The paper outlines a new interpretation of informational privacy and of its moral value. The main theses defended are: (a) informational privacy is a function of the ontological friction in the infosphere, that is, of the forces that oppose the information flow within the space of information; (b) digital ICTs (information and communication technologies) affect the ontological friction by changing the nature of the infosphere (re-ontologization); (c) digital ICTs can therefore both decrease and protect informational privacy but, most importantly, they (...) can also alter its nature and hence our understanding and appreciation of it; (d) a change in our ontological perspective, brought about by digital ICTs, suggests considering each person as being constituted by his or her information and hence regarding a breach of one’s informational privacy as a form of aggression towards one’s personal identity. (shrink)

Explicitly considering human values in the design process of socio-technical systems has become a responsibility of designers. It is, however, challenging to design for values because (1) relevant values must be identified and communicated between all stakeholders and designers and (2) stakeholders’ values differ and trade-offs must be made. We focus on the first aspect, which requires elicitation of stakeholders’ situated values , i.e. values relevant to a specific real life context. Available techniques to elicit knowledge and requirements from stakeholders (...) lack in providing the context and means for reflection needed to elicit situated values as well as an explicit concept of value. In this paper we present our design of a tool to support active elicitation of stakeholders’ values and communication between stakeholders and designers. We conducted an exploratory user study in which we compared the suitability of methods used in social sciences for (1) eliciting situated values, (2) supporting people’s expressions of values and (3) being implemented in value elicitation tool. Based on the outcomes we propose a design for a value elicitation tool that consists of a mobile application used by stakeholders for data collection and in-situ self-reflection, and a website used collaboratively by designers and stakeholders to analyse and communicate values. Discussion focuses on contributions to value sensitive design. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that the development and convergence of information and communication technologies (ICT) is creating a global network of surveillance capabilities which affect the traveler. These surveillance capabilities are reminiscent of 18th century philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, and as such the emerging global surveillance network has been referred to as the travel panopticon. I argue that the travel panopticon is corrosive of personal autonomy, and in doing so I describe and analyse various philosophical approaches to personal autonomy.

Technological revolutions are dissected into three stages: the introduction stage, the permeation stage, and the power stage. The information revolution is a primary example of this tripartite model. A hypothesis about ethics is proposed, namely, ethical problems increase as technological revolutions progress toward and into the power stage. Genetic technology, nanotechnology, and neurotechnology are good candidates for impending technological revolutions. Two reasons favoring their candidacy as revolutionary are their high degree of malleability and their convergence. Assuming the emerging technologies develop (...) into mutually enabling revolutionary technologies, we will need better ethical responses to cope with them. Some suggestions are offered about how our approach to ethics might be improved. (shrink)

In modern technical societies computers interact with human beings in ways that can affect moral rights and obligations. This has given rise to the question whether computers can act as autonomous moral agents. The answer to this question depends on many explicit and implicit definitions that touch on different philosophical areas such as anthropology and metaphysics. The approach chosen in this paper centres on the concept of information. Information is a multi-facetted notion which is hard to define comprehensively. However, the (...) frequently used definition of information as data endowed with meaning can promote our understanding. It is argued that information in this sense is a necessary condition of cognitivist ethics. This is the basis for analysing computers and information processors regarding their status as possible moral agents. Computers have several characteristics that are desirable for moral agents. However, computers in their current form are unable to capture the meaning of information and therefore fail to reflect morality in anything but a most basic sense of the term. This shortcoming is discussed using the example of the Moral Turing Test. The paper ends with a consideration of which conditions computers would have to fulfil in order to be able to use information in such a way as to render them capable of acting morally and reflecting ethically. (shrink)