Information Technology and Moral Philosophy

Description

Information technology is an integral part of the practices and institutions of post-industrial society. It is also a source of hard moral questions and thus is both a probing and relevant area for moral theory. In this volume, an international team of philosophers sheds light on many of the ethical issues arising from information technology, including informational privacy, digital divide and equal access, e-trust and tele-democracy. Collectively, these essays demonstrate how accounts of equality and justice, property and privacy benefit from taking into account how information technology has shaped our social and epistemic practices and our moral experiences. Information technology changes the way that we look at the world and deal with one another. It calls, therefore, for a re-examination of notions such as friendship, care, commitment and trust.

John Weckert is a Professorial Fellow at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University in Australia. He is editor-in-chief of NanoEthics: Ethics for Technologies that Converge at the Nanoscale and has published widely in the field of computer ethics. Jeroen van den Hoven is Professor of Moral Philosophy at Delft University of Technology. He is editor-in-chief of Ethics and Information Technology, a member of the IST Advisory Group of the European Community in Brussels, scientific director of the 3TU Centre for Ethics and Technology in the Netherlands, and co-author, with Dean Cocking, of Evil Online.

'This collection of 18 essays is rich in ideas on the implications of information technology and morality. Variety is the collection's strong point, though there are certainly some common themes, including the nature of identity and agency ... This work will appeal to scholars in several disciplines, including communication, political science, computer science, and philosophy. Summing up: recommended.' S. E. Forschler, Choice