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Ethics in the Information Age*
Terrell Ward Bynum
Southern Connecticut State University
As we stand on the verge of the information age, the social
and ethical implications of information and communication technology (ICT)
are enormous – and mostly unknown! ICT is developing so rapidly that
new possibilities emerge before the social consequences can be fathomed
(Rogerson and Bynum 1995). New social/ethical policies for the information
age, therefore, are urgently needed to fill rapidly multiplying “policy
vacuums” (Moor 1985). But filling such vacuums is a complex social
process that will require active participation of individuals, organizations,
and governments – and ultimately the world community (See Bynum and
Schubert 1998, also van den Hoven 1996).
Globalization – Górniak (1995) has perceptively pointed out that
ICT makes possible – for the first time in history – a genuinely
global conversation about ethics and human values. Such a conversation
has implications for social policy that we can only begin to imagine.
Traditional borders and barriers between countries have now become less
meaningful because most countries are interconnected by the Internet.
For this reason, individuals, companies and organizations in every culture
can engage in global business transactions, distance education, cyber-employment,
discussions of social and political issues, sharing and debating of values
and perspectives. Will this “global conversation” bring about
better understanding between peoples and cultures? – new shared values
and goals? – new national and international laws and policies? Will
individual cultures become “diluted,” homogenized, blurred?
These are just a few of the many social/ethical issues emerging from globalization
of ICT. (See Bynum and Rogerson 1996.)
The worldwide nature of the Internet has already led to many issues in
need of policies to resolve them. For example, if sexually explicit materials
are provided on a web site in a culture in which they are permitted, and
then they are accessed by someone in a different culture where such materials
are outlawed as “obscene,” whose laws and values apply? Should
the “offending” person in the first culture be extradited to
the second culture and prosecuted as a purveyor of pornography? Should
the values of the first culture be permitted to undermine those of the
second culture via the Internet? How can such cultural clashes be reasonably
resolved?
Or consider business transactions in cyberspace: Whose laws apply to business
on the Internet? When people in one country purchase goods and services
from merchants in another country, who should regulate or tax the transactions?
And how will “cyberbusiness” in a global market affect local
business? – local tax collections? – local unemployment? What
new laws, regulations, rules, practices should be adopted, and who should
formulate them? What policies would be fair to all concerned?
And how will global cyberbusiness affect the gap between rich nations
and poor nations? Will that gap get even worse? Will ICT lead to a “new
colonialism” in which the information rich lord it over the information
poor? Will economic and political rivalries emerge to threaten peace and
security? What kinds of conflicts and misunderstandings might arise, and
how should they be handled? – and by whom?
Or consider cyber medicine: Medical advice and psychological counseling
on the Internet, “keyhole” surgery conducted at a distance,
medical tests and examinations over the net, “cyber prescriptions”
for medicine written by doctors in one part of the world for patients
in other parts of the world – these are just a few of the medical
services and activities that already exist in cyberspace. How safe is
cyber medicine? Who should regulate, license, control it?
Or consider education in cyberspace: Hundreds of universities and colleges
worldwide now offer educational credit for courses and modules. But when
students earn university credits from all around the globe, who should
set the standards? Who should award degrees and certify “graduates”?
Will there be a “Cyber University of the World”? Will thousands
of “ordinary” teachers be replaced by a handful of “Internet-superstar
teachers”? – or perhaps by teams of multimedia experts? –
or even by educational software? Would such developments be wonderful
new learning opportunities, or instead be educational disasters? What
policies, rules, practices should be adopted and who should develop them
At the social/political level of education, what will be the impact upon
previously uneducated peoples of the world when they suddenly gain access
to libraries, museums, newspapers, and other sources of knowledge? How
will access to the world’s great newspapers affect “closed”
societies with no free press? Are democracy and human rights necessary
consequences of an educated population with access to a free press? Will
the Internet foster global democracy? – or will it become a tool
for control and manipulation of the masses by a handful of powerful governments?
– or powerful corporations?
Human Relationships – Of course, not all social/ethical issues which
arise from ICT depend upon its global scope. Consider, for example, the
impact of ICT on human relationships. How will family relationships or
friendships be affected by mobile phones, palmtop and laptop computers,
telecommuting to work and school, virtual-reality conferencing, cybersex?
Will the efficiency and convenience of ICT lead to shorter work hours
and more “quality time” with the family? – or will ICT
create instead a more hectic and breathless lifestyle which separates
family and friends from each other? Will people be isolated in front of
a computer hour after hour, or will they find new friendships and relationships
in “virtual communities” in cyberspace – relationships
based upon interactions that never could occur in regular space-time settings?
How fulfilling and “genuine” can such relationships be, and
will they crowd out better, more satisfying face-to-face relationships?
What does all this mean for a person’s self-realization and satisfaction
with life? What policies, laws, rules, practices should be put in place?
Social Justice – As more and more of society’s activities and
opportunities enter cyberspace – business opportunities, educational
opportunities, medical services, employment, leisure-time activities,
and on and on – it will become harder and harder for ICT “have-nots”
to share in the benefits and opportunities of society. Persons without
an “electronic identity” may have no socially recognized identity
at all! Therefore social justice (not to mention economic prosperity)
requires that society develop policies and practices to more fully include
people who, in the past, have had limited access to ICT resources: women,
the poor, the old, persons of color, rural residents, persons with disabilities,
even technophobes.
A good example is “assistive technology” for persons with disabilities.
A variety of hardware and software has been developed in recent years
to enable persons with disabilities to use ICT easily and effectively.
As a result, people who would otherwise be utterly dependent upon others
for almost everything suddenly find their lives transformed into happy,
productive, “near-normal” ones. Visual impairments and blindness,
hearing impairments and deafness, inability to control one’s limbs,
even near-total paralysis need no longer be major impediments to happiness
and productivity. Given such dramatic benefits of assistive technology,
as well as rapidly decreasing costs, does a just society have an ethical
obligation to provide assistive technology to its citizens with disabilities?
Work – Work and the workplace are being dramatically transformed
by ICT. More flexibility and choice are possible (e.g., teleworking at
home, on the road, at any hour or location). In addition, new kinds of
jobs and job opportunities are being created (e.g., webmasters, data miners,
cybercounselors, and so on). But such benefits and opportunities are accompanied
by risks and problems, like unemployment from computer-replaced humans,
“deskilling” of workers who only push buttons, stress keeping
up with high speed machines, repetitive motion injuries, magnetism and
radiation from computer hardware, surveillance of workers by monitoring
software, and ICT “sweat shops” that pay “slave wages.”
A wide range of new laws, regulations, rules and practices are needed
if society is to manage these workplace developments efficiently and justly.
Government and Democracy – ICT has the potential to
significantly change the relationship between individual citizens and
governments – local, regional and national. Electronic voting and
referenda, as well as e-mailed messages to legislators and ministers,
could give citizens more timely input into government decisions and law
making. Optimists point out that ICT, appropriately used, can enable better
citizen participation in democratic processes – can make government
more open and accountable – can provide easy citizen access to government
information, reports, services, plans and proposed legislation. Pessimists,
on the other hand, worry that government officials who are regularly bombarded
with e-mail from angry voters might be easily swayed by short-term swings
in public mood – that hackers could disrupt or corrupt electronic
election processes – that dictatorial governments might find ways
the use ICT to control and intimidate the population more effectively
than ever before. What policies should be put in place to take account
of these hopes and worries?
Intellectual Property and Ownership – In the information age, the
“information rich” will run the world, and the “information
poor” will be poor indeed! Possession and control of information
will be the keys to wealth, power and success. Those who own and control
the information infrastructure will be amongst the wealthiest and most
powerful of all. And those who own digitized intellectual property –
software, databases, music, video, literary works, educational resources
– will possess major economic assets. But digitized information is
easily copied and altered, easily transferred across borders, and therefore
the piracy of intellectual property will be a major social problem. Even
today, for example, in some countries over ninety percent of the software
is pirated – not to mention the music and video resources! What new
laws, regulations, rules, international agreements and practices would
be fair and just, and who should formulate or enforce them?
It is also possible to mix and combine several types of digitized resources
to create “multimedia” works of various kinds. A single program,
for example, might make use of bits and snippets of photographs, video
clips, sound bites, graphic art, newsprint and excerpts from various literary
works. How large must a component of such a work be before the user must
pay copyright royalties? Must the creator of a multimedia work identify
thousands of copyright holders and pay thousands of copyright fees in
order to be allowed to create and disseminate his work? What should the
rules be and who should enforce them? How can they be enforced at all
on the new frontiers of cyberspace?
Concluding Comment – The above paragraphs identify only a small fraction
of the social and ethical issues that ICT will generate in the coming
information age. The vast majority of such issues are still unknown, and
they will only come into view when the powerful and flexible new technology
of ICT generates them. It is the goal of computer ethics to identify and
analyze the policy vacuums and help to formulate new social/ ethical policies
to resolve them.
* A multimedia version of this paper was presented at De Montfort University
in Leicester, UK in May 1998 at the Research Seminar “Living and
Working in the Information Age” hosted by the Centre for Computing
and Social Responsibility.
References
Terrell Ward Bynum and Simon Rogerson, eds., Global Information
Ethics, Opragon Press, 1996 (published as the April 1996 issue of Science
and Engineering Ethics).
Terrell Ward Bynum and Petra Schubert, “How to Do Computer Ethics
– A Case Study: The Electronic Mall Bodensee” in M. J. van den
Hoven, ed., Computer Ethics – Philosophical Enquiry, Erasmus University
Press, 1998, pp. 85 – 95.
Krystyna Górniak, “The Computer Revolution and the Problem
of Global Ethics” in Bynum and Rogerson, 1996, pp. 177 – 190.
James H. Moor, “What Is Computer Ethics?” in Terrell Ward Bynum,
ed., Computers and Ethics, Blackwell, 1985, pp. 266 – 75 (published
as the October 1985 issue of the journal Metaphilosophy).
Simon Rogerson and Terrell Ward Bynum, “Cyberspace: the Ethical Frontier”
in The Higher Education Supplement to the London Times, June 9, 1995.
M. J. van den Hoven, “Computer Ethics and Moral Methodology”
in Porfirio Barroso, Simon Rogerson and Terrell Ward Bynum, Eds., Values
and Social Responsibilities of Computer Science, Proceedings of ETHICOMP96,
Complutense University Press, 1996, pp. 444 – 453. (Republished in
Metaphilosophy, July 1997, Vol. 28, No. 3)
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