Information Technology and Moral Philosophy

by Edited by Jeroen van den Hoven , John Weckert

• ISBN13: 9780521855495
• ISBN10: 0521855497
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-03-31
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Information technology is an integral part of the practices and institutions of post-industrial society. It is also a source of hard moral questions and thus is both a probing and relevant area for moral theory. In this volume, an international team of philosophers sheds light on many of the ethical issues arising from information technology, including informational privacy, digital divide and equal access, e-trust and tele-democracy. Collectively, these essays demonstrate how accounts of equality and justice, property and privacy benefit from taking into account how information technology has shaped our social and epistemic practices and our moral experiences. Information technology changes the way that we look at the world and deal with one another. It calls, therefore, for a re-examination of notions such as friendship, care, commitment and trust.

Table of Contents

List of Contributors	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
Norbert Wiener and the Rise of Information Ethics	p. 8
Why We Need Better Ethics for Emerging Technologies	p. 26
Information Ethics: Its Nature and Scope	p. 40
The Transformation of the Public Sphere: Political Authority, Communicative Freedom, and Internet Publics	p. 66
Democracy and the Internet	p. 93
The Social Epistemology of Blogging	p. 111
Plural Selves and Relational Identity: Intimacy and Privacy Online	p. 123
Identity and Information Technology	p. 142
Trust, Reliance, and the Internet	p. 161
Esteem, Identifiability, and the Internet	p. 175
Culture and Global Networks: Hope for a Global Ethics?	p. 195
Collective Responsibility and Information and Communication Technology	p. 226
Computers as Surrogate Agents	p. 251
Moral Philosophy, Information Technology, and Copyright: The Grokster Case	p. 270
Information Technology, Privacy, and the Protection of Personal Data	p. 301
Embodying Values in Technology: Theory and Practice	p. 322
Information Technology Research Ethics	p. 354
Distributive Justice and the Value of Information: A (Broadly) Rawlsian Approach	p. 376
Select Bibliography	p. 397
Index	p. 401
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