural, and trans-cultural (information) ethics,
the
latter being the result of the intercultural interaction as opposed to
a purely
meta-cultural or “thin” universality. The question of what kind of
culture(s)
will the Internet bring about is, on the one hand, a question of
fact(s), that
is to say, of how different cultures integrate it within their local
environment(s). But it is also, on the other hand, a question of
ethical
reflection on these facts that we call intercultural information ethics
in
which “thick” and “thin” arguments are intertwined. The Kantian
imperative of
universalizability does not mean that universal proved maxims should be
followed by the same kind of actions by everybody. It only states a
basic
condition for human action, a kind of elementary touchstone
for conviviality. But Kant is not facing the kind of
culture-oriented justice as made explicit by Hongladarom. His
imperative is a
necessary but not a sufficient condition for a view of justice that
takes care positively and empirically
of fostering different life-styles as something
belonging essentially to human communities, the humanness of humans not
being
reduced to their being rational or even to their membership in a
noumenal world. Hongladarom’s ethical
approach meets the older pre- and post-modern Western traditions of
self-care
and striving for the good. According to Eben Moglen (2003) the ethical
right to
share information, the principle of non-exclusion is the leading
ethical
principle of the information society that is not, I believe no longer,
based
on a market-driven information economy alone.
Charles Ess has analyzed
the cultural impact of computer-mediated communication (CMC) and in
particular
of Western-designed CSCW systems (Computer Supported Cooperative Work)
in different
countries such as Japan,
Indonesia, Malaysia, Israel,
and Kuweit (Ess 2002). The social context of use or the “thick”
cultural aspect
plays an important and distinctive role against the widespread idea of
a hard
technological determinism. In fact he draws the conclusion that CMC are
marked
by “soft determinism” (Don Ihde), i.e., their practical implementation
is
partly conditioned by the local context of use and does not necessarily
mean a
“computer-mediated colonialization.” He
writes.
In contrast with the apparent dichotomy
between a global but homogenous computer ethic vs. a local but
“disconnected”
computer ethic (i.e., one reflecting solely specific cultural values
and
preferences) […] Hongladarom’s model for a middle ground between
homogeneity
and diversity suggests rather a “both-and” ethic, i.e., one that serves
both a global computer ethics and
local values as expressed in specific
traditions, policies, etc. That is: in order to avoid the ethical
equivalent of
“Jihad vs. McWorld,” comparative philosophers need to contribute to a
computer
ethic for a global communications media such as the Internet and the
Web that
endorses both global/universal values and decision-making procedures and the distinctive practices and values
of local cultures. (Ess 2002, 337-338)
We
need an intercultural informatics not
only the development of software, say, accessible in different
languages but its
contextualization according to specific needs and cultural practices as
well as
a critical reflection on these practices inside and between them.
An
outstanding compilation of best-practices in intercultural information
has been
done for instance by Yois (Youth for
Intergenerational Justice and Sustainability) (2003). It includes
examples from
an educational system in rural areas of India,
learning projects in different regions of Africa, youth empowerment in
ICT in Turkey,
youth and economic participation in the
information society in the Philippines,
software development in Bangladesh, alternatives to high-tech computers in Romania as well as contributions from
European
countries, Canada
and the US.
5. BEYOND CULTURAL CONVENTIONS: A SOPHISTIC ARGUMENTATION
The sophist Antiphon the
Athenian (ca. 480-411 B.C.) questioned legal and cultural conventions (nomos) in the name of nature (physis). He
was a kind of libertarian
ethicist and a psychoanalyst avant la lettre.
He writes:
We can examine those attributes of nature
that are necessary in all humans and are provided to all to the same
degree,
and in these respects none of us is distinguished as barbarian or
Greek. For we
all breathe the air through our mouth and our nostrils, and we laugh
when our
minds are happy (A3) or weep when we are pained, and we receive sounds
with our
hearing, and we see by the light with our sight, and we work with our
hands and
walk with our feet. (Citation from Gagarin 2002, 183)
Is this reasoning based on
a naturalistic fallacy? The argument seems to me less ontological than
pragmatic, that is to say that our common nature (physis)
is based on things that we need as well as on the
capacities we have in order to be able to survive than in, say, a
universal
human reason. In some way we are followers and antipodes of Antiphon.
We are
followers as far as we are universal pragmatists. We believe in the
pragmatic
equality of human beings with regard to the struggle for survival. But
we are
his antipodes as far as we believe that we can better take care of our
lives on
the basis of the universal nomos we
call the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights (UDHR). And even more, we believe that artificial devices
such as
the Internet are as basic for human survival as the air we breathe and
the
sounds we hear. From a pragmatic point of view our natural capacities
are no
longer enough for guaranteeing survival. In other words, there are
things that
belong to artificiality, that is to say to culture or convention (nomos) and that are necessary to all
human beings, although the capacities to use them is not given by
nature. We
face an ethical dilemma as far as we state de
jure a kind of universality based on artificiality while de facto such a common basis is not
given. A theoretical path for the solution or dissolution
of this dilemma in the field of human communication is
intercultural information ethics.
The human right to
communicate (in general) is broader than the one to communicate via the
Internet, but de facto the problem
arises today because of the possibilities offered by the Internet as
they
become more and more necessary for survival. In other words, what
seemed to
have a relative or cultural character due to its artificiality becomes
an
object of universal or transcultural interest. At this point a new
ethical
dilemma arises as far as the usefulness of artificial products is
dependent on local
needs and on local nomos that would
give the impression of universality. The sceptic Antiphon would
probably say
that this is nothing but a domination strategy, which is very often the
case,
and that we should make a clear distinction between things that are
naturally
common to everybody and other kinds of cultural things produced by
artifice and
subject to local laws. He would contest the idea of a universal nomos. He writes in the same fragment:
(A2) <The laws [the gods?] of nearby
communities> we know and respect, but those communities far away we
neither
know nor respect. We have thereby become barbarian toward each other,
when by
nature (physis) we are all born in
all respects equally capable of being both barbarians and Greeks.
(Citation in:
Gagarin 2002, 183)
Antiphon states a de facto cultural difference between the
Greeks and the barbarians, this difference being not a natural one but
a
product of culture (nomos). Culture
is per definitionem what makes a
difference between human societies and something that, according to
Antiphon,
we should know and respect, although paradoxically this respect seems
something
very Greek in Antiphon’s view although xenophobia is indeed not
something given
by nature to barbarians and/or to Greeks. But it seems as if it were
the Greeks
that were aware of this bias and as far as they were aware they created
a
cultural difference based on the idea(l) that a natural
meta-code makes possible that cultures respect each other.
But this code itself is, indeed, a cultural product with meta-cultural
ambitions, the alternative being apparently the barbarian code of
ignorance and
hate that might also affect Greek culture. In other words, Antiphon’s
solution
of the nomos-physei dilemma is on the
one hand to look for a common natural
basis of living together; but, on the other hand, it also requires us
to state
a kind of transcultural code based on knowledge and respect as opposed
to hate
and ignorance.
Both codes cannot be
conceived as natural properties of any given society. Greeks can behave
as
barbarians and barbarians can behave as Greeks. The universality of
Antiphon’s
code does not deny cultural diversity but intends to find a modus
vivendi based on the Greek way of
life which is not a property of the Greek people as far as such a way
of life
can degenerate and become an enemy of human life. But it would be a
fallacy to
attribute to Antiphon the ideas of, say, French Enlightenment or of the
principles of the constitution of the United States or even of
the UDHR.
Antiphon was, indeed, a critic of Athenian democratic order. Even his
tolerant
views on Greek and barbarians can be interpreted as a kind of cultural
imperialism. Natural equality does not mean that we, Greeks and
barbarians, are
or should be cultural equals. Antiphon’s alternative to law and
cultural
conventions with their arbitrary character is a kind of libertarian
ideology
based on the individual’s harmony with himself (homonoia)
in opposition to the rights of the polis. Antiphon’s
ethics is eventually not only individualistic but
also apolitical. Its kind of pragmatic natural universality is a
necessary but
not a sufficient condition for dealing with the question of what we
call an
intercultural and even a transcultural ethics. But we can learn from
him the
limits of culture, law, and artificial devices when we feel the
tendency to
overestimate their capacity for creating social bonds.
CONCLUSION
The ongoing debate on the
impact of the Internet is at the core of today's and tomorrow's global
and
local political decision-making in a world that turns more and more
unified – and
divided. Manuel Castells puts it
this way:
It’s not as
activists used to say, ‘think globally, act locally.’ No, no, Think
locally –
link to your interest environment – and act globally – because if you
don’t act
globally in a system in which the powers are global, you make no
difference in
the power system. (Castells 2001, 5)
Questions
concerning anonymity, universal accessibility to knowledge, and digital
surveillance, are basic to all societies. From an intercultural
perspective the leading question is
how human cultures can locally flourish within a global digital
environment.
This question concerns in the first
place community building on the basis of cultural diversity. How far
does the Internet
affect, for better or worse, local and particularly glocal
cultures? How far does it foster democratic processes inside
and between them? How do people construct their cultural identities
within this
medium? How does it affect their customs, languages, and everyday
problems?
Intercultural information
ethics addresses, secondly, the
changes produced by the Internet on traditional media, such as oral and
written
customs, newspapers, radio and TV, the merger of mass media, the
telephone and
the Internet, and the impact of the Internet on literary cultures,
including
the impact of the next generation of information and communication
technologies
such as ubiquitous computing in the post-Internet era. This concerns
new
methods of manipulation and control made possible or aggravated by the
Internet.
Finally,
intercultural information ethics deals with the economic
impact of the Internet as far as it can become an instrument of
cultural
oppression and colonialism. How does it affect cultural memory and
cultural
sustainability? The question about the so called digital divide is thus
not
just an issue of giving everybody access to the global network (a
utopian
goal?), but rather an issue on how the digital network helps people to
better
manage their lives while avoiding the dangers of cultural exploitation
and
discrimination. The vision of a cultural inclusive
information society should be stated in plural not just because
there are
different visions according to cultural backgrounds but also because
there are
different possibilities of cultural inclusion from a type of inclusion
that
excludes the included until different forms of homogenization and
cultural
colonialism. Concepts such as hybrid
and polyphony are ethical markers
that need to be critically analyzed
in specific situations.
The
key question of intercultural information ethics is thus how far and in
which
ways are we going to be able to enlarge both freedom and justice within
a perspective
of sustainable cultural development
that protects and encourages cultural diversity as well as the
interaction
between them. Digital interaction could be used to weaken the
hierarchical
one-to-many structure of global mass-media, giving individuals, groups,
and
whole societies the capacity to become senders and not only receivers
of
messages. Cars and highways have lead in the meantime to a rediscovery
of
car-free localities within our cities as well as to a rediscovery of
slowness
and the value of natural environment particularly in Western societies.
Shaping
our daily lives with mobile communication technologies will indeed
transform
the ways we construct the social, political and economic world as well
as
the ways
we reshape natural environments. Will they also bring back cultural
practices
of individual and social self-care such as the art of silence in the
face of
verbosity, the art of laughing in the face of fear, and the art of
choosing paths
of liberation (Capurro 1996)? These practices will take place within
different
cultural horizons and moral traditions that should be critically
observed by
intercultural information ethics.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks
to Charles Ess (Drury University, USA) and Thomas J. Froehlich (Kent State University, USA)
for comments and criticisms.
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