We are living in an era when the focus of human relationships with the world is shifting from execution and physical impact to control and cognitive/informational interaction. This emerging, increasingly informational world is our new ecology, an infosphere that presents the grounds for a cognitive revolution based on interactions in networks of biological and artificial, intelligent agents. After the industrial revolution, which extended the human body through mechanical machinery, the cognitive revolution extends the human mind/cognition through information-processing machinery. These novel (...) circumstances come with new qualities and preferences demanding new conceptualizations. We have some work ahead of us to establish value systems and practices extended from the real to the increasingly virtual/info-computational. This paper first presents a current view of the virtual versus the real and then offers an interpretation framework based on an info-computational understanding of cognition in which agency implies computational processing of informational structures of the world as an infosphere. The notion of “good life” is discussed in light of different ideals of well-being in the infosphere, connecting virtuality as a space of potential and alternative worlds for an agent for whom the reality is a space of actual experiences, in the sense of Deleuze. Even though info-computational framework enables us to see both the real world and the diversity of virtual worlds in terms of computational processes on informational structures, based on a distinct layered cognitive architecture of all physical agents, there is clear difference between potential worlds of the virtual and actual agent’s experiences made in the real. Info-computationalism enables insight into the mechanisms of infosphere and elucidates its importance as cognitively predominant environment and communication media. The conclusion is that by cocooning ourselves in an elaborate info-computational infrastructure of the virtual, we may be increasingly isolating ourselves from the reality of direct experience of the world. The biggest challenges of the cognitive revolution may not be technological but ethical. They are about the nature of being human and its values. (shrink)

– This paper aims to examine the present status of the research field intercultural information ethics including the foundational debate as well as specific issues., – A critical overview of the recent literature of the field is given., – The present IIE debate focuses on a narrow view of the field leaving aside comparative studies with non‐digital media as well as with other epochs and cultures. There is an emphasis on the question of privacy but other issues such as online (...) communities, governmentality, gender issues, mobile phones, health care and the digital divide are on the agenda., – The paper addresses basic issues of IIE that may open new vistas for research and practice in this field. (shrink)

Recent advances in the capability of digital information technologies—particularly due to advances in artificial intelligence —have invigorated the debate on the ethical issues surrounding their use. However, this debate has often been dominated by ‘Western’ ethical perspectives, values and interests, to the exclusion of broader ethical and socio-cultural perspectives. This imbalance carries the risk that digital technologies produce ethical harms and lack social acceptance, when the ethical norms and values designed into these technologies collide with those of the communities in (...) which they are delivered and deployed. This special issue takes a step towards broadening the approach of digital ethics, by bringing together a range of cultural, social and structural perspectives on the ethical issues relating to digital information technology. Importantly, it refreshes and reignites the field of Intercultural Digital Ethics for the age of AI and ubiquitous computing. (shrink)

I trace the development of an emerging global Information and Computing Ethics , arguing that ethical pluralism – as found in both Western and Asian traditions – is crucial to such an ICE. In particular, ethical pluralism – as affiliated with notions of judgment , reson-ance, and harmony – holds together shared ethical norms alongside the irreducible differences that define individual and cultural identities. I demonstrate how such pluralism is already at work in both contemporary theory and praxis, including in (...) development projects in diverse cul-tures. I conclude with a number of resonances between this global pluralism and African thought and tradi-tions that thus suggest that such a pluralism may also succeed in the African context, as diverse African cultures and countries seek to benefit from ICTs while maintaining their cultural identities. (shrink)