The Cambridge Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics

Preface

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have profoundly altered many aspects of life, including the nature of entertainment, work, communication, education, health care, industrial production and business, social relations and conflicts. As a consequence, they have had a radical and widespread impact on our moral lives and hence on contemporary ethical debates. Consider the following list: PAPA (privacy, accuracy, intellectual property and access); ‘the triple A’ (availability, accessibility and accuracy of information); ownership and piracy; the digital divide; infoglut and research ethics; safety, reliability and trustworthiness of complex systems; viruses, hacking and other forms of digital vandalism; freedom of expression and censorship; pornography; monitoring and surveillance; security and secrecy; propaganda; identity theft; the construction of the self; panmnemonic issues and personal identity; new forms of agency (artificial and hybrid), of responsibility and accountability; roboethics and the moral status of artificial agents; e-conflicts; the re-prioritization of values and virtues. . .these are only some of the pressing issues that characterize the ethical discourse in our information societies. They are the subject of information and computer ethics (ICE), a new branch of applied ethics that investigates the transformations brought about by ICTs and their implications for the future of human life and society, for the evolution of moral values and rights, and for the evaluation of agents’ behaviours.

Since the seventies, ICE has been a standard topic in many curricula. In recent years, there has been a flourishing of new university courses, international conferences, workshops, professional organizations, specialized publications and research centres. However, research, and the corresponding teaching materials, have so far been largely influenced by professional and technical approaches, addressing mainly applied problems in legal, social and technological contexts. This trend is understandable. ICE emerged in recent decades not as a mere intellectual exercise, or something cooked up in the ivory tower of academia, but as an increasingly felt need for clarifications and guidelines in the ethically messy world generated by the fastest changes ever experienced by humanity. This bottom-up process has given to ICE an enviable platform of real and substantial evidence with which to work, from industry standards to social issues, from political decisions to legal requirements. However, this wealth of empirical data and grounding problems has come at a theoretical cost. Today, ICE is like a pyramid: it has a very large empirical base, but a rather slim top of theoretical insights. To use a different metaphor, imagine three runners on a typical oval track. In information societies around the world we find that one of the runners is well ahead, and that is technology and its applications. ICT has outpaced the second runner, represented by national and international legal systems and legislation, which are following, rather than leading, the race in almost any technological context. Last comes our conceptual understanding, the third runner. In ICT, we often innovate first, then try to regulate, and finally seek to understand what is actually happening. In theory, we all know perfectly well that the safest and most reasonable way of proceeding would be exactly the opposite. In practice, each runner requires different amounts of resources: thinking is always a slower process than deciding, which inevitably takes more time than doing. This book seeks to redress the situation. It is an attempt to give a substantial push to the third runner, to make sure that the distance between technology and the full, conceptual comprehension of it is as short as possible. For this reason, it is entirely and exclusively dedicated to conceptual approaches to ICE.

The book provides a philosophical introduction to the most important conceptual issues in ICE. It is to be hoped that it will serve as a groundbreaking resource as well as a timely, comprehensive review for both students and general readers alike. It is meant to engage a wide audience, from undergraduates, who need to study the new computational and informational turn in ethics, to teachers in need of a reliable textbook, to researchers interested in broadening their expertise, and to members of the general public, who might be curious about the ethical aspects of the information society in which they live.

The book comprises fifteen newly commissioned chapters. Each of them provides an authoritative, philosophical survey of the fundamental themes, problems, arguments and theories, which constitute the innovative field of ICE. Combining the virtues of careful scholarship and lucid exposition, each chapter is planned to be usable as a self-standing introduction to its topic. In line with a more theoretical approach, examples are used to illustrate and substantiate conceptual analyses, not to support a mere case-based approach, which often turns out to be insufficiently enlightening and generalizable. The first chapter is an introduction explaining the nature of the new paradigm in applied ethics. The chapters are followed by an epilogue in which I have outlined the possible development of the field, in a world increasingly globalized.

The book does not provide purely abstract discussions with no practical applications, but rather offers a broad and objective introduction to the conceptual understanding of the real-world problems that affect life in the information society, in a style that is both accessible and didactically useful. Here is a quick guide to its contents.

Preface

Part I Introduction and background

Part II Ethical approaches

Part III Ethical issues in the information society

Part IV Ethical issues in artificial contexts

Part V Metaethics