AUTHOR
Nancy Pouloudi, Antoine Harfouche and Stephane Bourliataux-Lajoinie

ABSTRACT

As the number and diversity of available e-government services grows worldwide, so does the research on their current state and the success factors leading to their adoption. Much of this research employs technology adoption and diffusion models, showing the importance of factors such as trust, perceived usefulness, perceived e-government value, perceived compatibility of values of citizens and governments ease of use (e.g., Belanger and Carter, 2006). At the same time, qualitative studies have shown, in context, the challenges in the implementation of e-government services, e.g., as citizens and state employees ‘work around’ the systems (Azad & Nelson, 2009), or as political parties as ‘mega actors’ negotiate the role of IT in state modernization (Prasopoulou, 2009). These studies reveal a complex picture of service adoption and bring to the fore the specificities of each national or application context.

Against this background, in a recent workshop on ‘IT and Culture’ at Tours, France, the authors of this paper had the opportunity to discuss and contrast their experience on the adoption and reactions to new e-government services in three countries of the Mediterranean Region, namely France, Greece and Lebanon. These countries are quite different in terms of and e-government adoption and the maturity of available e-services. However, the most intriguing aspect that seems to emerge from such a comparison is that ‘unconventional’ variables, that is, aspects that are rarely acknowledged in mainstream information systems research, may come into play and substantially influence e-government services adoption.

In this paper we will argue that religion may be one such important institution, whose significance can be more vividly understood and appreciated by considering different cultural contexts. In this respect, Lebanon, Greece and France provide an interesting set of countries to consider; despite their geographical proximity, the importance and interference of religion is substantially different, and, once considered in more detail reveals a complexity well worth studying further.

Of the three countries, in France, religion is separated from the State since the days of the French revolution and therefore religion is not expected to play a role, at least openly, in contemporary political decisions, such as the adoption of e-government services.

Conversely, the role of religion is very prominent in Lebanon, where it is tightly related to state governance. Lebanon has a complex political and public system, where a careful balance in all aspects of political life must be maintained among the 18 ethnic and religious communities. Therefore, the seats in parliament, in government, and in the civil administration are allocated proportionally between Christian and Muslim. The Christian president, the Sunni prime minister, and the Shiite speaker of parliament all rule with almost equal power, although in different capacities. As a result of this confessional oligarchy, Lebanon lives in perpetual political and administrative paralysis. The public administration is seen as the place where confessional parties took care of their interests, seriously undermining institutional credibility (Dagher 2002). According to several reports, Lebanese citizens hold a negative attitude towards the Lebanese administration. They perceive the public administration as a cave for corruption that absorbs public money without providing quality services in return (Antoun 2009). Therefore, adoption of public e-services was not independent of but rather contingent on this political environment. Lack of trust in securing private identifiable information, lack of privacy protections, and fear from government control were the main inhibitors.

In Greece the religious picture is much more homogeneous, with over 95% of the Greek population belonging to, although not necessarily practicing, the ‘prevalent religion’, according to the constitution, of the Eastern Orthodox Church of Christ (commonly known as Greek Orthodox). Church is an important institution, on occasion becoming involved in political matters. This role is rooted in the history of modern Greece: the Greek identity has been preserved alongside the Christian identity under the Ottoman Empire rule and has been instrumental in driving the revolution for liberty and the establishment of the modern Greek State in the early 19th century. The Church therefore argues that religious identity should be formally recognized as part of citizen identity: in 2000, when the Greek state revised the identifiers used on identity cards, the Church reacted very strongly to the removal of religion as an identifier. Citizen signatures were collected after Sunday service, pressing for a referendum on this matter. Although this never took place, it was clear that the church played an active role in shaping opinion about matters related to government services. At present, the Church opposes the introduction of an electronic citizen card by the Greek state. As a result, several citizens stated on the relevant online deliberation (www.opengov.gr) that they will not accept this card that ‘brutally insults [their] religious consciousness’. Set against a background of general mistrust towards the government on the one hand and skepticism against all institutions on the other, the Church occasionally strives to accentuate its importance by assuming a protagonist role in State affairs. Even though such initiatives are heavily criticized in society, they are nonetheless influential for part of the population (typically those least ready to participate in the e-society) and therefore religion can become an ‘unexpected’ inhibitor of e-government services adoption.

This initial comparison of the role of religion on e-government adoption in the three countries illustrates that religion may be an important factor to consider when designing e-government services. Yet, our survey of the literature shows limited attention to date to the role of religion for e-government adoption. Perhaps unsurprisingly, studies explicitly acknowledging and naming religion as a key cultural factor in the context of e-government come from countries where religion is central to state affairs, as is the case in many Arab countries (e.g., Alomari et al., 2010, Al-Shehry et al., 2006).

The aim of this paper is to consider the role of religion in more depth, and drawing from the experiences in the three countries discuss the methodological challenges related to the study of religion in e-government. We hope that this discussion will draw attention to this ‘unconventional variable’ that is absent in much of the mainstream research on e-government services adoption, but may in fact be significant in certain cultural context and therefore needs to be studied and understood more thoroughly.

REFERENCES

Alomari, Mohammad Kamel Kuldeep Sandhu, Peter Woods. (2010) Measuring Social Factors in E-government Adoption in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. International Journal of Digital Society, 1, 2.

Antoun, Randa, (2009) “Towards a National Anti- Corruption Strategy”, UNDP & LTA, Beirut.

Al-Shery, A. Rogerson, S, Fairweather, NB, Prior, M. (2006) The Motivations for Change Towards E-Government Adoption: Case Studies from Saudi Arabia.

eGovernment Workshop ’06 (eGOV06) September 11 2006, Brunel University, UK. Azad, B and King, N. (2009) Institutional Analysis of Persistent Computer Workarounds. Proceedings Academy of Management, OCIS Division, Chicago, United States.

Belanger, F. and Carter, L. (2009) The impact of the digital divide on e-government use. Communications of the ACM 52(4)132-135.

Dagher, A. (2002) L’administration libanaise après 1990, Colloque Le Modele de l’Etat developpemental et les defis pour le Liban, 15-16 fev. Rotana-Gefinor, Beyrouth, Liban.

Mouzelis N (1978) Modern Greece: Facets of Underdevelopment. Holmes & Meier, New York.

Prasopoulou, E. (2009) The interplay of ICT innovation with state administrative tradition: evidence from the Greek Taxation Information System (TAXIS).

Unpublished PhD Thesis. Department of Management Science and Technology, Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece.

AUTHOR
M.J.Phythian, Dr N.B.Fairweather and Dr R.G Howley

ABSTRACT

As an instrument in an action research (AR) project to reveal the most suitable way of measuring delivery of e-government, Mick Phythian initiated and maintained a weblog. Employing an electronic medium chimed well with e-government research. The weblog in this instance also provided a ‘golden thread’ of continuity through the research, from establishment towards the end of the initial literature review, to being a promotional tool for the research, promoting best practice from academic and practitioner literature, along with hosting two questionnaires, and drawing comments from practitioners on relevant topics. The limited literature around using weblogs as research instruments focuses on describing their use in general or as research diaries. However, sufficient was found to encourage inclusion of the weblog within the ‘toolbox’ of research instruments employed. The weblog could be said to be a whole toolbox itself, acting as repository for questionnaires, feedback to the questionnaires, ethical information and information about future and past feedback sessions. The weblog shaped thinking about the proposed model, matters around metrics and e-government in general, without directing responses to questionnaires or interviews, a key issue when employing a weblog for research, as opposed to journalistic or personal reasons Some ethical issues around weblogs were raised by Rogerson (2006) but he focused on journalistic and personal weblogs, not weblogs focused on research. This paper explores ethical issues involved with weblogs that are research focused, and in particuar AR focused.

As with any tool, practice at posting on the weblog made using it easier. The main concern was then to provide interesting content. Sources of material came from reading a range of publications but setting up an automated newsfeed search brought up content both for the weblog and the research. The blogger, having an IT background and being responsible for a number of official websites, had experience in the technology but had not previously constructed a weblog. Implementation required consideration of design options to develop a site structure to deliver a relatively attractive but easy to maintain research tool. Also needed was provision for future questionnaires and other documents. A title of the “Great E-mancipator” for the research theme and weblog assisted focusing and styling the weblog.

The weblog was a launch pad for surveys, enabling the ethical preamble to be read, with supporting materials, and then the survey reached by those wanting to complete it. This follows Denscombe’s (2005, p.8) advice:

“research project Home Pages offer a voluntary, self-initiated means for dealing with the requirements of research ethics. They provide an eminently practical tool for ‘self-governance’ that addresses a public audience of a) potential participants, b) actual participants, c) other researchers.”

This added ethical value to the weblog from the outset. In addition, the weblog was convenient when encouraging responses, since postings promoted the survey, with later posts reporting initial feedback and thus prompting additional responses.

Being relatively novel, and one of a set of instruments, writing original posts and relevant responses was a challenge, whilst operating within standard research ethical guidelines to support successful research. This meant not breaking confidences revealed in meetings and maintaining neutrality when discussing different suppliers’ products.

In September 2008, the Municipal Journal online version, www.localgov.co.uk, took the weblog as an automatic RSS feed into their own list of bloggers, which included known commentators and a Member of Parliament. Mick Phythian was interviewed by localgov for their special regular section on citizen engagement, with links back to the weblog. The weblog homepage was updated on a regular basis and further links added, along with the ability to subscribe being used by a slowly increasing audience.

The weblog had been consistently monitoring news around the new national indicator, NI14, on “avoidable contact” and announcing the latest government papers about it as they appeared. Establishing a role as a “critical friend” of metrics attracted a small, regular audience of practitioners, academics and consultants with an interest in the field. Whilst not discovering direct answers to research questions by itself, it drew out the limited range of solutions on the market to recording both service user satisfaction and NI14. Weblog comments confirmed we were correct to determine a common and composite metric for use across multiple channels and services, along with the general difficulties presented by channel shift and costing, when channels are seen in isolation. Encouraging feedback, whilst providing either anonymity or protection of social capital could also be seen as an ethical challenge when collecting data, either directly through the weblog, or via the questionnaires and interviews.

This paper describes in more detail:

• The process of developing the weblog, describing the ethical framework for this
• The ongoing experience of writing a weblog for research and for promoting research and discussion of ethical issues faced and how these were reconciled within the live/ongoing research process.
• Lessons learnt from employing the weblog that inform research ethics.
• Ethical Implications for researchers using blogs and a consideration of how these may be addressed
• Conclusions on the use of weblogs as research instruments and their ethical issues

REFERENCES

Denscombe (2005)

de Vries (2007)

Elo & Kyngas (2007)

Hookway (2008)

Krippendorff (1980)

Mayring (2000)

Murthy (2008)

Nahapiet & Ghoshal (1998)

Research Information Network (2010)

Rogerson (2006)

Weare & Lin (2000)

Wiles, Pain & Crow (2010)

AUTHOR
Prof Andy Phippen

ABSTRACT

Online pornography is one of the last taboos for acadmeic research with little peer reviewed literature exploring the phenomenon. However, one cannot underestimate is social and economic impact. According to Ropelato (n.d.), the ‘pornography industry is larger than the revenues of the top technology companies combined: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, Apple, Netflix and EarthLink’, yearning a worldwide revenue of $97.06 billion in 2006, where 25% of total daily search engine requests were for pornography, attracting 72 million visitors worldwide to pornography websites in this year. However, could one argue that research into the online pornography phenomenon is sadly lacking due to academic squeamishness or a failure to acknowledge it as a mainstream aspect of adult society?

Opinion on the social impact of online pornography is clearly divided, in both the little academic literature that exists on the subject, and discussion in the quality media. While conducting research for documentary ‘Hardcore Profits’, Tim Samuels discovered remote villages for example, Ghana, suffer consequences of porn (averypublicsociologist, 2009). It was the belief by local villagers that porn watched via mobile cinemas had increased rape occurrences and marital breakdowns. In the absence of sex education, young men follow suit having sex without using condoms and as a result, two men interviewed contracted HIV. We might suggest that there is a wider public health issue here for policy makers – if one’s only experience of “sex education” is online pornography, this may result in a distorted view of acceptable practice. However, is this the fault of the pornography industry, or government failures to provide effective sex education in their country?

The transmission of sexually transmitted disease also brings media attention to the industry, as reflected in a recent news story about an HIV positive actor in the US. In light of these incidents it could be argued that for the pornography to be deemed ethical, condoms should clearly be shown in use.

Toub (2010) reported that the director of the Feminist Porn Awards, Alison Lee, felt that although the porn industry believe viewers don’t want to see condoms used, however: ‘all it would take would for them to say we’re using condoms 100 percent of the time and viewers would get used to it’, therefore in her view, using condoms in porn would be accepted by consumers.

Many claim that heterosexual pornography showing women forced into sex acts by men objectifies women as genitals and sexualise women (Jones.C, 2004; Onne. A, 2009). Zillmann (1986) documented that men enduring prolonged exposure to heterosexual pornography influenced the likelihood of coercing women into unwanted sexual acts and committing rape (applies to those who have some degree of psychoticism). Zillmann identified other issues that emerged following experiments to test effects of prolonged consumption of heterosexual pornography. This includes discontent for the physical appearance and sexual performance of intimate partners and the opinion that habitual pornography consumers are at risk of becoming sexually callous and violent.

However, there are counter arguments that have a more “pro pornography” stance when considering its social impact. Marriott’s (2003) comments that Erotic Review film critics rarely think how, why and whether pornography is degrading to women; ‘we suspect that it might be degrading to everybody’. This could suggest that porn protesters, especially those who regard porn to degrade and objectify women, voice extreme views when actually, porn consumers understand they watch unrealistic material which is the purpose – to physically view fantasies for entertainment and pleasure. This reflects Neu’s (2002) argument, claiming that pornography is not supposed to reflect reality because it’s a fantasy, serving as a ‘safety valve’ for pleasure. Hoffman, 2008 conducted a documentary around the pornography industry and accepted the effect of all pornography, highlighting that, like any other entertainment such as sporting events, it perpetuates inaccurate ideas about how the audience can be in comparison to the characters.

Research undertaken at the University of Plymouth with a small group of adult consumers presents results that challenge of a lot of the “conventional wisdom” regarding the negative social impact of pornography. An online survey disseminated in January 2011 elicited 118 responses from mainly younger adults (over 85% aged between 18-24), with only 15 respondents saying they had never looked at pornography online. A gender split of roughly 50/50 male/female allowed an exploration of attitudes which challenged thinking that females viewed pornography as negative and detrimental to women.

In our sample, an almost equal number of females than males disagreed that pornography objectified women and while more of both genders did agree, more males “strongly agreed”. More females than males also disagreed that “regular exposure to pornography could increase the chance of consumers forcing others into unwanted sexual acts”, with the vast majority of our respondents disagreeing with this statement. However, there was more agreement that “regular exposure to pornography can lead to consumers desensitising sexual relationships” with a clear skew for the whole population agreeing with this statement. There was, again, no clear gender split.

It was also interesting to note that the majority of our respondents did not feel that watching pornography encouraged unsafe sex. Given our population was entirely UK based, this would support the earlier observation that pornography does not encourage unsafe se per se, however, if it is the only form of public education, it may.

One final area, which was the only attitudinal measure which did show a clear gender difference, was whether pornography should clearly show the use of condoms. The vast majority of our female respondents said they thought this should be the case, while over two thirds of males disagreed.

Respondents were also invited to comment if they disagreed with this statement. It was interesting to note that the comments of Hoffman (2008) were supported by a number of our respondents – generally they felt that pornography was “entertainment” or “fantasy” and therefore did not have to reflect sexual acts in the really world.

We would acknowledge that our initial results are presented from a relatively small sample size and are not immediately generalisable. However, our results do highlight the need for academic research in this area. Without a strong evidence base the stigma surrounded the phenomenon will remain as opinion will be presented as fact. Clearly our research shows a mature attitude in general to what some regard as part of mainstream adult Internet society. Perhaps the academic world, and its ethics committees, should cease its delicate sensibilities around the subject matter and engage in developing greater understanding of what is clearly viewed by many to be part of their adult lives.

REFERENCES

Averypublicsociologist (2009) Hardcore Profits [Online] Available: http://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/2009/09/hardcore-profits.html [Date accessed: 15 October 2010].

Hoffman (2008). 9to5: Days in Porn. Distributed by Media Entertainment GmbH (theatrical), Strand Releasing (DVD).

Jones, C. (2004) Porn – can you be an ethical consumer? [Online] Available: http://www.scarleteen.com/forum/Forum8/HTML/000786.html [Date accessed: 14 November 2010].

Marriott, E. (2003) Men and Porn [Online] Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/nov/08/gender.weekend7 [Date accessed: 5 October 2010].

Neu, J. (2002) An Ethics of Fantasy? Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psy, 22 (2), pp.133-157.

Onne, A. (2009) Review: The Sex Education Show vs. Pornography [Online] Available: http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2009/03/review_the_sex [Date accessed: 3 October 2010].

Ropelato, J. (n.d.) Internet Pornography Statistics [Online] Available: http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics-pg2.html [Date accessed: 25 November 2010].

Toub, M. (2010) How to revel in porn and feel good about it. [Online] Available from: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/family-and-relationships/how-to-revel-in-porn-and-feel-good- about-it/article1664172/ [Accessed: 28 October 2010].

Zillmann, D. (1986) Effects of Prolonged Consumption of Pornography [Online] Available: http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/NN/B/C/K/V/_/nnbckv.pdf [Date accessed: 15 November 2010].

AUTHOR
Norberto Patrignani and Iordanis Kavathatzopoulos

ABSTRACT

The ICT infrastructure and its technological core are now becoming the critical infrastructures of our society. Our activities and processes are now relying on these platforms, they are now our social and business platforms. But are they sustainable? What are the (physical) limits to take into account when looking into the ICT future? Do the planet have enough resources to sustain the making, powering and wasting of all the electronic devices needed to support our social and business platforms in the future?

This paper addresses the issue of evaluating the environmental impact of ICT. Starting from the analysis of the sustainability of one of its most celebrated “laws”, the Moore’s law, we analyse its entire life-cycle, from “silicon-factories”, to their use in data centres, to the final destination of ICT products: recycling and reuse (trash ware) in the best case or, uncontrolled waste traffic towards poor countries with health hazards and environmental pollution, in the worst case.

We introduce a new dimension in the social and ethical analysis related to ICT: the future. What are the implications of this future ethics in ICT?

The Physical limits of ICT Infrastructure

ICT, the “cleanest” and the most “de-materialized” economy’s sector, is under scrutiny by environmental advocacy organizations [Greenpeace, 2010]. ICT contribution (production, power supply) to greenhouse gas production (CO2, etc.) is becoming significant and reaching the same level of airlines (close to 3% of total CO2) [Gartner, 2007].

Our computers are based on silicon chips but their production process has one of he highest impact in the industry: for producing a DRAM (of 2g of weight) we need about 1,7 Kg of fossil fuels and chemicals, a “material intensity” of 850:1, probably the highest in all industries (cars manufacturing has a material intensity of 2:1) [SVTC, 2007].

About workers in these chip factories: the first warning was the results of the first study about the health conditions of “semiconductor workers”. They had an illness rate 200% higher than other workers and the women’s miscarriage rate was 40% higher. This was the first sign that the high-tech revolution carries a high price for health, the environment and sustainable economic development. Chip manufacturing requires vast resources and is based on several toxic hazards during its lifecycle, from design and production (then to disposal) [SJMN, 1985].

Probably the Moore’s law [Moore, 1965] is one of the best examples of the so called “magnificent and progressive” goals of technology trends, described by the doubling of the number of transistors on an integrated circuit every eighteen months. From the first microprocessor Intel 4004 (based on about 103 transistors), to the last generations of chips (Intel-Itanium, with more than 109 transistors), this “law” was valid. But what about its sustainability? A recent study of Yale University showed the limits of Moore’s law due to material consumption: “Our high-tech products increasingly make use of rare metals, and mining those resources can have devastating environmental consequences… The processing capacity increase … is enabled by an expanded use of elements … computer chips made use of 11 major elements in the 1980s but now use about 60 (two-thirds of the periodic table!)” [Schmitz, Graedel, 2010]. Most of these elements are the so called rare-earths and the largest mines are now concentrated in China (see fig.1). This has important implications also at international and political level [Pumphrey, 2011].

The Moore’s law has consequences also on the speed of “gadgets” consumption: new products emerge constantly, they are faster, smaller, cheaper and smarter; but each new wave of innovation in electronics technology introduces new materials and pushes last year’s obsolete gadgets and machines into the waste-basket [WSJ, 2004]. Innovation is the hallmark of ICT industry, but we should also start very quickly to think about its sustainability. This recall the electronic sustainability commitment of “Soesterberg principle”: “Each new generation of technical improvements in electronic products (Moore’s law) should include parallel and proportional improvements (@Moore’s law) in environmental, health and safety, as well as social justice attributes” [Soesterberg, 1999].

Future Ethics

Computer scientists and professionals have difficulties in dealing with long terms consequences of their research and projects, in particular when dealing with moral imperatives defined for the welfare of future generations of humans or for the planet. When we miss the direct interactions with the consequences of our actions it is very difficult to get feedback and change our directions. One of the first researchers studying the ethical challenges introduced by technological developments was Hans Jonas in its Imperative of Responsibility: “Human survival depends on our efforts to care for our planet and its future … act so that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life” [Jonas, 1984].

How can we develop a new stage of ethics, an ethics that will inform our decisions when the consequences of our acts are so distant in the future? This is the central problem of the so called “future ethics”: the rational acceptance of a norm doesn’t automatically guarantee the action or behaviour according to the norm [Birnbacher, 2006].

Conclusions

ICT offers a number of opportunities for the achievement of global sustainability by economic benefits (value creation, employment, government revenues, etc.), for industrialized countries (eco-efficiency enhancing applications, substitution of transport and buildings by teleworking, videoconferencing, e-business, etc.), and for developing countries (economic development, implementation of poverty alleviation strategies) [WSIS, 2003], but on the other hand we must be aware that ICT products can have adverse environmental and social impact by consuming elements that are becoming scarce, lowering the working conditions in the manufacturing phase, consuming energy in the use phase and growing the e-Waste problem.

This double face of ICT rise ethical dilemmas in the field of “future ethics” where the contributions of philosophers like Jonas or Birnbacher will helps us in analysing the dilemmas introduced by ICT towards the future.

If we want a more reliable ICT social and business platform we should start also pointing our glasses towards the future ethical dilemmas.

REFERENCES

– Birnbacher D., (2006), “What motivates us to care for the (distant) future?”, N° 04/2006 Gouvernance Mondiale

– Gartner (2007), Gartner Estimates ICT Industry Global CO2 Emissions, 2007

– Greenpeace (2010), Guide to Greener Electronics, October 2010

– Jonas H. (1984), “The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of Ethics for the Technological Age”, University of Chicago Press, 1984

– Moore G.E. (1965), Cramming more components onto integrated circuits, Electronics Magazine, 19 April 1965

– Pumphrey D., Ladislaw S.O., Hyland L. (2011), “Energy and Environment in the Barack Obama–Hu Jintao Meeting”, Center for Strategic and International Studies, csis.org, January 2011

– Schmitz O.J., Graedel T.E. (2010), “The Consumption Conundrum: Driving the Destruction Abroad”, e360.yale.edu, April 2010

– SJMN (1985), San Jose Mercury News, “High Birth Defects Rate in Spill Area”, January 17, 1985

– Soesterberg (1999), Trans-Atlantic Network for Clean Production Meeting, Soesterberg, The Netherlands, May 1999

– SVTC (2007), Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, October 2007

– UN-WSIS (2003), Geneva Declaration of Principles, World Summit on Information Society

– WSJ (2004), “e-Waste, the world’s fastest growing and potentially most dangerous waste problem”, Wall Street Journal, September 23, 2004.

AUTHOR
Prof. Ugo Pagallo

ABSTRACT

In their 2007 Ethicomp paper, Reynolds and Ishikawa proposed three possible examples of criminal robots:

I) Their first hypothesis was “Picciotto Roboto.” The field pertains to robotic security guards as the Sohgo Security Service’s Guardrobo marketed since 2005. The case concerns a security robot participating in a criminal enterprise as a bank robbery. “As such, it seems that the robot is just an instrument just as the factory which produces illegal products might be. The robot in this case should not be arrested, but perhaps impounded and auctioned” (Reynolds and Ishikawa, 2007);

II) The second scenario is given by the “Robot Kleptomaniac.” Here, the machine has free will and self-chosen goals, so that it plans a series of robbery of batteries from local convenience stores, the aim being to recharge its batteries. Leaving aside the responsibilities of designers and producers of such robots, it is possible to claim that the unlawful conduct of the robot depends on – and is justifiable on the basis of – what is mandatory for survival. In any event, “the robot ultimately chooses and carries out the crime” (Reynolds and Ishikawa, 2007);

III) The final hypothesis is no longer a matter of imagination: the Robot Falsifier. In the mid 1990’s, the Legal Tender project claimed that remote viewers can tele-operate a robotic system to physically alter “purportedly authentic US $ 1000 bills” (Goldberg et al., 1996).

Interestingly, in How Just Could a Robot War Be?, Peter Asaro seriously assumes the hypothesis of the “Robot Kleptomaniac,” by envisaging autonomous robots that challenge national sovereignty, produce accidental wars or even make revolutions. In fact, once we admit the existence of a robot that chooses and carries out the criminal action, it necessarily follows that “autonomous technological systems might act in unanticipated ways that are interpreted as acts of war” and, moreover, they may “begin to act on their own intentions and against the intentions of the states who design and use them” (Asaro, 2008). As a result, new types of crime could emerge with robots accountable for their own actions: for example, in Criminal Liability and ‘Smart’ Environments (2010), Mireille Hildebrandt examines a machine that “provides reasons for its behaviours [in that] it has developed second order beliefs about its actions that enable itself as their author.” The self-consciousness of the robot not only materializes Sci-Fi scenarios as imagining a robot revolution and, hence, a new cyber-Spartacus. What is more, in the phrasing of James Moor (1985), the “logical malleability” of robots would end up changing the meaning of traditional notions such as stealing and assaulting, because the culpability of the agent, i.e., its mens rea would be rooted in the artificial mind of a machine “capable of a measure of empathy” and “a type of autonomy that affords intentional actions” (Hildebrandt, 2010). Today’s state-of-the-art in technology, however, suggests to go back to the case of “Picciotto Roboto” rather than insisting on the adventures of “Robot Kleptomaniac.” Although “many authors point out that smart robots already invoke a mutual double anticipation, for instance generating protective feelings for Sony’s robot pet for AIBO” (Hildebrandt, 2010), it seems more profitable to revert to the terra cognita of common legal standpoints that exclude robot criminal-accountability. For the foreseeable future, indeed, robots will be held legally and morally irresponsible because they lack the set of preconditions for attributing liability to someone in the case of violation of criminal laws. Since consciousness is a conceptual prerequisite for both legal and “moral agency” (Himma, 2007), the standard legal viewpoint claims that even when, say, Robbie CX30 assassinated Bart Matthews in Richard Epstein’s story on The Case of the Killer Robot (1997), the homicide remains a matter of human responsibility, because robots are not aware of their own conduct like ‘wishing’ to act in a certain way. Whether the fault is of the Silicon Valley programmer indicted for manslaughter or of the company, Silicon Techtronics, which promised to deliver a safe robot, it would be meaningless to put poor Robbie on trial for murder.

Still, there is no need to evaluate robots with Turing tests so as to admit a new generation of criminal cases involving human (legal and moral) responsibility and even robots’ moral accountability (as in Floridi and Sanders, 2004). In order to highlight this transformation, it is crucial to address the new responsibilities for Picciotto Robotos that participate or are employed in criminal enterprises, in that robots affect standard legal notions as ‘causality’ and human ‘culpability.’ As the field of computer crimes has shown since the first 1990’s, robots induce a “policy vacuum” (Moor, 1985), for the increasing autonomy and even unpredictability of their behaviour alter the conditions on which the principle of human responsibility is traditionally grounded. Some speak of a “failure of causation” due to the impossibility of attributing responsibility on the grounds of “reasonable foreseeability,” since it would be hard to predict what types of harm may supervene (Karnow, 1996). Others stress “strong moral responsibilities” that software programmers and engineers now have for the design of AAAs, i.e., autonomous artificial agents (Grodzinsky, Miller and Wolf, 2008). Besides a new generation of cases, such as a “semiautomatic robotic cannon deployed by the South African army [which] malfunctioned, killing 9 soldiers and wounding 14 others” in October 2007 (Wallach and Allen, 2009), it is necessary to address both legal and ethical issues of this deep transformation, by paying attention to the ways responsibility should be apportioned between designers, producers, and users of increasingly smarter AAAs.

REFERENCES

Asaro, P. (2008,) How just could a robot war be?, Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications, 75, 50-64;

Epstein, R. G. (1997), The case of the killer robot, New York, Wiley;

Floridi, L., and Sanders, J. (2004), On the morality of artificial agents, Minds and Machines, 14(3): 349-379;

Goldberg, K., Paulos, E., Canny, J., Donath, J. and Pauline, N. (1996), Legal tender, ACM SIGGRAPH 96 Visual Proceedings, August 4-9, New York, ACM Press, pp. 43-44;

Grodzinsky, F. S., Miller, K. A., and Wolf, M. J. (2008), The ethics of designing artificial agents, Ethics and Information Technology, 10: 115-121;

Hildebrandt, M. (2010), Criminal liability and ‘smart’ environments, Conference on the Philosophical Foundations of Criminal Law at Rutgers-Newark, August 2009;

Himma, K. E. (2007), Artificial agency, consciousness, and the criteria for moral agency: what properties must an artificial agent have to be a moral agent?, 2007 Ethicomp Proceedings, Global e-SCM Research Center & Meiji University, pp. 236-245;

Moor, J. (1985), What is computer ethics?, Metaphilosophy, 16(4): 266-275; Reynolds, C. and Ishikawa M. (2007), Robotic thugs, 2007 Ethicomp Proceedings, Global e-SCM Research Center & Meiji University, pp. 487-492;

Wallach, W. and Allen, C. (2009), Moral machines: teaching robots right from wrong. New York: Oxford University Press.

AUTHOR
Marta Oyaga Serrano

ABSTRACT

When a computer network connects people or organizations it’s a social network. Just as a computer network is a set of machines connected by a set of cables, a social network is a set of people (or organizations or other social entities) connected by a set of social relations such as friendship, co-working or information exchange. Many researchs about how people use computer-mediated communication (CMC) have concentrated on how individual users interface with their computers, how two persons interact on-line, or how small groups function on-line. As widespread communication via computer networks develops, the analysts need to go beyond studying single users, two-person ties, and small groups to examining the computer-supported social networks (CSSNs) that flourish in areas as different as the workplace and virtual communities. This paper describes the use of the social network approach for understanding the interplay between computer networks, CMC, and social processes.

Social network analysis focuses on patterns of relations among people, organizations, states… and that’s the reason why the analysts try to describe networks of relations as much as possible, the flow of information (and other resources) through them, and discover what effects these relations and networks have on people and organizations.This research approach has rapidly developed in the past twenty years, principally in sociology and communication science. Also, they treat the description of relational patterns as interesting in its own right – e.g., is there a core and periphery?– and examine how involvement in such social networks helps to explain the behavior and attitudes of network members– e.g., do peripheral people send more e-mails and do they feel more involved? They use a variety of techniques to discover a densely-knit clusters and to look for similar role relations. When social network analysts study two-person ties, they interpret their functioning in the light of the two persons’ relations with other network members. This is a quite different approach than the standard CMC assumption that relations can be studied as totally separate units of analysis. “To discover how A, who is in touch with B and C, is affected by the relation between B and C… demands the use of the [social] network concept” [Barnes, 1972, p. 3].

Related with the information about social networks is necessary to say that is gathered by questionnaires, interviews, diaries, observations and more recently through computer monitoring. In both whole and ego-centered network studies of CMC, people are often asked to identify the frequency of communication with others as well as the medium of interaction. Questions may refer to a specific relational content such as “socialize with” or “give advice to” within a given time frame. The most typical question in the studies of communication patterns is thinking about each member of their team and to identify the means of communication for each type of relation. For example, members can give an account of their work communication with each person in unscheduled face-to-face meetings, scheduled face-to-face meetings, by telephone, fax, paper letters or memos, videoconferencing, etcetera.

There are times when the social network itself is the focus of attention. If we term network members egos and alters, then each tie not only gives egos direct access to their alters, but also indirect access to all those network members to whom their alters are connected. Indirect ties link in compound relations (e.g., friend of a friend) that fit network members into larger social systems The social network approach facilitates the study of how information flows through direct and indirect network ties, how people acquire resources and how coalitions and cleavages operate.

Although a good deal of CMC research has investigated group interaction on-line, a group is only one kind of social network, one that is tightly-bound and densely-knit. The whole relations doesn’t fit neatly into tightly-bounded solidarities. Indeed, limiting descriptions to groups and hierarchies oversimplifies the complex social networks that computer networks support.

Because computer networks often are social networks, the social network approach gives important leverage for understanding what goes on in computer-mediated communication: how CMC affects the structure and functioning of social systems (be they organizations, workgroups or friendship circles) and how social structures affect the way computer-mediated communication is used.

Initial studies of computer mediated-communication developed from studies of human-computer interactions. Such studies focused on how individuals interfaced with various forms of “groupware”: software and hardware adapted for computer-mediated communication. The obvious analytic expansion beyond the individual has been to the tie, e.g., how two persons interact through CMC. Not only is this a natural expansion, it is analytically tractable, and it has fit the expertise of those social scientists who have pioneered CMC research: psychologists and psychologically-inclined communication scientists and information scientists.

A need for new ways of analyzing CMC has developed with the spread of computer networks and the realization that social interactions online are not simply scaled-up individuals and ties. Analysts want to know how third parties affect communications, how relations offline affect relations online, and how CMC intersects with the structure and functioning of social systems. For example, have organizations flattened their hierarchy, are virtual communities rebuilding social trust online, and have personal attributes become less relevant on the Internet where “nobody knows you are a dog”. Given the network nature of computer-mediated communication, the social network pproach is a useful way to address such questions.