Information ethics

What is information ethics?

The Historical context of Information ethics
Information ethics in popular culture
Key topics in information ethics

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What is information ethics?
Information ethics is a field of applied ethics that addresses
the uses and abuses of information, information technology,
and information systems for personal, professional, and public
decision making.
For example, is it okay to download someone else's
intellectual property like pictures or music?
Should librarians ever remove controversial books from the
shelves or monitor users' Internet searching?
Should a scientist post the genome for the Ebola virus on the
Internet?

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The Historical context of Information ethics
In the mid-fifteenth century, Johannes Gutenberg's invention
of the movable type printing press altered the parameters of
information access and control and began to change the
world.
Widespread dissemination of printed information helped to
change the balance of power in Europe, notably contributing
to the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation, disruptions
to the political power of the Roman Catholic Church, and the
rise of the nation-state.

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In the mid-twentieth century, Claude Shannon (1948) and others
developed elegant mathematical theories that made modern
information technologies possible while other advances, such as the
development of the atomic bomb, made the risks and rewards of
widespread scientific and technological knowledge more significant and
more visible in everyday life.
Since then the increasing volume of digitized information and the
exponential improvements in digital processing, storage, and
communication have again altered the landscape of information access
and control.
Alongside the technological advances that have occurred since the mid-
twentieth century, formal consideration of the uses and abuses of
information began even before it was designated information ethics,
or infoethics.
The UN General Assembly raised many infoethical themes in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) including information
access (Article 19), intellectual property (Article 27), privacy (Article 12),
security (Articles 17 and 27), community (Article 27), and education
(Article 26).
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Since then, the role of information in government, healthcare, and
business, and concerns about the uses of that information, have
continued to fuel public policy debates.
The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) uses the term information ethics to focus attention on
global problems ranging from literacy, including cell phone access
in the developing world, the need to protect local cultures and
languages from the dominance of English on the Internet, and the
ramifications of expanding databases of genetic information.
In the last fifteen years, information ethics has also evolved within
and beyond its early professional and academic communities.
Its academic vitality is evident in the formation of scholarly
associations such as the International Society for Ethics
and Information Technology (INSEIT), scholarly websites such as
the International
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Information ethics in popular culture
Fiction and films frequently illustrate information ethical dilemmas,
illuminating significant points that may not be apparent in everyday
life.
The entertainment value of emphasizing particular dilemmas and
their consequences in fictional settings does not reduce the value of
ethical exploration by way of popular culture.
Machines have long mimicked and extended human physical
capabilities. But a physical aid such as a snow shovel presents few
consequential dilemmas and appears only infrequently as the
dramatic centerpiece of a film or book.

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At the other extreme, information technologies mimic and
extend the human mind—popularly regarded as the essence
of being human. The role of self-aware creations in fiction and
film has increased as information and information technology
permeate everyday life.
Consider the Terminator (1984, 1991, 2003) and Matrix (1999,
2003, 2003) trilogies which project the ethical dilemmas that
arise when the roles of information processing machines
conflict with the needs, even the survival, of human society.
Table 3 lists examples of films and fiction that highlight
infoethical dilemmas drawn from the COAPS framework.

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Information Ethics in Popular Culture
Film, Story, or Book Dilemma
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley (fiction, 1818) Ownership
1984, George Orwell (fiction, 1949) Privacy
"The Enormous Radio," John Cheever (fiction, 1953) Privacy
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury (fiction, 1954) Access
The Gods Must Be Crazy (film, 1980) Ownership
Blade Runner (film, 1982) Security
The Electric Grandmother (film, 1982) Community

"Melancholy Elephants," Spider Robinson (fiction, 1984) Ownership

Neuromancer, William Gibson (fiction, 1984) Access

The Handmaid'sTale, Margaret Atwood (fiction, 1986) Community
Gattaca (film, 1997) Privacy
AI: Artificial Intelligence (film, 2001) Community
Minority Report (film, 2002) Security
SOURCE: Courtesy of Ed Elrod and Martha Smith.
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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.
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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.
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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.

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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.

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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.
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Questions?

Homework
Read on Social issues in computer ethics

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Social issues in computer ethics

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