2 Society and The Need For ICT Ethics

2. Society and The Need For ICT Ethics Two Way Relationship Between Society and Technology The Impacts of ICT; Optimistic, Pessimistic and Contextualist Views Why Computer Ethics The Task Of Computer Ethics

The Impacts of ICT; Optimistic, Pessimistic and Contextualist Views • Optimistic Views: Automation will bring high productivity, material abundance, The elimination of repetitive jobs, More time for the creative use of leisure. The information society will be more egalitarian (equality); old class divisions will be obsolete when knowledge rather than wealth is the source of power. Organizations will be less hierarchical as decision making is decentralized among smaller units connected by computer networks. Democracy will be enhanced. Telecommunications will improve worldwide understanding. Gözde Dedeoğlu Lecture Notes

• Pessimistic Views: Information technology augments the power of institutions that are already powerful. It increases the gaps between the information-rich and the information-poor. Automation provides a few high-skilled jobs, but for most workers it leads to unemployment or low-skilled jobs. The new methods of electronic surveillance and computerized personal dossiers facilitate the invasion of privacy. A handful of companies dominate the world computer market. American and European companies control access to the channels of international communication, resulting in new forms of cultural imperialism through the global media. A large fraction of computer funding and expertise is devoted to military goals. Gözde Dedeoğlu Lecture Notes

• The Contextualist View: Reject technological and economic determinism and insists that there alternatives and choices. There is two-way interaction between society and technology. They examine the diversity of social forces entering into the design and deployment of particular computer systems. The social consequences, in turn, vary greatly among different context and with differing management strategies, worker responses, and political decisions. Automation can be used to deskill workers, or reskilling, job rotation and worker participation. Computers can centralize or decentralize managerial organization, depending on the strategies pursued. Gözde Dedeoğlu Lecture Notes

Two Way Relationship Between Society and Technology • Information technology and information systems create opportunities for social change. • It is possible to create social change in a “socially responsible manner” or vice versa. • Technology does not stand “outside” of society. It – its manufacturers, benefactors, users- is a social phenomenon itself subject to all the constraints of other social actors. Among these constraints is the notion of social responsibility: corporations and individuals can and will be held accountable for their actions. (Management Information Systems, K. -J. Laudon, p. 139 -140) Gözde Dedeoğlu Lecture Notes

• There is new form of behavior that didn’t exist before computers. • ICT creating new opportunities for human behavior. Enormous possibilities for individual have been created. • ICT create new possibilities, new opportunites for human action; not only for individuals; create new forms of collective and collaborative action as well. • Use and abuse of technology: both are possible. Information and communication technologies are malleable; can be used in a wide range of activities touching every aspect of human endeavor. Gözde Dedeoğlu Lecture Notes

• Computer and information technology creates potentially detrimental as well as benefical possibilities. Ex: Nuclear power – nuclear waste Automobiles – air pollution Aerosol cans – global warming (and many other application) Gözde Dedeoğlu Lecture Notes

• Monitor individuals Ethical? Eliminate human contact Good/ bad? Advanced weapon systems Good/ bad? Data mining Morally acceptable? Inaccurate or slanderous information on electronic media Who is liable? Electronically reproduce and alter an artistic image or music which was originally created by someone else Right? Gözde Dedeoğlu Lecture Notes

• RFID chip implants dehumanizing and demeaning? Social networks purposes other than known aim? Consider public debates about nanotechnology, cloning, stem cell research, mind-alternating pharmacology, …; all of these technologies have stirred fear and apprension as well as fascination and hope. • Ethical issues surrounding ICT -> in high range and complexity. Gözde Dedeoğlu Lecture Notes

• Are the ethical issues surrounding ICT new? >> Ex: Privacy issues have been around for ages. With technological development, possibilities for privacy invasion increased very much: wiretapping, hidden cameras, etc. . (What did you buy, where, when, how much; phone calls; what did you eat; where did you go for holidays, …) Gözde Dedeoğlu Lecture Notes

Why Computer Ethics The Task Of Computer Ethics • If we have any hope of steering the development of future technologies in a direction that is good for humanity, that hope lies in understanding the social and ethical implications of our choices about ICT. • Humanity has acquired a new capacity that takes us into new ethical territory. Part of “why computer ethics? ” question has to do with technology in general. • “Why computer ethics? ” question also provides a framework for identifying and understanding the issues, as well points an appropriate methodology to use in analyzing computer ethical issues. Gözde Dedeoğlu Lecture Notes

• New technologies seem to pose ethical issues when they create new possibilities for human action, both individual action and collective or institutional action. • The implications of adoption and use of a particular technology can and should be examined from a variety of perspectives, including economics and politics, but the ethical perspective is especially important because it is normative. • Evaluation –morally, environmentally, . . - can and should take place at each step of a technological development. So, potential for good is better realized and negative effects are eliminated or minimized. Gözde Dedeoğlu Lecture Notes

• Ethical analysis considers whether the new technology should be adopted and how a new possiblity fits (or doesn’t fit) moral values, notions, and practices. Gözde Dedeoğlu Lecture Notes

• What the policies should be? : Complex issue. • Traditional account says all that is necessary is to take traditional moral norms and the principles on which they are based, and apply them to the new situations created by computer and information technology. • “Look at the conventions that are already followed and ‘map’ these onto computer-mediated activities”. Ex: Certain kind of conversations are considered confidential, certain words and questions are considered impolite (apply those on electronic communication also. ) Gözde Dedeoğlu Lecture Notes

• cont. traditional account: Apply prevailing social and moral norms. But traditional account oversimplifies. To fit is not so routine or mechanical. Traditional account is a good starting point, but has limitations. The norms that are followed in many prevailing practices have survived the test of time. They embody important social values such as respect for persons, fairness, … The conceptual muddles have to do with understanding what the technology is or should be and what sort of situations it creates. Gözde Dedeoğlu Lecture Notes

• To say that computer ethical issues arise because there is a vacuum of policies leaves open whether the vacuum should be filled with laws or with something else. • It is possible that some vacuums are left to personal choices, institutional policies, social conventions or imposition of law. In a wide variety of cases, what seems to be needed is a multiplicity of approaches. • System of laws come from a shared sense of what is just and what is good. • Ethical analysis precedes law when it is the basis for creation of a law. Gözde Dedeoğlu Lecture Notes

• James Moor describes the task of computer ethics as that of filling policy vacuums. According to Moor, when computers create new possibilities, there is a vacuum of policies. He acknowledges that the task is far from easy. Filling the policy vacuum involves sorting out what Moor refers to as conceptual muddles. (ex: at the beginning, fitting computer software to prevailing intellectual property law – copyright and patent seemed best possibilities. ) • The central task of computer ethics is to determine what we should do and what our policies should be. Includes consideration of both personal and social policies. Policy vacuums continue to arise and are not always easy to fill Gözde Dedeoğlu Lecture Notes

• Policy vacuums sometimes go unfilled or they get filled, but in ways that perpetuate continuous struggle or tension over the policy. Sometimes policy vacuums are resolved with bad policies, policies with negative or undesirable consequences. In any of these, ethical analysis can have an important role in critiquing policies that have already formed, pointing to their misfit with notions of justice or responsibility or good consequences. Gözde Dedeoğlu Lecture Notes

• Technologies are always developed in a social world. Laboratories, universities, . . are embedded in an existing culture. The features of the product, what it makes possible has everything to do with the social context in which it was created and the context for which it was created. • The process by which ICT systems are designed –who is involved, who has a say, who is funding the project- shapes the particular features of a technology, and who it serves or doesn’t serve. • The invention and design context is filled with legal requirements, economic incentives, cultural attitudes, and consumer with particular profiles. Gözde Dedeoğlu Lecture Notes

• ICT (information and communication technologies) is part of, and shapes, many domains of life including education, health, business, government, social relationships, . . • Society and technology shape each other. Technology shapes and is shaped by society, that society shapes and is shaped by technology. • Social context shapes the character and direction of technological development at macro level (development of computer and information technology over time), at micro level (how specific applications are adopted and used at particular sites such as small business, university campuses or government agencies. Who will have access to what, the kind of information that is stored and processed, the type of security and so on. Gözde Dedeoğlu Lecture Notes

• In order to understand the ethical issues surrounding ICT, one has to understand the environments in which it is being used. Then, the study of computer ethics turns out to be the study of human beings and society –our goals and values, our norms of behavior, the way we organize ourselves and assign rights and responsibilities. Gözde Dedeoğlu Lecture Notes

• Computer and information technology is developed and used in a social context rich with moral, cultural and political ideas. • The technology is used in businesses, homes, justice systems, educational institutions, medicine, science, government and so on. All of these have an influence on how a new technology is understood and how policy vacuums are filled. • People and artifacts are intertwined that people are influenced by artifacts, and that artifacts are shaped by humans. • STS (science and technology studies or science, technology, and society) scholars entreat us to think of technology as sociotechnical systems (combination of things and people. ) The material world powerfully shapes what people can and can not do. Gözde Dedeoğlu Lecture Notes

• The life cycle of ICT include manufacturing, marketing, distribution and disposal. The lens of ethics should be brought to bear on all these stages in the life cycle of ICT. • Micro and macro level analysis: Micro level analysis focuses on individuals, their responsibilities, their choices, and their behavior. Macro issues are generally focused on groups or organizations or even countries, and they are generally concerned with policies, rules, or systems. Gözde Dedeoğlu Lecture Notes

• The better we understand technology and how it shapes and is shaped by morality, the better our choices and decisions are likely to be. • Different technologies affect human activity and forms of life differently. The field of computer ethics focuses specifically on the role of IT in constituting the moral world. • Moral philosophy is focused on human action and social arrangements, and technology has always been intertwined with both. Gözde Dedeoğlu Lecture Notes

• Deciding what policies should reign in computerized environments, be they personal policies or policies for organizations, agencies, states, and countries requires understanding the social context in which the technology is used. • This includes understanding the nature of the human relationships involved, institutional purposes and values, and prevailing norms of behavior. • This social context is extricably intertwined with the ethical issues that arise in that context. Policy vacuums cannot be filled without that social context into account. Gözde Dedeoğlu Lecture Notes

• Bibliography: Management Information Systems, Kenneth and Jane Laudon, Prentice Hall, Inc. , 1996 p. 139, 140. , Computer Ethics, Deborah Johnson, Pearson Education, Inc. 2009 (4 th edtn. ) p. 5 -22, Computers, Ethics and Society; M. David Erman-Mary B. Williams -Michele S. Shauf, Oxford University Press, 1997 p. 161 -162, Computer Ethics, Deborah Johnson, 2001 (3 rd edtn. ) p. 11 -13 Gözde Dedeoğlu Lecture Notes