Information Technology and Moral Philosophy

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.
Contents: 1. Norbert Wiener and the rise of computer ethics Terrell Ward Bynum; 2. Why we need better ethics for emerging technologies James H. Moor; 3. Information ethics, its nature and scope Luciano Floridi; 4. The transformation of the public sphere: political authority, communicative freedom, and internet politics James Bohman; 5. Democracy and the internet Cass Sunstein; 6. The social epistemology of blogging Alvin I. Goldman; 7. Plural selves and relational identity: intimacy and privacy online Dean Cocking; 8. Identity and information technology Steve Matthews; 9. Trust, reliance, and the internet Philip Pettit; 10. Esteem, identifiability, and the internet Geoffrey Brennan and Philip Pettit; 11. Culture and global networks: hope for a global ethics? or can Plato's Cybernetes/Confucius' Junzi navigate an interconnected world? Charles Ess; 12. Collective responsibility and information and communication technology Seumas Miller; 13. Computers as surrogate agents Deborah G. Johnson and Thomas M. Powers; 14. Moral philosophy, information technology, and copyright Wendy J. Gordon; 15. Information technology and the protection of personal data Jeroen van den Hoven; 16. Embodying values in technology: theory and practice Mary Flanagan, Daniel Howe, and Helen Nissenbaum; 17. Information technology research ethics Dag Elgesem; 18. Distributive justice and the value of information: a (broadly) Rawlsian approach Jeroen van den Hoven and Emma Rooksby.