AUTHOR
Frances S. Grodzinsky and Andra Gumbus

ABSTRACT

When Tim Berners Lee unleashed the World Wide Web (WWW) in 1990, his goals were to create “an internet-based hypermedia initiative for global information sharing” (Frauenfelder, 2004). The accessibility to information at the click of a mouse coupled with the affordability of hardware and connectivity have re-oriented our lives. Within the past fifteen years, this tool has made its way into our homes, schools, and workplaces changing the way we communicate, learn and conduct business. The WWW has lifted the restrictions on the Internet from a tool that could be used solely by academics and researchers, to one that can now be used by society to access popular culture. It has become a perceived necessity for people within an Information Society. At the same time, it has brought along its share of problems. Looking back to the future, who would have dreamed that our lives would be so online in 2005?

Rapid access to data and information brought about by advances in Information Communication Technology (ICT) is essential for competitive businesses in the Information Age. Central servers with dumb terminals controlled by management information systems (MIS) departments have given way to distributed client server models, where employees have both application and presentation software on their own personal computers or workstations. Unlimited Internet access was tradtionally afforded to employees on their machines at the workplace, While this access made life more enjoyable for these employees, organisations found that time spent on personal business was eroding time spent on company business. This paper continues a long tradtion of the exploration of Internet usage in the workplace at Ethicomp. Studies by Introna (2001), Palm (2004) and Prior (2004) have all examined aspects of this topic. This paper will build on these studies and focus specifically on Internet usage and its effect on productivity in the workplace.

In the last few years, companies have started to rethink how much Internet access to allow employees in the workplace as unlimited Internet access in some companies has resulted in potential lost productivity and abuse of work time spent online. Statistics show that worldwide, corporations lose billions in the resultant reduced productivity. This abuse of Internet privileges is real problem for organizations, with real monetary ramifications and it shows no sign of letting up. Recently, the International Data Corp. estimated that 30% to 40% of employee Internet use isn’t work related. And according to Nielsen/Net Ratings, 92% of online stock trading occurs from the workplace during work hours and 46% of online holiday shopping takes place at work” (Schweitzer, 2004).

Schweitzer also indicates that liability placed upon the corporation can be frightening because it opens the company up to legal action and a hostile workplace environment. “About 70% of all Web traffic to Internet pornography sites occurs between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., according to SexTracker, a porn industry consultancy” (Schweitzer, 2004). To counter this trend, companies today are limiting unrestricted access to the Internet. Thin clients (computers with limited applications and no Internet access) are replacing thick clients that afforded unlimited access. Organizations are implementing policies and practices that restrict employees and limit their ability to access non- work related sites. Company Intranets are replacing the public Internet because they provide secure access for employees and can be heavily regulated and controlled by management. These practices are often presented under the guise of virus control, spam control, and employee safety. Additional motivators for the restriction of Internet are attempts to protect bandwidth thereby ensuring the resources necessary to control legitimate business, and prevention of automatic downloads that may damage or infect corporate programs.

What are the ethical ramifications of controlling employee behavior in the workplace? Is the company acting ethically when spy ware or other software is installed that monitors all employees based on the inappropriate behavior of a few? Is monitoring for control eroding the employee / employer relationship and undermining trust? Does a company have the right to deny the reading of private email during lunchtime or after work hours? Are companies realizing these anticipated results gained from the switch from thick to thin client terminals? We will explore these questions in this paper using survey results from forty companies across industries. Part One will examine the effect of the Internet on employee behavior in the workplace and its effect on productivity. The analysis will focus on issues of productivity, monitoring and privacy, employer/employee relationships and trust, behavioral expectations and managerial control. Part Two will present and analyze the research of forty organizations including corporate, non-profit and academic institutions in order to gain a perspective across industries on company policy and practices regarding employee use of the Internet as it relates to productivity.

REFERENCES

Alge, Bradley J., Ballinger, Gary A., Green, Stephen G. (2004) Remote control: Predictors of electronic monitoring intensity and secrecy. Personnel Psychology. Durham: Vol 57, Issue 2. 377 – 411.

American Management Association (2001), AMA survey on workplace surveillance and monitoring www.amanet.org/research/pdfs/ems_short2001.pdf accessed 12/18/04.

Anandarajan, M., Simmers, C., and Igbaria, M.(2000) An exploratory investigation of the antecedents and impact of internet usage: an individual perspective. Behavior and Information Technology, 19, 69 – 85.

D’Antoni, Helen. (2004) E-Mail: Worker’s constant companion. Information Week. Manhasset. Issue 979. 66 – 68, March.

Fox, M., Phillips, L. Vaidyanathan, G. (2003) Managing Internet Gambling in the Workplace, First Monday, volume 8, number 4 , URL: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_4/fox/index.html. Accessed 12/18/04.

Frauenfelder, Mark, (2004) Sir Tim Berners-Lee: He Created the Web, Now He’s Working on Internet 2.0. MIT’s Magazine of Innovation Technology Review. Vol 107. No 8. 40 – 45.

Grodzinsky ,F, Tavani,H. (2005) The Internet and Community Building at the Local and Global Levels: Some Implications and Challenges, ICIE 2004, Karlsruhe, Germany forthcoming in Johannes Frühbauer, Rafael Capurro, Thomas Hausmanninger (Eds.): Localizing the Internet. Ethical Issues in Intercultural Perspective. Munich: Fink Verlag.

Introna, Lucas.(2001) Workplace Surveillance, Privacy and Distributive Justice. Readings in Cyberethics, eds, Spinello and Tavani, Jones and Bartlett, 418-429..

Lim, Vivien K.G.(2002) The IT way of loafing on the job: Cyberloafing, neutralizing and organizational justice. Journal of Organizational Behavior. Vol23,Issue 5, Aug..

Nielsen//Netratings, (2002). “Online Usage at Work Jumps 17 percent year-over-year, driven by female office workers,” at http://www.nua.org, accessed 15 February 2003.

Palm, Elin (2004) “An Ethical Questioning of Work Place Monitoring-strengthening employees’ negotiating power. Ethicomp Proceedings 2004, Syros, Greece.

Peterson, Dane K. Computer ethics: the influence of guidelines and universal moral beliefs. Information Technology & People.(2002) West Linn:. Vol 15, Issue 4. 346 – 362.

Prior, Mary. (2004). “Surveillance-Capable Technologies in the Workplace Some Evidence of the Views of the Next Generation” Ethicomp Proceedings 2004, Syros, Greece.

Robinson, S.L. and Bennett, R.J. (1995)A typology of deviant workplace behaviors: a multidimensional scaling. Academy of Management Journal, 38, 555-572.

Schweitzer.D. “Workplace Web Use: Give Em an Inch”, 27 Sep 2004 | SearchSecurity.com http://searchsap.techtarget.com/originalContent, accessed 12/18/04.

Urbaczewski, Andrew and Jessup, Leonard M. ( 2002) Does electronic monitoring of employee internet usage work? Communications of the ACM, Vol 45 issue 1. 80 – 84, Jan.

Van Slambrouck, Paul.(2000) E-mail ethics: You’ve got pink slip. Christian Science Monitor, 08827729, Vol 92 Issue 193, August..

Wen, H. Joseph and Lin, Binshan.( 1998) Internet and employee productivity. Management Decision. London: Vol 36, Issue 6.

Websites:

http://it.sacredheart.edu/webservices/policies/privacy/index.asp accessed 12/18/04.

http://www.ci.stamford.ct.us accessed 12/18/04.

http://www.webspy.com/files/articles accessed 12/18/04.

http://searchsap.techtarget.com/originalContent accessed 12/18/04

AUTHOR
NDUKWE CAJETAN OKECHUKWU

ABSTRACT

Introduction

The internet has revolutionalised the healthcare industry. Many people in developed countries of the world seek medical information, advice or even buy drugs via the internet.So many websites rise every now and then claiming to provide various medical assistance to patients. But the application of information technology to medicine poses some ethical problems.With this paper,I hope to view critically the possibility of a morally justifiable cyber medicine.

WHAT IS CYBER MEDICINE

Cyber medicine may be defined as all medications via the internet,whether in the form of seeking medical advise via an internet doctor, the ordering or buying of drugs via an internet pharmacy, or the reading up of medical information via an internet website.Hence, the consultation sites, the e-pharmacy sites and the information giving sites are the three different kinds of cyber medicine websites that elicit different ethical problems.

The Consultation Sites :These are sites that offer medical advise by the use of a doctor or a pharmacist. Here the following ethical questions arise, how is the patient sure that the person giving the medical advise is a trained physician?, how can the doctors credentials be verified?, where can the patient locate the cyber doctor in the case of a wrong medical advise?, and how is the doctor to guarantee for the privacy of the personal information that are collected via the net? These ethical questions revolve around the principles of trust and caring, responsibility,privacy,autonomy, etc.

The E-Pharmacy Sites or Drug shops :These are sites that engage in the sale of Drugs.Here, who takes responsibility in the case of a bad effect of a drug given? Are the pharmacy operators competent? What is the distinguishing mark between real pharmacy sites and those that are for the purpose of making money?Is it possible to check the sell of unapproved drugs via the e-pharmacy? Do the operators of these pharmacies tell their patronizers the side effects of the drugs they purchase?Also the exclusion of the doctor as an intermediary calls to question the doctor-patient relationship.etc These are some of the ethical questions that surround the e-pharmacy sites.

The Information Giving Sites :These are websites that offer medical information about diseases,sicknesses or drugs that patients can log in and read up.It is confirmed today that so many people make use of this type of sites in knowing more about their illness.But the ethical questions associated with this site include,what is the validity of the information given? Are those information reliable and authentic?Are we sure that the sites are not sponsored by some advertizers for the purpose of e-commerce ?

THE STRUCTURE OF THE PAPER

I will start by defining cyber medicine and distinguishing the three major cyber medicine websites. Then i will delve into the arguments for and against Cyber Medicine.Here, I am going to present the views of scholars who are for Cyber Medicine as against the views of those that oppose Cyber Medicine. I am going to compare and contrast the two views and take a stand.Generally,the arguments will be revolving around competition, cost effectivity, confidentiality, validity, as an alternative, access to information, quality health care,etc.

Later, I will analyze critically Cyber Medicine vis-a-vis some ethical principles. The ethical principles that I will consider include, the principle of autonomy,the principle of responsibility, privacy, trust and caring and the doctor-patient relationship,which is not an ethical principle but an important relationship in healthcare .

I will then lay out some conditions that are necessary for a morally acceptable cyber Medicine. Some of the conditions as noted by Health On The Net Foundation include, authority, complementarity, confidentiality, attribution, justifiability, transparency of authorship, transparency of sponsorship, honesty in advertising and editorial policy,etc.I will do a critically evaluation of them. Finally,I will do a critical evaluation of the entire work and give some concluding remarks in which I will posit proper orientation as the way forward for cyber medicine.

AUTHOR
Agata Mróz

ABSTRACT

Communication is the most important process for each society. As the basis for the cultural heritage transfer, it determines the society’s existence. The more complicated the social structure becomes, the more efficient and sophisticated ways of information transfer needs. Therefore the cause of all the changes, that took place during the media evolution, was the will for overcoming the three major barriers in communication: spatial, temporal and economic.

Nowadays we are witnessing the situation, when all the hills we had to climb on that way, have already been reached. With inventing ICT we have reached the top: the basic barriers mentioned above do not cause much trouble anymore. This situation should fill us with euphoria and pride. However, having old barriers behind doesn’t actually mean no problems to cope with. Development of ICT is bringing new questions and new threats itself. The new problems are connected not only with the technical side of communication (as it was before) but, first of all, with philosophical and ethical issues.

One of those issues is a language of media and the consequences of the particular language usage. Language itself is not only the element of the structure of communication process. It also is an integral part of our identity. Our mother tongue is one of the elements that show us (and others) who we are and what we identify ourselves with. That’s why I consider that problem very important.

When we look back through the process of the evolution mentioned above, we notice two events, which (apart from the informational growth) had a crucial influence on the language usage in media: 1. invention of the printing machine (J. Gutenberg, 1450), 2. invention of the computer (J.P. Eckert, J. W. Mauchly, 1946).

With the first invention we left homogeneous world of Latin hand-writings and entered McLuhan’s heterogeneous galaxy of Gutenberg. Until that moment there was a domination of Latin (lingua doctus – ‘language of the learned’) in media. The capability of using it was a privilege of high-educated. Language was then the barrier which was dividing educated from non-educated, pushing the second ones into the space of social exclusion.

J. Gutenberg’s invention, together with the beginning of Reformation (Martin Luther, 1517), were the two events which made publishing in mother tongues (national languages) possible and (what’s maybe more important) desirable. The diversification of the media language sphere and shrinking space of social exclusion were the first result of that events.

The second invention takes us into M. Castells’ galaxy of Internet, the space of globalisation. New Media hasn’t followed the previous direction taken in the language sphere. On the contrary, ICT has turned back from the diversity of national languages to the idea of one common language. English, sometimes called the Latin of our times, became the official international language of electronic media. This domination is the straight consequence of the place of invention (USA), media expansiveness and intense, constant development. The major opportunity, that this change brings to international (intercultural) communication, is the possibility of overcoming the old linguistic barriers. That’s a great advantage, unless we keep the reasonable proportions.

Recently in Poland we can observe a growing tendency of depreciation publishing in Polish. Any scientific publication in English seems to be, in general, considered as more valuable than the same text published in Polish. The official explanation of the situation is, that the first one may have potentially greater number of potential readers. In my opinion this explanation is unjustified. I’m sure that this also happens in other non-English countries. English then pretends to be considered not as a lingua vulgaris (‘common, ordinary, usual’), but as a new lingua doctus. It makes me state, that this language unification, which creates a new space of exclusion inside the scientific society, is dangerous for our identity.

Considering that fact, there’s a strong necessity to promote publishing in national languages. Therefore last year we made a decision to open Multilingual Internet Catalogue of Scientific Publications, which will be installed on one of the machines in the Multimedia Laboratory at Social Science Dept., AMU. It’s projected as a free Internet advanced communication utility, which gives the scientific community all over the world maximum information about the successively published analogue and digital scientific publications mainly in national languages, a database catalogued according to the rules of the traditional library catalogue. Each position will be presented in at least two language versions: the national and English (as an alternative), but our intention is to translate all the entries into as many languages as possible.

We hope that this kind of initiatives give chance to defend publishing in mother tongues and, consequently, our identity.

AUTHOR
Carl Åborg, Iordanis Kavathatzopoulos and enny öhman Persson

ABSTRACT

Background

Stress-related problems in IT (information technology) – supported work are well known and well documented (Aronsson et al 1994, Smith 1997).

In this paper we focus on stress related moral problems in work environments dominated by the use of IT tools. Our assumption is that ethical competence may be an important factor in the efforts towards optimal use of IT systems. Ethical competence can contribute to a more satisfying handling of moral problems (Collste 2000), and thereby to reduction of the stress level and a better work environment. The point of departure is that ethical competence is a psychological problem-solving and decision-making process based on ethical autonomy theory (Piaget 1932; Kohlberg 1985; Kavathatzopoulos 2004).

Efficient use of IT systems demands competent users with certain kind and amount of knowledge. Persons lacking necessary knowledge feel that they cannot satisfactorily handle the work demands and control their work situation, and lack of control is a well known stress factor (Karasek & Theorell 1990). Social support has been shown to have an important effect on work related stress and health. (House 1981). The most favourable, in terms of stress and health, is when the work situation is perceived as characterized by reasonable demands, high control/decision latitude and high social support (Karasek & Theorell 1990).

Most experiences, from a long period of time, show that when expanded IT-systems are introduced into a workplace the subjective demands increase, while the subjective control and support decrease (Aronsson et al 1994, Sandblad et al 2003). The control factor is of special interest within the scope of this paper. Users report that when more IT-based work is introduced the control of their own work situation is decreased, while at the same time the managements control of the employees is perceived as increasing (Aronsson et al 1994, Åborg & Billing, 2003).

The main hypothesis of the study was that the existence of ethical competence contributes to lower levels of stress by strengthening the feelings of competence and control when dealing with problems during IT-supported work.

Methods

A questionnaire, Health and Moral Stress Questionnaire (HMSQ), was constructed and used. Included were questions on background information, and on the following dimensions: work demands, support and control (Karasek, R. & Theorell, T. 1990), work with the computer system (Åborg 2002), ethical competence and confidence (Collste 2000, Kavathatzopoulos 2004), health conditions (Åborg 2002).

The questionnaire first was tested with a group of 50 persons at a local tax office in Sweden. The questionnaire then was used on a bigger group of employees at the National Registration Office. 638 persons at different local offices answered the questionnaire, 568 women and 53 men. Most of them, 432 persons, were between 40-59 years of age, and they had an average of 15 years of experience at National Registration. 207 were assistants, 354 were clerks, 36 were junior managers, and 17 were senior managers.

Results and Conclusions

The results show that IT-based work is indeed correlated to moral stress and they help us to formulate hypotheses and suggestions on how to prevent moral stress and promote health. It seems that continuing education, improved support, information, control, and participation in the process of systems development could improve ethical competence and confidence in employees in highly computerized work places, and thereby increase efficiency and decrease stress.

Many employees reported worries about potential negative consequences of badly functioning computer systems. In combination with the finding that the IT systems often broke down and that using them is complex and difficult, this points out the need for better IT support and better system development processes. The results showed that, even in a well functioning computerized work place, there are serious moral concerns about IT systems. The hypotheses that ethical competence and ethical confidence can decrease stress and negative health effects of IT-supported work was strengthened, but need further testing.

The study showed that it is possible to construct a usable questionnaire to assess ethical competence as one important factor influencing subjective stress in IT-supported work. The questionnaire needs some further development and testing. Hopefully it then can become a useful tool to increase the knowledge needed to develop efficient IT systems and good and healthy work. Clearly we need more focus on moral stress and ethical competence in today’s IT-based work and in the methods and processes used in future development of work organizations and IT systems.

REFERENCES

Aronsson, G., Dallner, M., & Åborg, C., 1994, Winners and losers from computerisation. A study of the psychosocial work conditions and health of Swedish state employees. International Journal of Human-computer Interaction, 6, 17-35.

Collste, G. (2000). Ethics in the age of information technology. Linköping, Sweden: Centre for Applied Ethics.

House, JS. (1981). Work, stress and social support. Addison Wesley, London, UK.

Karasek, R. & Theorell, T. (1990). Healthy work: Stress, productivity and the reconstruction of working life. New York: Basic Books.

Kavathatzopoulos, I. (2004). Making ethical decisions in professional life. In H. Montgomery, R. Lipshitz & B. Brehmer (Eds.), How professionals make decisions (pp. 277-288). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Kohlberg, L. (1985). The Just Community: Approach to moral education in theory and practice. In M. Berkowitz and F. Oser (Eds.), Moral education: Theory and application, (pp. 27-87). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Piaget, J. (1932). The moral judgment of the child, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. Sandblad, B., Gulliksen, J., Åborg, C., Boivie, I., Persson, J., Göransson, B Kavathatzopoulos, I. & Blomkvist, S. (2003), Work environment and computer systems development, Behaviour & Information Technology, 22, 375-388.

Åborg, C. (2002). How Does IT Feel @ Work – and How to Make IT Better. Computer use, Stress and Health in Office Work. Comprehensive summaries of Dissertations, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden.

Åborg, C., Billing, A. (2003), Health effects of “the Paperless Office” – evaluations of the introduction of electronic document handling systems, Behaviour & Information Technology, 22, 389-396

AUTHOR
Lawrence M. Hinman

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I will be arguing in support of several theses:

Importance. Search engines play an increasingly crucial role in public life. For those who are working in this area, the importance of search engines is almost self-evident, yet for the general public search engines are transparent; they see the sites to which search engines lead them, not the search engines themselves. Consider three areas in which search engines have assumed a growing importance.

Political Life. In the political world, the common citizen depends on access to knowledge, without which the kind of discourse that Habermas and others see as essential to democracy would be impossible. Search engines play a crucial role in providing or denying that access. The absence of Abu Ghraib photos from an image search on Google illustrates the way in which search engines can shape political perceptions. Google’s acquiescence to Chinese political demands, as well as its country-specific treatment of hate speech, further add to this complex picture.

The Virtual Constitution of Knowledge and Reality.Initially, they are the “gatekeepers” of the web, but their importance is in fact far more important than that. Through their influence, they become part of a feedback loop and, as such, increasingly become constitutive of knowledge itself. This is most obviously the case with the development of Google Scholar, which will shape the next generation’s perception of knowledge in extraordinarily powerful ways.

Economic Life. Economic success or failure often depends on how close to the top a site is ranked in search engines. While moral progress has been made by separating sponsored sites from non-sponsored ones, but many thorny issues remain, such as the apparently greater weight given commercial sites over noncommercial ones, even when the noncommercial sites provide far more resources than their commercial counterparts.

Accountability. Search engines are responsible to the public, but accountable only to their stockholders and to their advertisers, who are the paying customers. Despite their rapidly growing importance in public life and in the growth of knowledge, search engines are under very little if any public regulation. Some companies, such as Google, have been quite concerned about self-regulation, but it is far from clear that this is sufficient, given the magnitude of the role that search engines will play in society.

Comparable Cases. When we look at other industries that occupy a similar public role-television and airlines are two examples-we see that they are regularly subject to federal scrutiny.

Proposal. Both individual countries and international consortia need to move toward developing appropriate regulatory structures for search engines. This needs to be done in a way that is simultaneously sensitive to the growth incentives for the search engine companies themselves and to the needs and rights of the larger public.

Areas of concern. What, if anything, needs to be scrutinized and regulated in search engines? This paper discusses three principal areas.

Algorithms. While early search engines used primitive criteria such as the number of page visits or back links, contemporary search and ranking algorithms are far more sophisticated and hidden from view. It is no longer clear what it means to have a given site come up first in a specific site-it is not merely popularity, not merely the number of other sites that link to that one, but it is unclear precisely what it means for a site to come up first.

What kind of regulatory structure would be appropriate for this situation? Clearly search companies have both a right and a duty to keep the details of their algorithms confidential. Not only are those algorithms what gives one company an advantage over other companies, but publication of the detailed algorithms leaves search engines open to even greater manipulation by spammers than currently possible. In this section, we explore what model regulatory structures might look like, structures that protect legitimate needs for secrecy and yet provide sufficient transparency that the public knows and understands what the search results actually mean.

When in Rome, do as? Search engine technology presents interesting issues in regard to ethical relativism. To what extent should search engines adopt a maxim of “When in China, do as the Chinese do” or other similar guidelines? We are moving increasingly toward an era of global ethics, and in this section we will argue in favor of the necessity of global solutions to local problems. A consideration of this problem will also help elucidate the shortcomings of ethical relativism in the twenty-first century.

Privacy. Search engines increasingly have the potential to record a tremendous amount of information about users. Sometimes this information is not linked to particular identities, but it now often is through the sophisticated use of cookies, free email services, and the like. This raises serious ethical issues about privacy in at least two areas.

Economic Privacy. As our buying habits become subject to increasing tracking, we find that sellers are able to manipulate our choices all the more effectively. In this section, we explore ways to insure consumer privacy while maintaining the economic incentives necessary to the continued growth of the search industry.

Political Privacy. In an era in which political privacy rights have often been sacrificed in the name of the war against terrorism, we find that search engine records offer a potentially powerful way to track and control citizens. We must establish guidelines that limit the power of governments to access information about citizens. In the United States, the government’s Carnivore program failed, not for want to political support but because of inept programming, a problem that has plagued the FBI for years. However, might search engines not deliver comparable information about citizens-what searches they have made, what links they have chosen to explore, etc.? Once again, the challenge is to develop regulatory structures that preserve legitimate interests while still maximizing the political freedom of the ordinary citizen.

REFERENCES

Introna, Lucas D. and Helen Nissenbaum (2000) “Shaping the Web: Why the Politics of Search Engines Matters”, The Information Society, Vol. 16, No.3, 1-17.

Machill, M., Welp, C., eds. Wegweiser im Netz: Qualität und Nutzung von Suchmaschinen. Bielefeld: Verlag Bertelsman Stiftung, 2003.

Machill, M., et al. “Navigating the Internet: A Study of German-Language Search Engines.” European Journal of Communication.2004; 19: 321-347.

Baye, M. R. and Morgan, J (2001). Information Gatekeepers on the Internet and the Competitiveness of Homogeneous Product Markets, American Economic Review 91(3): 454-474.

Brake, D. “Judging Search Engines.” LSE MSc Coursework. http://www.well.com/user/derb/papers/judgingsearchenginesabstract.html Full copy available from author on request.

Phua, V. 1998. “Towards a set of ethical rules for search engines.” MSc dissertation, LSE [I have not yet been able to locate this author or the dissertation.]

In addition, I will be drawing on:

Numerous articles from GoogleWatch.com and related websites

Direct interviews and correspondence with Google representatives.

AUTHOR
Gonçalo Jorge Morais of Costa

ABSTRACT

The goal of the presented paper is the attempt to explain if the Internet will be a middle of human communication ethically incompatible or not? The analysis in cause will be elaborated in way to answer to the presented subject in a total way.

The evolution of the means of human communication is a clear and unequivocal reality… The preferential mean of human communication in the knowledge society is without a doubt the Internet, fruit of increasingly user’s growth. In fact, the fast development of the information technologies allowed: the dilution of geographical spaces, the appearance of new social and economical contexts, and for that, new complexity forms, contradictions and paradoxes appear daily.

One of those paradoxes is clearly the aim of this paper… It is to know to what extent the Internet is a middle of human communication ethically incompatible or no…

The sharp cultural mutations underlying human beings that happen on in this millennium request a total analysis of subjects related to the communicational ethics. We no longer lived to the reach just the radio, the television, the newspaper, the publicity, the movies and the video. The era of the information flows reconfigure the mediatic field. In the cyberspace, each one is potentially originator and receiver in a differentiated qualitatively space, no-fixed and disposed by the users. Under such prism, the Internet is a universal cradle of information, clearly differentiated of the mediatic macro-systems for the following requirements:

1. at least until the present, no there are directive center’s nor decision commands in the Internet;
2. the Internet communication is founded in a reciprocity with community dimension (the telephone is reciprocal, but individual; it doesn’t allow a vision than what happens in the net). The television and radio are poles from where the information leaves and it is distributed. Even taken in consideration blunting interactive solutions, a clear separation exists between the issuing nuclei and the addressees isolated some of the other ones. In the Internet, there is the substantive possibility of receivers participate, including in non territorialized collectivities;
3. the interactive and multipolar character of the virtual communication breaks up with limits demarcated by hegemonic institutions. Texts, sounds and images circulate in great amount for the Internet, without the obligation of if they submit to evaluation filters and whose ethical consequences are not quantified properly;
4. beside that, in the Internet doesn’t exist programming grills or pre-established roots, while the television, the radio and the newspapers select their news in function of their own directives, the computerized nets impel us to go behind the dispersed information for the hemispheres, with the prerogative to define what we independently consider as ethical or not.

The cyberspace is configured as one universal uncertain, without controls and apparent hierarchies, without place nor time clearly marked, and for that, in any part of the world when any one of us clicks in the mouse, opening for that middle a browser is “buying a ticket for the unknown”… Unknown means the possible contact with different perspectives of life, in terms of the social-historical-economical context, and even in ideological and religious terms. It means, that we can be involved in a behavioural paradigm that embraces the realities that we are going to contact, as well as, fruit of that uncertain universe, without controls and hierarchies we cannot be prepared in mental terms essentially for the cognitive dissonance (“sociological shock”) resultant.

The sociological shock creates then a world problem in ethics terms and regulation of the Internet. It is known that the establishment of laws and rules for the communication in the Internet are in study by countless government entities of several countries as for instance: in the U.S.A., in China, in Japan, in Singapore, etc. However, other question rises in the horizon: how can we control and regulate these information limitations, and what type of government or non governmental organizations will have legitimacy for doing it? The answer to this question is not still very clear, but on the contrary, the government positions as for instance the one of France or Japan demonstrate the concern of the underlying countries to the problem.

However, the constitution of barriers to those accesses is not a contradiction to the basic beginnings what governs the Internet? Beginnings those that seat in the freedom of fluency of the information, because today Internet is fruit of spaces or contradictory interests and hesitates between a gigantic space of individual statement and collective communication, as referred previously.

In conclusion, the Internet neither is good nor it is bad. Just the use that will be done of her will drive us to judge her.

REFERENCES

[1] Barroso, P. (2001), Cyberespace: ethical problems with new technology, Ethicomp 2001, Available in the Internet: http://www.ccsr.cse.dmu.ac.uk/conferences/ethicomp/ethicomp2001

[2] Bauer, R. (1964), The science of human communication: new direction and new findings, 29, 619-620.

[3] Blatt, R. (2001), In the beginning was the rumor, Revista de Occidente, 53-71.

[4] Boekhorst, A., Britz, J., Bothma, T. e Lor, P. (2001), Barriers to information, EEI21, Available in the Internet: http://exlibris.memphis.edu/ethics21/archives

[5] Comisky, P. (1979), Theories of human communication, Journal of Communication, 29, 219-220.

[6] Froehlich, T. (2000), Social responsibility and the internet resources, EEI21, Available in the Internet: http://exlibris.memphis.edu/ethics21/archives/

[7] Frohmann, B. (2000), Cyber-ethics: bodies or bytes?, EEI21, Available in the Internet: http://exlibris.memphis.edu/ethics21/archives

[8] Gammack, J. e Goulding, P. (1999), Ethical responsibility and the management of knowledge, Australian Computer Journal, 31, 72-77.

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