The question this article addresses is how the WTO supports and deals with digital trade. The article then analyzes how existing WTO agreements have dealt with digital trade. The article also addresses recent trade agreements particularly the USMCA.

Digital technologies are becoming an essential tool in modern trade, contributing to its development and change. This article examines global trends in using digital technologies in trade and their potential impact on the Ukrainian market. The research shows that e-commerce, mobile shopping experience, smart technologies, and data analytics are key areas that affect consumers and business processes. The authors of the article analyze the impact of digital technologies on consumers, pointing to the growth of e-commerce (...) and the convenience of online shopping. Smart technologies such as facial recognition, chatbots, and virtual reality are becoming increasingly common in trade processes. The authors discuss the potential benefits of digital technologies for the Ukrainian market and point out the need to adapt and implement these innovations. (shrink)

Digital Rights Management (DRM) covers the description, identification, trading, protection, monitoring and tracking of all forms of rights over both tangible and intangible assets. The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) system provides a framework for the persistent identification of entities involved in this domain. Although the system has been very well designed to manage object identifiers, some important questions relating to the creation and assignment of identifiers are left open. The paradigm of a Referent Tracking System (RTS) recently advanced (...) in the healthcare and life sciences environment is able to fill these gaps. This is demonstrated by pointing out inconsistencies in the existing DOI models and by showing how they can be corrected using an RTS. (shrink)

Online technologies enable vast amounts of data to outlive their producers online, thereby giving rise to a new, digital form of afterlife presence. Although researchers have begun investigating the nature of such presence, academic literature has until now failed to acknowledge the role of commercial interests in shaping it. The goal of this paper is to analyse what those interests are and what ethical consequences they may have. This goal is pursued in three steps. First, we introduce the concept (...) of the Digital Afterlife Industry, and define it as an object of study. Second, we identify the politico-economic interests of the DAI. For this purpose, we develop an analytical approach based on an informational interpretation of Marxian economics. Third, we explain the practical manifestations of the interests using four real life cases. The findings expose the incentives of the DAI to alter what is referred to as the “informational bodies” of the dead, which in turn is to be seen as a violation of the principle of human dignity. To prevent such consequences, we argue that the ethical conventions that guide trade with remains of organic bodies may serve as a good model for future regulation of DAI. (shrink)

-/- For all that digital methods—including network visualization, text analysis, and others—have begun to show extensive promise in philosophical contexts, a tension remains between two uses of those tools that have often been taken to be incompatible, or at least to engage in a kind of trade-off: the discovery of new hypotheses and the testing of already-formulated positions. This paper presents this basic distinction, then explores ways to resolve this tension with the help of two interdisciplinary case studies, (...) taken from preregistration in contemporary science and the debate over whig history in the history of science. These case studies, the paper argues, refocus our attention from a mutually exclusive testing/discovery binary to the relationship between our background data or philosophical views and the empirical generalizations that we might draw from the data. Finally, it develops a set of three challenges for philosophers and corresponding avenues for future work that will, it is hoped, allow us to better justify our use of these methods. (shrink)

The article entitled “Post-COVID-19: Education and Thai Society in Digital Era” has two objectives: 1) to study digital technology 2) to study the living life in Thailand in the digital era after COVID-19 pandemics. According to the study, it was found that the new digitized service is a service process on digital platforms such as ordering food, hailing a taxi, and online trading. It is a service called via smartphone. The information is used digitally. Public relations, (...) digital marketing, and living in cyberspace play an increasingly digital role. People have communication skills, use Line, Facebook, social media, have tools to search for knowledge, learn and improve themselves. People in the new era of life have a new way of life therefore there is social life in the cyber world. There should be ethics, attitudes, values, and click-on images that are linked to digital use. For a good time life, It is important to have digital intelligence (Digital Quotient) to live after post-COVID19, the digital era. (shrink)

This special issue introduces the study of financial technologies and finance to the field of philosophy of technology, bringing together two different fields that have not traditionally been in dialogue. The included articles are: Digital Art as ‘Monetised Graphics’: Enforcing Intellectual Property on the Blockchain, by Martin Zeilinger; Fundamentals of Algorithmic Markets: Liquidity, Contingency, and the Incomputability of Exchange, by Laura Lotti; ‘Crises of Modernity’ Discourses and the Rise of Financial Technologies in a Contested Mechanized World, by Marinus Ossewaarde; (...) Two Technical Images: Blockchain and High-Frequency Trading, by Diego Viana; and The Blockchain as a Narrative Technology: Investigating the Social Ontology and Normative Configurations of Cryptocurrencies, by Wessel Reijers and Mark Coeckelbergh. (shrink)

Perceptual systems respond to proximal stimuli by forming mental representations of distal stimuli. A central goal for the philosophy of perception is to characterize the representations delivered by perceptual systems. It may be that all perceptual representations are in some way proprietarily perceptual and differ from the representational format of thought (Dretske 1981; Carey 2009; Burge 2010; Block ms.). Or it may instead be that perception and cognition always trade in the same code (Prinz 2002; Pylyshyn 2003). This paper (...) rejects both approaches in favor of perceptual pluralism, the thesis that perception delivers a multiplicity of representational formats, some proprietary and some shared with cognition. The argument for perceptual pluralism marshals a wide array of empirical evidence in favor of iconic (i.e., image-like, analog) representations in perception as well as discursive (i.e., language-like, digital) perceptual object representations. (shrink)

Greatly aided by an information age in which protesting laborers in a remote offshore outpost can capture front page headlines around the globe, theSarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SARBOX) has made corporate transparency the linchpin for good corporate governance. Under a SARBOX-enhancedregulatory framework, publicly traded corporations are required to rapidly disclose material changes in their financial conditions or operations—changes such as impairments to goodwill, a trademark, or some other intangible corporate asset. Especially challenging for multinational corporations (MNCs) with far-flung corporate empires (...) is the need to stay abreast of the ebb and flow of goodwill, at a time when transnational human rights groups are aggressively mobilizing world opinion against the sweatshop labor conditions that abound at the offshore production sites favored by MNCs. The author explains why the convergence of a digital age of free-flowing information and the advent of SARBOX, a legislative enactment of paraenetic design, is causing the boards of MNCs to more critically evaluate the long-term costs of their offshore operations. (shrink)

Turing’s much debated test has turned 70 and is still fairly controversial. His 1950 paper is seen as a complex and multilayered text, and key questions about it remain largely unanswered. Why did Turing select learning from experience as the best approach to achieve machine intelligence? Why did he spend several years working with chess playing as a task to illustrate and test for machine intelligence only to trade it out for conversational question-answering in 1950? Why did Turing refer (...) to gender imitation in a test for machine intelligence? In this article, I shall address these questions by unveiling social, historical and epistemological roots of the so-called Turing test. I will draw attention to a historical fact that has been only scarcely observed in the secondary literature thus far, namely that Turing’s 1950 test emerged out of a controversy over the cognitive capabilities of digital computers, most notably out of debates with physicist and computer pioneer Douglas Hartree, chemist and philosopher Michael Polanyi, and neurosurgeon Geoffrey Jefferson. Seen in its historical context, Turing’s 1950 paper can be understood as essentially a reply to a series of challenges posed to him by these thinkers arguing against his view that machines can think. Turing did propose gender learning and imitation as one of his various imitation tests for machine intelligence, and I argue here that this was done in response to Jefferson's suggestion that gendered behavior is causally related to the physiology of sex hormones. (shrink)

One famous scene in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) is the dialogue between the young Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) and the expert trader Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey). Hanna is complaining that the stock market is unpredictable; it’s “fugazi … it’s fairy dust. It doesn’t exist. It’s never landed. It is not matter. It’s not on the element chart. It’s not real”. But the fact that something is unpredictable and non-physical does not imply that it does not exist. On the (...) other hand, its unpredictability, non-physicality, and the fact that the stock market trend is largely determined by investors’ beliefs, do make its nature difficult to grasp. -/- This special issue of Rivista di Estetica aims to explore the financial sector from an ontological point of view. While the ontology of money has been extensively studied, few scholars have focused on the stock market and, more generally, on those entities belonging to the investment landscape. Matters are made more complicated by the fact that the financial sector is characterized by an ever-increasing use of digital technology, including software elements that trade in the market themselves. We believe that a careful study of this phenomenon may help us better to understand the role of artificial agents in the social world. (shrink)

This research aims at establishing the impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) on e-commerce development of industrial enterprises by means of economic and mathematical modelling. The goal was achieved using the following methods: theoretical generalization, analysis and synthesis (to critically analyse the scientific approaches of scientists regarding the expediency of using mathematical models in the context of enterprises’ e-commerce development), target, comparison and grouping (to reveal innovative methodological approach to assessing ICT impact on e-commerce development of industrial enterprises), tabular, (...) analytical and integral method (for summarizing the analysis results of enterprises readiness to implement ICT, ICT use in the activities of industrial enterprises of Ukraine and the analysis of e-commerce development), mathematical modelling (to build a regression model determining impact of changes in ICT use on the market share occupied by industrial enterprises), generalization (to determine promising directions of e-commerce developing of industrial enterprises). The implementation of a comprehensive approach to understanding the importance of ICT influence on e-commerce development of industrial enterprises will ensure acceleration of the digitalization of business processes, will contribute to the speed increase of enterprises response to customer requests, and increase the market share occupied by enterprises. A new vision of directions for developing e-commerce of industrial enterprises is suggested, which are determined by the need for enterprise rebranding, the development of e-commerce tools and technologies, the importance of outsourcing service automation and promotion of subscription trade. ICT is considered as integration factor that determines prospects for e-commerce development of industrial enterprises and contributes to increasing efficiency of online business management. Research results demonstrate that the use of economic and mathematical modelling is an important tool for assessing ICT impact, and its absence can negatively affect the accuracy and validity of online business management. (shrink)

The paper analyses six ethical challenges posed by cloud computing, concerning ownership, safety, fairness, responsibility, accountability and privacy. The first part defines cloud computing on the basis of a resource-oriented approach, and outlines the main features that characterise such technology. Following these clarifications, the second part argues that cloud computing reshapes some classic problems often debated in information and computer ethics. To begin with, cloud computing makes possible a complete decoupling of ownership, possession and use of data and this helps (...) to explain the problems occurring when different providers of cloud computing retain or relinquish the right to use or own users‘ data. The problem of safety in cloud computing is coupled to that of reliability, insofar as users have to trust providers to preserve their data, applications and content in a reliable manner. It is argued that, in this context, data insurance could play an important role. Regarding fairness, the paper argues that cloud computing is already reshaping the nature of the Digital. Responsibility, accountability and privacy close the ethical analysis of cloud computing. In this case, the thesis is that the necessity to account for the actions of cloud computing users imposes delicate trade-offs between users‘ privacy and the traceability of their operations. (shrink)

In this article we analyse the role that artificial intelligence (AI) could play, and is playing, to combat global climate change. We identify two crucial opportunities that AI offers in this domain: it can help improve and expand current understanding of climate change and it contribute to combating the climate crisis effectively. However, the development of AI also raises two sets of problems when considering climate change: the possible exacerbation of social and ethical challenges already associated with AI, and the (...) contribution to climate change of the greenhouse gases emitted by training data and computation-intensive AI systems. We assess the carbon footprint of AI research, and the factors that influence AI’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in this domain. We find that the carbon footprint of AI research may be significant and highlight the need for more evidence concerning the trade-off between the GHG emissions generated by AI research and the energy and resource efficiency gains that AI can offer. In light of our analysis, we argue that leveraging the opportunities offered by AI for global climate change whilst limiting its risks is a gambit which requires responsive, evidence-based and effective governance to become a winning strategy. We conclude by identifying the European Union as being especially well-placed to play a leading role in this policy response and provide 13 recommendations that are designed to identify and harness the opportunities of AI for combating climate change, while reducing its impact on the environment. (shrink)

Financial literacy is becoming a pivotal skill in navigating the marketplaces within the predominant rising digital branches of trading domains; however, there remains a concerning gap in the purchasing behavior of adolescents, who are its primary users. With this in mind, the main objective of our research is to determine whether there is a relationship between a student's level of financial literacy and their online purchase decision-making. The researchers employed an explanatory mixed approach and purposive sampling to identify respondents (...) from Immaculate Conception College of Balayan, Inc. A 5-point Likert scale survey was utilized to collect data from 66 respondents, followed by semi-structured interviews with 10 selected participants. The results showed a moderately positive correlation between a student's financial literacy and online purchase decisions, as determined by the Pearson correlation coefficient. Thus, the thematic analysis revealed that respondents generally have good financial literacy, emphasizing factors like pricing, online reviews, and product ratings when making digital marketplace decisions. However, there are notable gaps in their understanding of basic financial concepts and their ability to apply them in real-life situations. To effectively enhance students’ financial literacy and online purchasing decisions, a holistic approach is necessary, including targeted interventions, practical applications, and continuous adaptation to evolving consumer behaviors. Educational institutions, policymakers, and stakeholders should work together to create comprehensive programs that provide students with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to negotiate real-world financial situations and make sound judgments in the digital commerce ecosystem. By emphasizing practical learning, key financial concepts, and trustbuilding approaches, educators may empower students to become responsible consumers capable of managing their resources successfully and ethically. (shrink)

Abstract. Death seems to be a permanent event, but there is no actual proof of its irreversibility. Here we list all known ways to resurrect the dead that do not contradict our current scientific understanding of the world. While no method is currently possible, many of those listed here may become feasible with future technological development, and it may even be possible to act now to increase their probability. The most well-known such approach to technological resurrection is cryonics. Another method (...) is indirect mind uploading, or digital immortality, namely the preservation of data about a person to allow for future reconstruction by powerful AI. More speculative ways to immortality include combinations of future superintelligence on a galactic scale, which could use simulation to resurrect all possible people, and new physical laws, which may include time-travel or obtaining information from the past. Acausal trade with parallel worlds could help combine random resurrection and reconstruction based on known data without loss of share of worlds where I exist (known as existence measure). Quantum immortality could help to increase the probability of success for cryonics and digital immortality. There many possible approaches to technological resurrection and thus if large-scale future technological development occurs, some form of resurrection is inevitable. (shrink)

The world never stands still. There is always a Brownian movement of economic subjects and objects on the face of it. But, if we have been visualizing this movement over a relatively long period of time, then we can distinguish the acceleration and increase in the volume of movements along individual commodity routes, the growth and formation of new subjects of international economic relations. From time to time, "accelerators" of this movement appear, either in the form of new types of (...) energy to service production, or technologies to simplify the exchange and distribution of benefits. The market, controlled by the "invisible hand", is gradually taking over the whole world, and some new goods appear to meet the needs. We use technologies and devices described in unreal fantasy plots of classical literature already today in real life. The speed of change is exciting on the one hand and is frightening on the other hand. In the modern world, it would seem, everything is mobile. The quality and cost of transportation has no longer been a physical obstacle to any exchange and travel. The forms of modern financial transactions for service international economic relations, their speed and coverage are impressive. Enterprises, in terms of capitalization, exceed the national incomes of states and do not have spatial territorial boundaries, being the main players in international economic relations along with states, their associations and international organizations. Digitalization is no longer a challenge for society, but our present. It seems sometimes that the world allegedly wants to slow down the further development of mankind and creates obstacles in the form of wars, epidemics and crises. Such obstacles become challenges for the development of economic entities of all levels. Change always creates unexpected opportunities for someone and insurmountable restrictions for other one. Change always leads to a redistribution of forces. Changes are needed to overthink the nature and direction of movement. Changes are the certain reorganization of the world economic system. The world is always on the verge of changes. What will they be this time? (shrink)

The article highlights the current issues related to the management of information provision of the enterprise. It has been specified that complete and reliable information support of business processes is a necessary condition for the effective functioning of the enterprise. It was determined that the information support mechanism for managing the development of business processes should include available information resources, technologies, systems and platforms, software, and qualified personnel responsible for this work. The article examines the works of domestic and foreign (...) economists. It was established that the modern business environment is practically inseparable from scientific, information and intellectual achievements and the results of their implementation (information technologies, systems, and platforms), and the management of the development of business processes must be confirmed by a powerful information support of the enterprise. In the article contains information about the number of Ukrainian enterprises which were engaged in electronic trade. Nevertheless, it was revealed the number of Ukrainian enterprises, such as: 1) carried out electronic trade, in the total number of enterprises by type of sale; 2) have a website; 3) buy cloud computing services. It was found that of the analyzed number of Ukrainian enterprises that carried out electronic trade, the first place took enterprises in the field of information and communication technologies (9.5%), the second place – enterprises in the field of information and telecommunications. (9%), and the third – from the production of electrical equipment (8.2%). It has been proven that the successful operation of enterprises directly depends on the ability to make effective management decisions based on information generated in the information support system of enterprise management. In addition, it has been proven that in the era of digitalization, for the formation of proper information support, it is necessary to: 1) create and develop special data banks; 2) have special technical means and software products for working with large volumes of information; 3) making effective management decisions based on their processing. (shrink)

This article presents the first, systematic analysis of the ethical challenges posed by recommender systems through a literature review. The article identifies six areas of concern, and maps them onto a proposed taxonomy of different kinds of ethical impact. The analysis uncovers a gap in the literature: currently user-centred approaches do not consider the interests of a variety of other stakeholders—as opposed to just the receivers of a recommendation—in assessing the ethical impacts of a recommender system.

All societies have to balance privacy claims with other moral concerns. However, while some concern for privacy appears to be a common feature of social life, the definition, extent and moral justifications for privacy differ widely. Are there better and worse ways of conceptualising, justifying, and managing privacy? These are the questions that lie in the background of this thesis. -/- My particular concern is with the ethical issues around privacy that are tied to the rise of new information and (...) communication technologies (henceforth “ICT”). The focus here is on technologies involved in processing personal data in its broadest sense, including “any operation or set of operations which is performed on personal data or on sets of personal data, whether or not by automated means, such as collection, recording, organisation, structuring, storage, adaptation or alteration, retrieval, consultation, use, disclosure by transmission, dissemination or otherwise making available, alignment or combination, restriction, erasure or destruction.” The issue of moral concern is commonly designated as that of 'data privacy'. -/- The first step is to consider why privacy matters, or ought to matter, in the first place. And here we run into our first difficulty, since both the conceptualisation of privacy and the justification for the right to privacy are matters for contention. On the one hand, we are animated by a moral concern for privacy in some sense; on the other, we lack the conceptual and moral resources for making sense of this concern or for promoting particular social policies and criticising others. This often-cited dichotomy and its ensuing confusion have been the central motivation for most of the philosophical literature on privacy – including this thesis. -/- In what follows, I will suggest a way out of the confusion that pervades the current debate on data privacy. I will essentially argue two claims: one, that the concept of (data) privacy is uniquely characterised by a particular context within which we exchange information; two, that because (data) privacy constitutes an intrinsic value, its moral concerns and justifications ought to be deliberated as such. -/- The first chapter sketches the current data privacy landscape by introducing a number of concepts and arguing the unique nature of the landscape. I argue that the traditional distinction between four kinds of privacy (physical, mental, decisional and informational) is no longer accurate, given the technological context that reduces, unifies and processes all aspects of people’s lives by means of digital data. In fact, to hold on to the distinction leads to a fundamental misconception of data privacy. I further argue that today’s distinction between data protection and data privacy runs the risk of ignoring the fact that the former is an inherent aspect of the latter. These arguments allow me to settle on a (provisional) definition of data privacy: controlling how data about identifiable people is processed by ICT. -/- Next, I draw a line between descriptive and normative accounts of data privacy, and explain why this book belongs to the latter category. After a brief discussion of the coherence and distinctiveness theses, and of the difference between instrumental and intrinsic theories of privacy, I introduce the problem of data privacy as a distinct, coherent, and intrinsic moral concern. Three arguments support this position: one, data privacy is a coherent moral concern because it is motivated by a singular moral concept; two, data privacy is a distinct moral concern because the privacy challenges we face today are of a fundamentally new nature – distinct from any moral concerns we’ve faced in the past; and three, data privacy is an intrinsic moral concern that is predominantly justified, not by what it instrumentally protects us from, but by what it intrinsically constitutes. -/- Chapter Two makes the case against a harm-based, consequentialist approach to data privacy. After a brief introduction to the basic tenets of consequentialism I discuss harm-based arguments in favour as well as against privacy. I explain how privacy may protect us against psychological distress, but at the same time constitute the source of that distress; how privacy may be necessary for the proper functioning of democratic societies, but at the same time provide a cloak for anti-social and immoral behaviour; and how privacy protects us against the improper use of our personal data by others, but at the same enables us to conceal information or spread false information about ourselves in ways that are harmful to others. Next, I argue that consequentialism essentially relies on two flawed presumptions – that we know what harm is, and that we know how to predict it – and discuss the controversies surrounding definitions and predictions of harm. This argument becomes especially pertinent in today’s rapidly changing technological context: we may guess, and make assumptions, perhaps even find correlations, but don’t really know or understand (yet) with any degree of certainty the harmful consequences today’s data privacy violations are causing or will eventually cause – if any. -/- I illustrate this with examples of recent data privacy violations, and with a brief overview of consequentialist arguments for and against data privacy. Those who invoke consequentialist arguments against data privacy claim that personal data is nothing more than a raw material that can be turned into something useful and valuable without harming anyone. Choosing to move fast and break things – a popular mantra that promotes the benefits of technological “permissionless innovation” over and above its risks and costs – they draw our attention to the many benefits free data flows generate. Those who rely on consequentialist arguments in favour of data privacy, on the other hand, insist on actual and potential misuse of personal data. Rather careful than sorry, they draw our attention to the urgent need to take back control and protect ourselves against data privacy violations – precisely because we don’t know which harm they may cause in the future. Others go one step further and argue that these violations are part of a broader ideology of power. -/- What Chapter Two demonstrates is that vague definitions, unreliable predictions and inconclusive allegations of harm from both sides of the debate perpetuate a stalemate that fails to produce morally defensible answers to our growing data privacy concerns. Deliberating about data privacy from a consequentialist perspective is a dead end. -/- Chapter Three proposes an alternative to the harm-based approach, namely that privacy is an intrinsic value that deserves moral protection for its own sake. After a brief account of what I take values to be, and why we have a need to protect them, I introduce the foundational value of respect for persons, and lay out my main argument in two steps. The conceptual component of my argument returns to the definition of data privacy I had temporarily settled on in Chapter One, but now with the added consideration of the particular context, and particular circumstances and attitudes, within which information is exchanged. This addition is crucial, as it reveals the fundamental value that is at stake in our data privacy concerns, namely the inherent value of each and every person, which we protect by upholding an ethical principle commonly known as the principle of respect for persons. It is for this reason that the violation of privacy cannot (only) be expressed in terms of harm. I further argue that the principle of respect for persons is consistent with, and in fact unthinkable without, some degree of privacy. -/- I reply to potential challenges to a value-based approach to data privacy by showing that (i) values and value trade-offs are fundamentally different from consequential benefits and cost-benefit analyses; (ii) the suspension of one value in favour of another is not inherently contradictory; what matters is morally defensible deliberation about values and valid individual consent; (iii) data privacy concerns cannot be reduced to other moral concerns and therefore deserve a specific, distinct protection. -/- Finally, because this is a thesis in applied ethics, I attempt an answer to the question as to how we ought to apply a value-based approach to practical data privacy concerns. I argue that a revised, three-pronged version of John Rawls’ reflective equilibrium, founded on the non-negotiable principle of respect for persons, is the best possible procedure to deliberate data privacy concerns in relation to other moral values. (shrink)

Jordan made substantial market access commitments as part of its WTO membership negotiations. Jordan has low average tariffs with single or two digits rate and ad valorem-only duties with some exceptions where specific duties apply. Customs standards in Jordan were streamlined in accordance with WTO rules. Jordan confirmed in its accession to the WTO that free zones or export processing zones would be fully subject to the coverage of the commitments taken in the protocol of accession. The purpose of this (...) article is to examine and analyse Jordan’s current imports and tariffs regime. (shrink)

The paper argues that digital ontology (the ultimate nature of reality is digital, and the universe is a computational system equivalent to a Turing Machine) should be carefully distinguished from informational ontology (the ultimate nature of reality is structural), in order to abandon the former and retain only the latter as a promising line of research. Digital vs. analogue is a Boolean dichotomy typical of our computational paradigm, but digital and analogue are only “modes of presentation” (...) of Being (to paraphrase Kant), that is, ways in which reality is experienced or conceptualised by an epistemic agent at a given level of abstraction. A preferable alternative is provided by an informational approach to structural realism, according to which knowledge of the world is knowledge of its structures. The most reasonable ontological commitment turns out to be in favour of an interpretation of reality as the totality of structures dynamically interacting with each other. The paper is the first part (the pars destruens) of a two-part piece of research. The pars construens, entitled “A Defence of Informational Structural Realism”, is developed in a separate article, also published in this journal. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to reveal the scientific approach that substantiates the impact of the creation of strategic alliances (SA) on the digital transformation of business and the development of their innovative power based on identified success factors. The aim was achieved using the following methods: abstract logic and typification (for classification of SA's success factors), generalization (to determine the peculiarities of SA's influence on their innovation development), analytical and ranking method (to determine the relationship between the (...) dynamics creating of SA and the degree of acceleration of digital transformation), expert evaluation (to determine the degree of influence of SA success factors by business areas). Implementing a business-integrated approach to understanding digital transformation will accelerate implementation of innovation and organizational change, identifies future prospects for market, customer and business relationships, highlighting the importance of researching the factors that ensure their success. An alternative vision of SA’s success factors is suggested, which are determined by the possibilities the organization of partnerships and organizational culture, integration of business sectors, compatibility of management goals, external relevance, obtaining synergies. Innovation is considered by the authors as an integration factor that reconciles all groups of SA success factors, giving them the necessary focus to solve business problems. The results of the study show that the creation of SA has a significant impact on accelerating and changes priority of digital transformation of business areas involved in strategic partnerships, and the impact of SA on the development of their innovation power is crucial. (shrink)

Throughout Iran and various countries, the recent calls of the “Zan, Zendegi, Azadi” (in Persian), “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” (in Kurdish), or “Woman, Life, Freedom” (in English) movement call for change to acknowledge the importance of women. While these feminist protests and demonstrations have been met with brutality, systematic oppression, and internet blackouts within Iran, they have captured significant social media attention and coverage outside the country, especially among the Iranian diaspora and various international organizations. This article, grounded in feminist urban (...) theories of the Global South, analyzes the digital feminist placemaking movement in Iran. As the first counter‐revolution led by women, the movement utilizes digital art, graffiti, and protest movements to embody women’s solidarity groups and sympathy rallies. Our analysis employs various digital research methods, including social media scrutiny and the study of protest illustrations. Analyzing the digital feminist placemaking in Iran will enable us to compare the commonalities, differences, challenges, and opportunities between the minorities and majorities in the world’s countries. The outcomes of this research can help international organizations such as Amnesty International and the United Nations Agency for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (UN Women), as well as policymakers, institutions, academics, and NGOs, to highlight the various ways in which broader public participation could be encouraged in the process of digital feminist insurgent placemaking. (shrink)

On the traditional relationalist conception of singular thought, a thought has singular content when it is based on an ‘information relation’ to its object. Recent work rejects relationalism and suggests singular thoughts are distinguished from descriptive thoughts by their inferential role: only thoughts with singular content can be employed in ‘direct’ inferences, or inferences that ‘trade on identity’. Firstly this view is insufficiently clear, because it conflates two distinct ideas—one about a kind of inference, the other a kind of (...) process that grounds inferences—under the title, ‘trading on identity’. Secondly, this leaves us without a notion that can be used as an alternative to relationalism about singular thought. The first notion is no more applicable to singular than to descriptive thought. The second may help us better understand singular thought, but does so, not by replacing the view that singular thoughts are information-based, but by helping us understand the nature of information-based thought. (shrink)

The technological revolution and appropriation of internet tools began to reshape the material basis of society and the urban space in collaborative, grassroots, leaderless, and participatory actions. The protest squares’ representation on Television screens and mainstream media has been broad. Various health, governmental, societal, and urban challenges have marked the advent of the Covid-19 virus. Inequalities have become more salient as poor people and minorities are more affected by the virus. Social distancing makes the typical forms of protest impossible to (...) carry out. Under social distancing, some state-led policies took advantage of social media to focus on the Covid-19 pandemic to silence social and political activities, censor criticism, and control the press. However, during the pandemic era, the movements for social justice have been particularly active, focusing on defending workers’ rights, mutual aid and solidarity, monitoring policymakers, and popular education. These progressive movements combined concrete practices and experiences to confront the reactionary, capitalist, and governmental actors that sought to shape and envision the world. Through different case studies of protest movements during the pandemic in Europe, the UK, and Asia, this paper argues that at the time of rising racial, social, and economic inequalities, the social activities adapted to the circumstances determined by the social distancing and the impossibility of people gathering in physical spaces. Subsequently, the people in different countries had various individual and collective responses to the support of health workers, systemic inequalities, loss of jobs, and other societal and financial challenges imposed by the governments. It means that, rather than disappearing, the social movements have adapted to the unexpected situations during the pandemic outbreak. The pandemic broke the new digital global wave of protests in this sense. (shrink)

In the popular and academic literature on the problems of the so-called attention economy, the cost of attention grabbing, sustaining, and immersing digital medias has been addressed as if it touched all people equally. In this paper I ask whether everyone has the same resources to respond to the recent changes in their stimulus environments caused by the attention economy. I argue that there are not only differences but disparities between people in their responses to the recent, significant increase (...) in the degree and persuasiveness of digital distraction. I point toward individual variance in an agent’s top-down and bottom-up attention regulation, and to further inequality-exacerbating variance in active participation on the internet and in regulating reward-seeking behaviors on the internet. Individual differences in these areas amount to disparities because they have been found to be connected to socioeconomic background factors. I argue that disparities in responding to digital distraction threaten fair equality of opportunity when it comes to digital distraction in the classroom and that they may lead to an unequal contribution of achievements that require complex cognition by people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. (shrink)

Abstract:Trust is important for a variety of social relationships. Trust facilitates trade, which increases prosperity and induces us to interact with people of different backgrounds on terms that benefit all parties. Trade promotes trustworthiness, which enables us to form meaningful as well as mutually beneficial relationships. In what follows, I argue that when we erect institutions that enhance trust and reward people who are worthy of trust, we create the conditions for a certain kind of moral progress.

Common mental health disorders are rising globally, creating a strain on public healthcare systems. This has led to a renewed interest in the role that digital technologies may have for improving mental health outcomes. One result of this interest is the development and use of artificial intelligence for assessing, diagnosing, and treating mental health issues, which we refer to as ‘digital psychiatry’. This article focuses on the increasing use of digital psychiatry outside of clinical settings, in the (...) following sectors: education, employment, financial services, social media, and the digital well-being industry. We analyse the ethical risks of deploying digital psychiatry in these sectors, emphasising key problems and opportunities for public health, and offer recommendations for protecting and promoting public health and well-being in information societies. (shrink)

We argue that deliberative decision-making that is inclusive, transparent and accountable can contribute to more trustworthy and legitimate decisions on difficult ethical questions and political trade-offs during the pandemic and beyond.

This report aims to offer insights into cutting-edge research on digital well-being. Many of these insights come from a 2-day academic-impact event, The Future of Digital Well-Being, hosted by a team of researchers working with the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in February 2024. Today, achieving and maintaining well-being in the face of online technologies is a multifaceted challenge that we believe requires using theoretical resources of different research disciplines. This report explores diverse perspectives on (...) how digital well-being can be actively cultivated, while also emphasising the importance of considering individual differences, societal contexts, and nuanced cultural factors. We aim to offer a holistic view of the future of digital well-being, one that will inspire the next generation of designers of online tools, as well as policymakers who will regulate these tools. We start by asking what digital well-being is – how we can best define a concept that is used by diverse stakeholders and researchers from many disciplines in various ways. To do this, we explore the classic ethical theories of well-being, showing how they can give us insights into how the term digital well-being is currently deployed. We then move to look at the existing strategies that have been proposed to actively cultivate digital well-being, exploring the business models that threaten digital well-being and the relative advantages of the digital and non-digital solutions that are currently proposed. On the one hand, digital tools – such as Apple’s Screen Time and app blockers such as Opal and Forest – integrate seamlessly with the digital lifestyles of users. They also create precise metrics for digital well-being, which facilitates their solutions to reduce screen time. On the other hand, non-digital solutions, including mindfulness practices, digital detoxes, and digital well-being coaching, offer a new set of tools to reconnect individuals to their natural rhythms and help to actively promote offline activities. We then move to discuss diversity and how various groups of users have strikingly different digital well-being needs. Embracing neurodiversity in digital well-being is crucial as it strongly impacts the users’ experience of online technologies. When designing for diversity, organisations and designers alike need to prioritise customization for people with physical disabilities, mitigate harmful content for users with mental well-being conditions, address gender stereotypes and online harassment, and be designed in ways that recognize the very real risks of online technologies. This report closes by examining cultural differences. We believe that non-Western conceptions of well-being offer rich sources for enhancing digital well-being insofar as these traditions can inform and inspire the designers of future online technologies. We focus on East-Asian and South-Asian traditions, although in further work we recognise it would be useful to investigate conceptions of well-being that are influential in the Gulf region, Africa, and South America. Each of these areas have ethical frameworks that discuss well-being in depth as well as a rich cultural heritage. In conclusion, this report’s insights underscore the imperative of recognizing diversity in digital well-being, both in terms of cultural contexts and disciplinary perspectives. It emphasises the need for culturally responsive design methodologies and the integration of non-Western philosophical perspectives into current digital well-being research. Embracing this diversity, we believe, offers the best chance to create digital environments that prioritise well-being for users and the societies they live in across the world. Ultimately, we believe that it is not only about designing better online products; it’s about shaping a digital landscape that promotes well-being and flourishing for everyone. (shrink)

As ever more advanced digital systems are created, it becomes increasingly likely that some of these systems will be digital minds, i.e. digital subjects of experience. With digital minds comes the risk of digital suffering. The problem of digital suffering is that of mitigating this risk. We argue that the problem of digital suffering is a high stakes moral problem and that formidable epistemic obstacles stand in the way of solving it. We then (...) propose a strategy for solving it: Access Monitor Prevent (AMP). AMP uses a ‘dancing qualia’ argument to link the functional states of certain digital systems to their experiences—this yields epistemic access to digital minds. With that access, we can prevent digital suffering by only creating advanced digital systems that we have such access to, monitoring their functional profiles, and preventing them from entering states with functional markers of suffering. After introducing and motivating AMP, we confront limitations it faces and identify some options for overcoming them. We argue that AMP fits especially well with—and so provides a moral reason to prioritize—one approach to creating such systems: whole brain emulation. We also contend that taking other paths to digital minds would be morally risky. (shrink)

Nelson Goodman's distinction between autographic and allographic arts is appealing, we suggest, because it promises to resolve several prima facie puzzles. We consider and rebut a recent argument that alleges that digital images explode the autographic/allographic distinction. Regardless, there is another familiar problem with the distinction, especially as Goodman formulates it: it seems to entirely ignore an important sense in which all artworks are historical. We note in reply that some artworks can be considered both as historical products and (...) as formal structures. Talk about such works is ambiguous between the two conceptions. This allows us to recover Goodman's distinction: art forms that are ambiguous in this way are allographic. With that formulation settled, we argue that digital images are allographic. We conclude by considering the objection that digital photographs, unlike other digital images, would count as autographic by our criterion; we reply that this points to the vexed nature of photography rather than any problem with the distinction. (shrink)

Though Mathias Risse and Gabriel Wollner’s On Trade Justice admirably incorporates the history of European philosophy and U.S. government, their otherwise reasonable proposals rest on dubious grounds. The book derives both much of its appeal, and its primary vulnerability, from a cluster of central terms that are situated precariously at the intersection of metaphors and concepts, or what Lakoff and Johnson call “metaphorical concepts.” In this article, I explore the three most important such terms, as featured in the following (...) paraphrase of theirs: “Trade is an embedded ground of justice.” For each italicized term, I conclude, Risse and Wollner vacillate between its most conceptual and metaphorical meanings, thereby attempting to (a) stretch “trade” to identify prehistoric exchange with global capitalism, so as to (b) rebrand the contextual “ground” of this universal activity as a foundation, even though (c) foundations “embedded” in other foundations simply reduce to their lowest common denominator. The latter, in this case, is global capitalism, the most immoral practices of which they are thereby pressured to defend, including temporary forms of the very exploitation that they so persuasively reconceive and otherwise condemn. (shrink)

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is a multilateral trade organization that, at least partially, governs trade relations between its member states. The WTO (2011a) proclaims that its “overriding objective is to help trade flow smoothly, freely, fairly and predictably.” The WTO is a “treaty-based” organization – it has been constituted through an agreed, legally binding treaty made up of more than 30 articles, along with additional commitments by some members in specific areas. At present, 153 states (...) are members of the WTO, which collectively make up over 97 percent of all trade worldwide (WTO 2011b). Together, the WTO treaty specifies the rights and obligations of its member states. To become a member of the WTO, a state must treat the agreement as a “single undertaking.” Members cannot choose à la carte which agreements – for example, regarding tariffs, or trade in services or intellectual property – they want to accede to and which they do not. Instead, they must take on the obligations of the agreement in toto. The WTO is one of the most consequential governance institutions in the world, a lodestar of political debate about globalization (see globalization), attracting increased interest from moral and political philosophers in recent years (James 2006; Moellendorf 2005; Risse 2007; Brock 2009). (shrink)

COVID-19 knows no boundaries, but political responses to it certainly do. Much has been made about how the pandemic has revealed the Hobbesian nature of political power, but this picture of politics occludes from vision the interdependent nature of our current international order. In particular, it overlooks the fact that much of the goods, services, capital, and people that societies rely on in order to function are sourced from outside the domestic state. And, conversely, it overlooks the extent to which (...) the policy responses taken in one state have considerable effects on the options available, and the outcomes suffered, in other jurisdictions. This paper seeks to correct this oversight, by highlighting two duties that states bear towards one another in the context of this crisis, by virtue of their participation in international trade relationships. Trade grounds duties of justice between trade partners by making them dependent upon one another in order to realize their respective duties of domestic justice. This dependence, in turn, grounds a duty of stability, and a duty of accountability. Having explained and argued for these two duties, the paper discusses the implications of taking these two duties seriously in the context of states’ policy responses to the COVID-19 crisis. (shrink)

This article begins by distinguishing between two approaches to egalitarian trade justice – the explicative approach and the applicative approach – and notes that the former has been used to defend conclusions that are less strongly egalitarian than those defended by advocates of the latter. The article then engages with the primary explicative account of trade egalitarianism – that offered by Aaron James – and argues that its egalitarian conclusions are unduly minimalistic. The aim of the article is (...) not to criticize the explicative approach, but rather to show that the arguments and commitments of its best-known defender – James – either fail to rule out, or in fact positively support, more robustly egalitarian conclusions. (shrink)

The paper argues that the digitalization enterprise revives, beyond the post-modern period of interpretive anarchism, the XIXth century ideal of philological probity.

Digital COVID certificates are a novel public health policy to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. These immunity certificates aim to incentivize vaccination and to deny international travel or access to essential spaces to those who are unable to prove that they are not infectious. In this article, we start by describing immunity certificates and highlighting their differences from vaccination certificates. Then, we focus on the ethical, legal, and social issues involved in their use, namely autonomy and consent, data protection, equity, (...) and international mobility from a global fairness perspective. The main conclusion of our analysis is that digital COVID certificates are only acceptable if they meet certain conditions: that they should not process personal data beyond what is strictly necessary for the aimed goals, that equal access to them should be guaranteed, and that they should not restrict people’s autonomy to access places where contagion is unlikely. We conclude that, if such conditions are guaranteed, digital COVID certificates could contribute to mitigating some of the most severe socioeconomic consequences of the pandemic. (shrink)

Nietzsche promises to “translate man back into nature,” but it remains unclear what he meant by this and to what extent he succeeded at it. To help come to grips with Nietzsche’s conceptions of drive (Trieb), instinct (Instinkt) and virtue (Tugend and/or Keuschheit), I develop novel digital humanities methods to systematically track his use of these terms, constructing a near-comprehensive catalogue of what he takes these dispositions to be and how he thinks they are related. Nietzsche individuate drives and (...) instincts by the type of actions they motivate. One way in which the “translation” of man back into nature might succeed is through naturalistic explanation and reduction of moral notions such as virtue in terms of amoral, naturalistic notions, such as drives and instincts. I go on to show that this is indeed Nietzsche’s project: for him, a virtue is a well-calibrated drive. Such calibration relates both to the rest of the agent’s psychic economy (her other drives) and to her social context (what’s considered praiseworthy and blameworthy in her community). (shrink)

It is becoming increasingly common for authoritarian regimes to leverage digital technologies to surveil, repress and manipulate their citizens. Experts typically refer to this practice as digital authoritarianism (DA). Existing definitions of DA consistently presuppose a politically repressive agent intentionally exploiting digital technologies to pursue authoritarian ends. I refer to this as the intention-based definition. This paper argues that this definition is untenable as a general description of DA. I begin by illustrating the current predominance of the (...) intention-based definition (Section 2). Section 3 then presents four counterexamples to this definition: benign surveillance; digital sovereignty; attention-harvesting algorithms; and tech-induced loneliness. In each case, we witness authoritarianism being promoted by digital technologies without any evidence of this being intentionally caused by politically repressive agents. Based on these observations, I contend that the intention-based definition is underinclusive and is therefore unsustainable. Section 4 outlines an improved definition of DA – what I call the promotion-based definition. Since this more expansive definition does not posit intentional, politically repressive agency as a precondition of DA, it can accommodate the counterexamples discussed in Section 3. Moreover, it enables us to catch a broader spectrum of cases of DA, such as tech-induced loneliness, which those adhering to the intention-based definition are prone to overlook. After outlining further practical benefits of the promotion-based definition, I argue that we still need to distinguish between intentional and unintentional forms of DA since they call for distinct types of remedial action. -/- . (shrink)

To date, technology has become so integral to our lives that it is almost impossible to imagine a day without using it. The digitization of society is gaining speed every day, affecting all areas of life: communication with people and the management of entire governments. To one degree or another, the use of digital technologies can be observed in every social institution on which society is built. The process includes social changes associated with introducing modern technologies into society and (...) social control. Since the second half of the XX century, the introduction of digital technologies has been seen as a means of overcoming temporal and spatial restrictions, the negatives of subjectivity that hinder the development of modern society. In the XXI century, the influence of digital technologies has grown significantly, which calls into question the sovereignty of the person himself as a social object. Undoubtedly, technology makes our lives much more accessible, with benefits such as saving time, accessing new information, and simplifying everyday life. However, the more social space is captured by objective digitalization, the more this space undergoes subjective influence. Digital technologies do not liberate the person from subjective control but, on the contrary, contribute to it. In the article, we consider how this happens in the field of the major social institutions of society, and possible vital consequences of this impact. (shrink)

As a generation of ‘digital natives,’ secondary students who were born from 2002 to 2010 have various approaches to acquiring digital knowledge. Digital literacy and resilience are crucial for them to navigate the digital world as much as the real world; however, these remain under-researched subjects, especially in developing countries. In Vietnam, the education system has put considerable effort into teaching students these skills to promote quality education as part of the United Nations-defined Sustainable Development Goal (...) 4 (SDG4). This issue has proven especially salient amid the COVID−19 pandemic lockdowns, which had obliged most schools to switch to online forms of teaching. This study, which utilizes a dataset of 1061 Vietnamese students taken from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)’s “Digital Kids Asia Pacific (DKAP)” project, employs Bayesian statistics to explore the relationship between the students’ background and their digital abilities. Results show that economic status and parents’ level of education are positively correlated with digital literacy. Students from urban schools have only a slightly higher level of digital literacy than their rural counterparts, suggesting that school location may not be a defining explanatory element in the variation of digital literacy and resilience among Vietnamese students. Students’ digital literacy and, especially resilience, also have associations with their gender. Moreover, as students are digitally literate, they are more likely to be digitally resilient. Following SDG4, i.e., Quality Education, it is advisable for schools, and especially parents, to seriously invest in creating a safe, educational environment to enhance digital literacy among students. (shrink)

Objective: The study seeks to provide a thorough description of the teachers' digital literacy (DL) and digital competence (DC) and shine a light on the variables that influence the development of their digital literacies and competence. Method: Comprehensive data collection and analysis from 274 participants were completed. Descriptive and inferential statistics were conducted to accomplish the objectives of this study. Results: It came to light that teachers with less than ten years of experience have higher levels of (...) digital literacy. Pre-service education, having access to ICT resources, and a favorable attitude about using ICT were all strongly associated with DL and DC. The research's essential contribution is its findings affirming the value of DL and DC, which can be utilized to approach new technologies critically and use them as a part of digital pedagogy. Novelty: The critical contribution of the research is the result claiming the positive status of DL and DC, which can be used to approach new tools from a critical pedagogical perspective and apply them as part of digital pedagogy. -/- . (shrink)

This study aims to identify the digital reputation at the University of Palestine: an analytical perspective of the employees ’point of view, where the researchers used the descriptive and analytical approach, through a questionnaire distributed to a sample of employees at the University of Palestine, where the size of the study population is (234) employees, and the size of The sample is (117) employees, of whom (90) employees responded. The study provided a theoretical framework for what the writers and (...) researchers presented about the study variables, as well as a practical analytical framework for the opinions of employees at the University of Palestine. The digital reputation was expressed as an independent variable through its four indicators (feeling about the organization (satisfaction), admiration and respect, and trust, and social responsibility). The study found a set of results, the most important of which are: the existence of a high degree of digital reputation at the University of Palestine from the viewpoint of employees, and the absence of differences in the opinions of the study sample about digital reputation according to demographic variables. The study presented a set of recommendations, the most important of which are: The need for universities to enhance their digital reputation and raise its level. (shrink)

The information regime is mediated by the culture of the electronic device. It is characterized by the control of the deluded citizen through the deployment of freedom, thereby nullifying the core issue of human life: freedom. Through phenomenological-hermeneutic methodology (Heidegger, 2002), this work starts from the world of digital life to direct the interpretation towards digital governance, all of which appears as a hermeneutic horizon the information regime. It is concluded that in this new social order the political (...) and all other orders that arise from interaction are governed by a capitalism of emotions. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss some prominent features of our use of social media and what I think are its harms. My paper has three main parts. In the first part, I use a dialogical framework to argue that much of the discursive activity online is manifested as an ethically impoverished other-directedness and interactivity. In the second part, I identify and discuss several reasons that help explain why so much of the discursive activity on social media is ethically lacking. And (...) in the final part, I mention some of the effects these discursive practices have on us even when offline. Specifically, I suggest that the persistent use of digital communication technologies trains its users to adopt these problematic online discursive attitudes and activities into their experiences offline, making it more difficult for them to engage with themselves and others in more dialogically ethical ways. (shrink)

The digital is deeply transforming reality. Through discussion of concepts such as identity, location, presence, law and territoriality, this article explores why and how these transformations are occurring, and highlights the importance of having a design and a plan for our new digital world.

This paper argues that social media companies’ power to regulate communication in the public sphere illustrates a novel type of domination. The idea is that, since social media companies can partially dictate the terms of citizens’ political participation in the public sphere, they can arbitrarily interfere with the choices individuals make qua citizens. I contend that social media companies dominate citizens in two different ways. First, I focus on the cases in which social media companies exercise direct control over political (...) speech. They exercise quasi-public power over citizens because their regulation of speech on social media platforms implies the capacity to arbitrarily interfere with citizens’ democratic contestation in the political system. Second, companies’ algorithmic governance entails the capacity to interfere with citizens’ choices about what mode of discursive engagement they endorse in their relationships with fellow citizens. By raising the cost of deliberative engagement, companies narrow citizens’ choice menu. (shrink)

We argue that while digital health technologies (e.g. artificial intelligence, smartphones, and virtual reality) present significant opportunities for improving the delivery of healthcare, key concepts that are used to evaluate and understand their impact can obscure significant ethical issues related to patient engagement and experience. Specifically, we focus on the concept of empowerment and ask whether it is adequate for addressing some significant ethical concerns that relate to digital health technologies for mental healthcare. We frame these concerns using (...) five key ethical principles for AI ethics (i.e. autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, justice, and explicability), which have their roots in the bioethical literature, in order to critically evaluate the role that digital health technologies will have in the future of digital healthcare. (shrink)