AUTHOR
Barbara Hull

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the increasingly important role envisaged for all types of libraries, especially Public Libraries in the realisation of the Information Society, making special reference to developments in the United Kingdom. The global proliferation of online information has already led to a growing national and international recognition of the potential of libraries and librarians as readily accessible “deliverers”, especially to those in our communities who are currently socially excluded.

However, access to libraries and Information Technology may be impeded by a variety of barriers. Apart from any problems of physical access, there are a number of psychological barriers which can frustrate the accessioning of information. The natural human fear of the unknown and the need to protect the self esteem can be powerful inhibitors, especially to the more psychologically vulnerable. Low self esteem is more likely to occur in those who are socially excluded. Also, research has indicated that large numbers of adults find interacting with a computer a threatening experience. In the early days of computerisation their problems could be partly resolved by shunning contact with computers but avoidance of human-computer interactions in normal life is becoming increasingly difficult. Additionally, recent research has revealed a widespread deficiency in literacy and numeracy skills, a problem not confined to the United Kingdom. Those disadvantaged in this way are less likely than others to gravitate towards a library environment, whether print-based or electronic, where their lack of expertise will be highlighted.. Those who are well educated and have matured in a tradition of literacy and culture may find difficulty in visualising the degree of feelings of inadequacy and alienation sustained by those who lack previous experience of Libraries and Information technology. As we progress into the information-rich 21st century, with a growing emphasis on Information Technology in the delivery of education and training, some concern is warranted that the very mode and location of delivery may serve to exacerbate the social exclusion we are trying to overcome.

Positive steps need to be taken by librarians and others in contact with the library/computer naive to ensure that their initial experiences are positive and confidence-enhancing, thus easing the transition to the Information Society.

The paper draws on current research into “Barriers discouraging access to Libraries as agents of Lifelong Learning” which has been funded by the Library and Information Commission.

AUTHOR
Jeroen van den Hoven

ABSTRACT

Information systems enable human beings to do things they could not have done without them. Many work-environments are therefore gradually, or overnight, as the case may be, transformed into highly computerized work-environments. I shall refer to the idea of enhancing human intellectual functioning by means of computers as the idea of ‘epistemic empowerment’, that is the upgrading by means of digital computational devices of human reasoning and decision making. The limits of epistemic empowerment converge with the limits of our scientific imagination in cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, mathematics, software engineering and micro-electronics.

However, computer support for human ratiocination and decision making may have down-sides to it as well. As the personal authorities associated with traditional organizations are replaced by artificial authorities, epistemic empowerment may lead to a relativization of our ideal of intellectual autonomy and individual responsibility.

Two hundred years ago Immanuel Kant still firmly believed that each and every human being ought to ‘think for himself’. But what does ‘thinking for yourself’ mean in highly computerized work-environments? To what extent can it still be required, as John Stuart Mill put it hundred years ago, that ‘our understan-ding should be our own’?

In the following I will argue that where human beings are artificially geared to higher levels of intellectual accomplishment by ICT applications there may be a moral backlash. Computer users may be led to stretch to a point where their cognitive reach exceeds their moral grasp. They may become dependent on their computer tools in a way which pre-vents them from doing what is traditionally required of them as moral persons, namely to think for themselves about what is the right thing to do and account to others for what they have done on the basis of their thinking.

I shall first attempt to charac-terize the situ-ations of users, in which the threat of compromizing one’s status as autonomous moral person looms large. Then I shall discuss the limitations users are subject to in those situ-ations, both in terms of the acqui-si-tion of their beliefs and in terms of the resources for rational justification of their beliefs once acquired. This general account of the moral dimension of the human-computer relationship is then used to articulate the drawbacks of epistemic empowerment for users as far as their capability to take moral responsibility is concerned. On the basis of a taxonomy of different types of responsibilities I shall articulate the notion of “meta-task responsibility” for users and IT professionals, which corresponds with a higher order responsibility to see to it that one’s lower order responsibilities can be adequately fulfilled. Implications for systems development methodologies and quality models spelled out on the basis of this analysis.

AUTHOR
David Sanford Horner

ABSTRACT

The simple fact that most of us without doubt lead less than perfect moral lives does not entail that most people may not progress morally. The idea of moral progress must be central to an area of applied ethics such as Information Ethics. The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast two models of ethical reasoning, and their implications, in an attempt to illuminate how ethical behaviour might be viewed and promoted.The first model, ‘the synoptic model’, I argue is a generally dominant model drawing,as it does, on a kind of post-Wittgensteinian moral psychology which is both rationalist and behaviourist. I take as a token of this way of thinking about ethical reasoning that presented by Mason, Mason and Culnan in their book ‘Ethics in Information Management’ (1995). They argue that ethical thinking may be defined ‘as the systematic examination of ethical issues at a “moment of truth” to determine whether an agent’s actual or contemplated behaviour is ethical or unethical or whether alternatively, there are no ethical considerations involved’. Their ethical persons or moral agents move through a set of stages which include: the recognition of a moment of truth in response to an ethical issue; reflection upon the situation; anticipation of the ethical consequences of their actions; and finally the making of an ethically defensible judgement. Implict in this model is the public nature of these procedures or at least the parasitism of the inner on the outer. (‘Reasons are public reasons, rules are public rules’.) I argue there are three types of objections we can have to such a synoptic model. Firstly, empirical objections – people are just not essentially or necessarily like that; secondly, objections of a philosophical nature – the underpinning arguments are not cogent or convincing; thirdly, may be it is just the case that people ought not to picture themselves in this way.

To this synoptic model of moral decision making I contrast a model which seems more cogent and persuasive derived from the moral philosophy of the late Iris Murdoch and developed in works such as ‘The Sovereignty of the Good’ (1970) and ‘Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals’ (1992). This alternative model I will call ‘incremental’. Murdoch argues that a person’s moral life is something which goes on continually and is tied up with small, everyday happenings as much as with moments of big decision. Our moral life is not something which is switched off between the happenings of explicit moral choices or ‘moments of truth’. This, of course , is not to suggest that we do not make moral decisions but simply to argue that most of the work is done by the time the decision is made! For Murdoch the relevant metaphor here is that of vision (rather than a movement through stages). We can only choose within the world we see in the ethical sense of ‘see’. This implies according th Murdoch that clear vision arises as a result of moral imagination and moral effort. (One of the important advantages of this conception is that it once more opens a route for moral imagination.) Central to her argument then is the concept of ‘attention’ in which the work of attention imperceptibly creates structures of value around us; ‘where virtue is concerned we often apprehend more than we clearly understand and grow by lookig’. She characterised her own position as that of a kind of ‘non-dogmatic naturalism’ in the sense that goodness is connected with knowledge in a common-sense way. Knowledge becomes a refined and honest perception of what really is the case and developed through ‘patient and just decernment’. The implication is that moral change and moral progress are slow and, as with Kant, there is a recognition here that we constantly wrestle with our inclinations and desires. We are not simply free in some existentialist sense suddently to alter the way we see things. In contrast to the synoptic model explicit moral choice now seems less important and less decisive ‘since much of the decision lies elsewhere’. I argue that the relative veracity of these models is important in our understanding, for example, of the role of moral education or of professional codes of ethics.

AUTHOR
Jan Holmqvist

ALSO PRESENTED AT
The Computer Ethics Conference, Sweden, 1997

ABSTRACT

This purpose of this paper is to discuss the question if school, through the principle of beneficence, can be said to have a moral obligation to give students access to information on the Internet. The paper relates the principle of beneficence to the notion of human need, understood as that which it is bad for man to be without. It discusses in what ways information can be considered a human need and bad for man to be without. The conclusion of the paper is that information as such is not a human need, but that information is linked to human needs and that school therefore has moral obligations in relation to the principle of beneficence, to contribute to the students ability to handle this information. These obligations are on the one hand a moral obligation to act so that the students can find relevant information on the Internet and then evaluate this information. On the other hand school has a moral obligation to guarantee the fair distribution of both information and the ability to deal with this information among their students.

AUTHOR
Scott Hanson

ABSTRACT

At the end of this century, the status of computer technology has become central to modern culture. Equally astonishing, dialogue in the media on the moral significance of technology reveals a historical and cultural peremptoriness. Have the advancements of computer technology contributed to the moral capacity of an individual? In this paper, I discuss the nature of computer technology as a potential moral source, and argue that the effect of the Internet, as a prime example, is largely quiescent to, what Rousseau describes as a source of joy and contentment: “le sentiment de l’existence.” Rousseau articulates that moral sensibility depends on inner contact with oneself. If the Internet compromises our reflections on what we ought to do with our lives, then a technological conception is negligible because it fails to address questions of what is good in human activity.

Outlined initially as largely an historical investigation, I assess the plausibility of this idea that the progress of computer technology has contributed to the moral capacity of the individual. I focus on two intertwined positions of Nietzsche: namely, his mistrust on arriving at a narrow sense of morality and his sympathy toward a naturalistic understanding of reality. At this point, I revise the question “Have the advancements of computer technology contributed to the moral capacity of an individual?” to “Have the advancements of technology enabled a ‘higher’ transformation of our selves?” I analyze this revised question with respect to Rousseau’s balanced skepticism of the benefits derived from the arts and sciences, which is articulated most forcefully in his Discourse on the Sciences and Arts. I conclude from both Rousseau and Nietzsche that the current progress of the sciences has led to the disparagement of the virtues. The achievements of technology have been naively interpreted and are subject to superficial reasoning and distortion.

References

Chamberlain, L. (1999). Nietzsche in Turin: an intimate biography, (New York: Picador USA).

Nietzsche, F. (1992). Basic writings of Nietzsche, translated by Walter Kaufmann, 1992 Modern Library Edition, (New York: Random House).

Nietzsche, F. (1990). Twilight of the idols and the anti-Christ translated by R. J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin Books).

Nietzsche, F. (1998). On the genealogy of morality, translated by Maudemarie Clark and Alan J. Swensen, (Indianapolis: Hackett).

Nietzsche, F. (1980). On the advantage and disadvantage of history for life, (Indianapolis: Hackett).

Rousseau, J. J. (1997). The discourses and other early political writings, edited and translated by Victor Gourevitch, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Rousseau, J. J. (1992). Discourse on the origin of inequality, (Indianapolis: Hackett).

Rousseau J. J. (1959). Les reveries du promeneur solitaire, vepromendae, in Oeuvre completes, vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard).

Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the self: The making of the modern identity, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Taylor C. The Ethics of Authenticity, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).

AUTHOR
Frances S. Grodzinsky

ABSTRACT

It has been a decade since Computer Ethics came into prominence within the field of computer science and engineering, changing not only the profession but the classroom as well. The commercialization and globalization of the World Wide Web has impacted us all, both producers and consumers alike. What was once the province of the few has become the virtual society of the multitudes. Ethical issues concerning security, privacy, information, identity, community and equity of access once contained and localized, have assumed additional complexity in the global environment. Every day, the front pages of our newspapers and magazines report violations of one sort or another.

This paper will address two questions: As we move into the 21st century, are we shaping ‘ethical’ information communication technology (ICT) professionals? Is our vision of an ‘ethical’ global on-line society a realistic one?

Part One will examine the education of ‘ethical’ ICT professionals who will be instrumental in the integration of computer technology into 21st century society. It will also focus on the changing role of the professor of computer ethics and the usefulness of ethical codes. Part Two will focus on the vision of an ethical on-line society. It will ask whether a moral dialogue can take place concerning the structure and policies of on-line society and reflect on how computer professionals, those of us creating technology, need to define and communicate our mission vis-a-vis humankind. If we focus only on normative models, we will be sacrificing the hope of a ‘good’ society for merely a civil one. I fear that without moral dialogue, we will lose all sense of shared community values.