This entry presents the historical backgrouond and
conceptual development of moral questions as well as of methodological
and scientific issues comprising the ethics of information, viewing
information and communication especially in its technological form.
Historical Background
Information ethics understood as a
philosophical discipline dealing with good and bad practices of human
communication, has a long history going back, in the Western tradition,
to the
question of freedom of speech (parrhesia)
in the Greek polis, dealing particularly
with the Sopphists' and Socrates' criticisms of the mores,
principles, and concepts underlying communication in all its
practical and theoretical dimensions. Plato’s questioning of the
written logos as well as Aristotle’s careful analyses
of the uses of language and his theory of rhetoric are forerunners of
ethical
thinking on the pervasive biases and power structures of communication.
The
invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg around 1450 and
the
Reformation that profited from it challenged the legitimization of
practices of
interpretation and application of the Bible by the Roman Catholic
Church, but
implicitly also challenged any kind of monopolization of knowledge and
its
production,
storage, retrieval, distribution, and criticism by any human agent
based
on
power. The questioning of customary premodern communication practices
culminated in the Enlightenment and its criticisms of political and
religious
censorship. Freedom of the press, the transformation of private
libraries owned
by the nobility and the Catholic Church into public property and
several
encyclopedic
projects aiming at critical and broad public access to knowledge were
some
practical corollaries of information ethics in the mmodern era..
Information
ethics
became a matter of concern particularly with the invention of the
computer and
the widespread use of the Internet since the last decade of the 20th
century.
Terms like computer ethics
and cyberethics became
popular. The term information
ethics has been used particularly in relation to the information
society by
international agencies such as UNESCO since the end of the 1990s. This
process
culminated in the World Summit on the
Information Society in 2003 and 2005.
Information
Ethics as an Academic Discipline
The terms information
ethics and computer ethics
have
been used since the early 1980s in the context of
library
and information science as well as computer science. In the mid 20th
century, computer
scientists such
as Norbert Wiener (1894-1964) and Joseph Weizenbaum (1923-2008) raised
ethical questions about the impact of computers on
society,
focusing on the responsibility of computer scientists. Computer ethics
courses were
introduced into academic curricula in the 1990s in schools of computer
science
in the United States.
In the first decade of the new century, professional societies and
networks
such as the International Society for
Ethics and Information Technology, the Centre
for Computing and Social Responsibility (De Montfort
University, UK), and the International
Center for Information Ethics were set up. There is a large
bibliography in the field, including specialized journals and handbooks
as well
as several international and regional conferences.
There are divergent views
concerning the intension and extension of the concept of "information
ethics"–that is, both its meaning and its reference.
Some philosophers criticize the focus on human communication and plea
for an
extension to include all kinds of beings. This view turns eventually
into
informational metaphysics: questions of ontology and what to include in
it. At the other end of the spectrum, there is
the view
of information ethics as dealing only with human communication as
shaped
particularly by information technology. In this case, the concept of
information ethics excludes nondigital communication media still used
today or
prevalent in other epochs and cultures. The concept of information
ethics might
be extended to cover all kinds of information technology applications
beyond
the sphere of human communication. From a digital perspective that
addresses
all beings insofar as they can be digitized in order to be understood
information ethics is grounded in information ontology and concerns
good
practices of being-in-the-world in the digital age.
Key Topics in Information
Ethics
The relation between information
technology and ethical practices is twofold. On the one hand, it deals
with the
impact of information technology on good practices and their
principles, while
on the other hand, it has to do with the ethical reflection on
information
technology, which could be less reactive and more proactive with regard
to the
new societal challenges arising from new information and communication
technologies. In both cases, information ethics has the task of
discussing good
practices and their principles with regard to either digital
information technology
or other media.
Information ethics deals with descriptive
and
critical issues in different cultures and epochs, giving raise to
intercultural
information ethics. This includes, but is not restricted to, the
question
concerning universal practices and principles. There might be agreement
on universal
declarations, but their interpretation and application might be
different
according to cultural traditions. An example of intercultural dialogue
in
information ethics is the discussion on the concept of privacy from a
Western versus a Buddhist perspective. Practical consensus might
involve different
reasons
that are the object of analysis and criticism by information ethics.
Deontological
and utilitarian theories play a major role in information ethics, no
less do
than theories grounded in hermeneutics, analytical philosophy, critical
theory,
social theory, Marxism, postmodernism, and critical rationalism, to
mention just
a few.
Classical topics on information
ethics are privacy, identity, trust, justice, intellectual property,
cyberwar,
the surveillance society, plagiarism, censorship, gender issues, and
information
overload. Information ethics addresses the effects of the materiality
of
information technology on the environment caused by electronic waste
and
especially by its export to Third World
countries. It also deals with the economic and political impact of
information
technology. Ethical analysis and critical evaluation of the global
digital
economy concerns the relation between transparency, privacy, and
secrecy, no
less than issues of justice regarding access to and use of the
Internet.
Information
technology in general, and in social networks in particular, plays a
major role
in the political development of societies. They might strengthen
liberation movements
and enable new forms of democratic participation, but they can be
misused for oppression
and exploitation as well. The vision of a people-centered, inclusive,
and
development-oriented information society, as proclaimed by the World
Summit on the Information Society, outlines
the object of ethical scrutiny and evaluation
in order to
develop
reliable social conditions for trust, security, and transparency.
New
technological
developments such as ambient intelligence, human-machine symbiosis,
neuro-electronics,
affective computing, augmented reality, bioelectronics, the future of
the Internet, cloud
computing, quantum computing are among the most relevant challenges
for
information ethics in the foreseeable future. The underlying
philosophical
debate concerns theoretical and practical prospects for human freedom
and
self-understanding in the digital age. Both issues cannot be divorced
from the
relation between humankind and the world, as well as between human and
nonhuman life, taking into consideration the dangers and opportunities
arising
from their manipulation and transformation based on the uses and abuses
of
digital technology.
See also
Human-Machine Interaction;
Information Society; Knowledge Society, Systems Theory; Technological
Convergence; Technoscience and Society, Trust, Social.
Further Readings
Bynum, T. (2008). Computer and
Information Ethics. In Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy.
Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-computer/
Capurro, R. (2006). Towards an
Ontological Foundation of Information Ethics. Ethics
and Information Technology 8 (4), 175-186. Retrieved from
http://www.capurro.de/oxford.html
Capurro, R., Frühbauer, J.
& Hausmanninger T. (Eds.) (2007). Localizing
the Internet. Ethical aspects in intercultural perspective. Munich: Fink.
Floridi, L. (2010). The Cambridge
Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics. Cambridge,
England: Cambridge
University
Press.
Froehlich,
T. (2004). A brief history of
information ethics. Retrieved from
http://www.ub.edu/bid/13froel2.htm
Himma,
K. E. & Tavani, H. T. (Eds.) (2008). The
Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics. Hoboken, NJ:
Wiley.
Hongladarom,
S. & Ess, C. (Eds.) (2007). Information
Technology Ethics: Cultural Perspectie. Hershey, PA:
Idea Group.
van den
Hoven, J. & Weckert, J. (Eds.) (2008). Information
Technology and Moral Philosophy. Cambridge.
England: Cambridge
University
Press.