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Contents Series title Title page Copyright page In memoriam Foreword by Luciano Floridi Preface to the Third Edition

Notes Acknowledgments 1 Central Issues in the Ethics of Digital Media

Chapter overview Case-study: Amanda Todd and Anonymous Introduction (Ethical) life in the (post-)digital age?

1. Digital media, analogue media: convergence and ubiquity 2. Digital media and “greased information” 3. Digital media as communication media: fluidity, ubiquity, global scope, and selfhood/identity

Digital media ethics: How to proceed? Is digital media ethics possible? Grounds for hope How to do ethics in the new mediascape: Dialogical approaches, difference, and pluralism Further considerations: Ethical judgments Overview of the book, suggestions for use

Chapter arrangement, reading suggestions Case-studies; discussion/reflection/writing/research questions

Notes

2 Privacy in the (Post-)Digital Era? Chapter overview Information and privacy in the global digital age

“Privacy” and anonymity online – is there any? Interlude: Can we meaningfully talk about “culture?” “Privacy” in the global metropolis: Initial considerations

You don’t have to be paranoid – but it helps ... If you’re not paranoid yet ... terrorism and state surveillance

“Privacy” and private life: Changing attitudes in the age of social media and mobile devices “Privacy” and private life: Cultural and philosophical considerations “Privacy” and private life: First justifications, more cultural differences – transformations and (over-?)convergence “Privacy” and private life: Cultural differences and ethical pluralism Philosophical and sociological considerations: New selves, new “privacies?” 1. Culture? 2. The privacy paradox Notes

3 Copying and Distributing via Digital Media: Copyright, Copyleft, Global Perspectives

Chapter overview The ethics of copying: Is it theft, Open Source, or Confucian homage to the master?

Intellectual property: Three (Western) approaches (a)Copyright in the United States and Europe (b)Copyleft/FLOSS

FLOSS in practice: the Linux operating system FLOSS in practice

2. Intellectual property and culture: Confucian ethics and African thought

Notes 4 Friendship, Death Online, Slow/Fair Technology, and Democracy

Chapter overview Friendship online? Initial considerations Friendship online: Additional considerations Friendship – and death – online Slow technology and the Fairphone Case-study: Are you ethically obliged to purchase a Fairphone? Digital media and democratization: First considerations

Democracy, technology, cultures Notes

5 Still More Ethical Issues: Digital Sex, Sexbots, and Games Chapter overview Introduction: Is pornography* an ethical problem – and, if so, what kind(s)? Pornography*: More ethical debates and analyses

Pornography* online: A utilitarian analysis “Complete sex” – a feminist/phenomenological perspective

Sex with robots, anyone? Now: What about games? Sex and violence in games Notes

6 Digital Media Ethics: Overview, Frameworks, Resources Chapter overview A synopsis of digital media ethics Basic ethical frameworks

1. Utilitarianism Strengths and limits

(a)How do we numerically evaluate the possible consequences of our acts? (b)How far into the future must we consider? (c)For whom are the consequences that we must consider?

2. Deontology Difficulties ... 3. Meta-ethical frameworks: Relativism, absolutism (monism), pluralism

Ethical relativism Ethical absolutism (monism) Beyond relativism and absolutism: Ethical pluralism

Strengths and limits of ethical pluralism 4. Feminist ethics

Applications to digital media ethics 5. Virtue ethics

Virtue ethics: sample applications to digital media 6. Confucian ethics

Confucian ethics and digital media: sample applications 7. African perspectives

Applications Notes

References Index End User License Agreement

Series title

Digital Media and Society Series Nancy Baym, Personal Connections in the Digital Age, 2nd edition

Mercedes Bunz and Graham Meikle, The Internet of Things

Jean Burgess and Joshua Green, YouTube, 2nd edition

Mark Deuze, Media Work

Andrew Dubber, Radio in the Digital Age

Quinn DuPont, Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains

Charles Ess, Digital Media Ethics, 3rd edition

Jordan Frith, Smartphones as Locative Media

Alexander Halavais, Search Engine Society, 2nd edition

Martin Hand, Ubiquitous Photography

Robert Hassan, The Information Society

Tim Jordan, Hacking

Graeme Kirkpatrick, Computer Games and the Social Imaginary

Tama Leaver, Tim Highfield, and Crystal Abidin, Instagram

Leah A. Lievrouw, Alternative and Activist New Media

Rich Ling and Jonathan Donner, Mobile Communication

Donald Matheson and Stuart Allan, Digital War Reporting

Dhiraj Murthy, Twitter, 2nd edition

Zizi A. Papacharissi, A Private Sphere: Democracy in a Digital Age

Jill Walker Rettberg, Blogging, 2nd edition

Patrik Wikström, The Music Industry, 3rd edition

Digital Media Ethics Third Edition

CHARLES ESS

polity

Copyright page Copyright © Charles Ess 2020

The right of Charles Ess to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2009 by Polity Press

This edition published in 2020 by Polity Press

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In memoriam Barbara Becker (1955–2009): gifted and energetic philosopher, among the earliest to conjoin phenomenology, embodiment, and computational technologies in what proved to be prophetic and prescient ways

Preston K. Covey, Jr. (1942–2006): pioneer in conjoining philosophy and computation, including ethics, questions of democracy, and educational computing, and co-founder of what is now the International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP)

Henry Rosemont, Jr. (1934–2017): leading authority in Chinese philosophy, tireless promoter of comparative philosophy and the liberal arts, inspiring activist and most generous mentor

Brilliant colleagues, generous and patient teachers, good friends: their spirits and guiding insights inform and inspire much of my life as well as this book.

Foreword Luciano Floridi

A common risk, run by many forewords, is to bother the reader by repeating, sometimes less accurately, what the table of contents of the book already specifies or (and unfortunately this is often an inclusive or) by eulogizing the text and the author, plastering comments that look like semantic clones lifted from a myriad of other texts. It is in order to try to avoid both pitfalls that I shall skip here the usual hypes – which the book and its author do deserve, make no mistake – in order to speak to the reader a bit more frankly and hence, I hope, less uninformatively.

Like the previous edition, this third edition has all the usual virtues of a good textbook: it is carefully researched, clearly written, and argued intelligently. Yet these are basic features that we have come to expect from high-standard scholarship and do not make it special. That Charles Ess has written a good textbook is uninteresting. That he might have written an excellent (and now newly updated) one is what I would like to argue. What the book offers, over and above its competitors, are some remarkable and, to my knowledge, unique features. Let me be schematic. The list is not exhaustive, nor do the listed features appear in order of importance, but there is a good narrative that keeps them together.

First, the topic. The book addresses the gray but crucial area of ethical concerns raised by digital media. Of course, it is flanked on the shelf by many other textbooks in information and computer ethics, data ethics, AI ethics, and digital ethics (the terminology varies but topics often overlap), even more so than when the second edition was published, but, as Charles Ess well explains, this is not one of them, and it sticks out for its originality. For the book tackles that messy area of our ordinary lives where ethical issues are entangled with digital mass media, communication artifacts, information technologies of all sorts, computational processes, computer-mediated social interactions, algorithms, and so forth. Indeed, it is one of its virtues

that it tries to clarify that “so forth” which I have just somewhat surreptitiously added in order to spare myself the embarrassment of a lack of a clear definition. As Schrödinger once said in a different context, this is a very sharp picture of a rather fuzzy subject.

Second, the approach. The book has all the required philosophical rigor, but, once again, this is not its most impressive feature. It is also graced by a light touch, which means that Ess has avoided being either prescriptive or proscriptive (you will not be told what to do and what not to do), opting in favor of an enlightened (liberal, in his own words), critical description of the problems discussed. This is a noteworthy advantage, since the author empowers the reader, as should be (but often is not) the case with similar texts. Having said all this, the feature that I find unique and outstanding (in the literal sense that it makes this book stand out on the ideal shelf of other comparable books) is its capacity to combine a pluralistic approach – without the bitter aftertaste of some crypto-relativism – with a well- informed and timely look into non-Western views on the ethical issues it tackles. This is crucial. Following a remarkable tradition of German philosophers (Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Hegel), Ess makes a sustained and successful effort to bring together Eastern and Western ethical traditions in an enriching and fascinating synthesis. And he achieves all this thanks to his extended, international experiences with a variety of cultures. If you wish to see how masterfully he avoids syncretism, relativism, and dogmatism and succeeds in shaping an overview of the field which is both captivating and ethically robust, you need to read the book. This was already a great feature of the second edition – it is now quite essential given the importance of China’s role in the development of digital technologies and solutions.

Third, the style. This is a reader-friendly book that teaches without patronizing, with a didactic style that can only be the result of decades of care and experience in guiding students and readers through difficult topics. Its degree of accessibility is as misleading as the ability of an acrobat to make her performance look effortless. The third edition just got even friendlier.

Many things are like pornography: it is very difficult to define them, but you recognize them immediately when you see them. Digital media

are not an exception. Because we all know what digital media are, even if it is hard to determine the exact boundaries of their nature, applications, evolutions, and effects on our lives, I am confident that the reader will understand why I would recommend this book not only inside but also outside the classroom. Given its topic, its approach, and its style, this is a book for the educated public as well. It should be read by anyone interested in the development and future of the information society and our moral lives within it.

Preface to the Third Edition No one was more surprised – and then, gratified beyond measure – by the successes of the first edition of this little book. And then came suggestions that a second edition might be in order – and then a third: well, what are surprise and immeasurable gratification squared and then cubed?

Many good comments from colleagues and students who have used the book indicate that “success” here means first of all pedagogical success. The book is designed precisely as a classroom text for use across a wide range of academic disciplines. My intention is that it should be accessible and useful for “the rest of us” – all of us who are neither technology professionals nor philosophically trained ethicists. The guiding assumption here (from Aristotle, along with many other global traditions) is that we are already ethical beings, already equipped with experience and capacities in ethical judgment (phronēsis). The aim is to provide a basic ethical toolkit for better coming to grips with the many ethical challenges that confront us all as consumers and citizens, even designers of a digital media lifeworld.1 The broad strategy conjoins primary ethical frameworks and theory with specific ethical experiences in our digital existence – increasingly, as several examples argue, our post-digital existence.2 And lots of practice by way of the “Reflection/discussion/writing questions” designed to provoke and guide reflection and discussion that apply the ethical insights and theories to central examples. On a good day, students and readers will thereby become more adept in using these ethical tools to more confidently and successfully take on newer challenges most certainly to come.

These structures and approaches apparently work – hence (again) a new edition. But to state the painfully obvious: things change fast in our technological world. This was certainly true for the three years between the first (2009) and second editions (2012): it is all the more the case for the subsequent six or so years. Quantitatively: ever more people in the world are connecting to the internet, increasingly via

mobile devices. Along the way, the past six years have witnessed the increasing roles of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI), and an emerging Internet of Things (IoT), along with social robots and sexbots. Qualitatively: the optimism driving much of the development and visions of “the internet” from the early 1990s onward appears to have peaked around 2012 following the first-blush successes of the 2011 Arab Springs. Early enthusiasm surrounding these so-called “Twitter Revolutions” or “Facebook Revolutions” was soon tempered by the harsh realities of the Arab Winters of 2013 and thereafter. With the one shining exception of Tunisia, these democratization movements were brutally crushed, in part as regimes learned how to censor and manipulate social media. They further transformed these technologies into infrastructures of total state surveillance – including in ostensibly more democratic societies, as Edward Snowden’s revelations of the US National Security Agency’s surveillance programs documented.

Reasons for pessimism have continued to pile up. They include the Cambridge Analytica scandals and the resulting manipulations of the 2016 US elections and Brexit via fake news and filter bubbles, and the polar choice between US-based “surveillance capitalism” (Zuboff 2019) and the emerging Chinese Social Credit System (SCS). While rooted in diametrically opposite ideologies, both treat us as Skinner rats in a Skinner cage: our behavior is closely monitored and thoroughly controlled through exquisitely refined systems of reward and punishment. Worse still: the SCS is increasingly exported and adopted by other regimes, fueling the dramatic rise of “digital authoritarianism” globally (Shahbaz 2018).

Fortunately, there remain middle grounds and bright spots. The European Union is expanding individual privacy rights via the new General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR 2016). The EU is likewise developing robust ethical guidelines for an emerging “AI for people” (Floridi et al. 2018). France and Germany are now confronting Google and Facebook with significant fines and anti-trust accusations, respectively (Romm 2019; Spencer 2019). Even the otherwise business-friendly US is moving to fine Facebook some US$5 billion for privacy violations (Kang 2019). Moreover, more and more people are

looking beyond “the digital” for a better balance between their online and offline lives – discussed here with the concept of a “post-digital era.” Six years ago, “digital detox” and “mindfulness” were the vocabulary of a few who were dismissed as cranks and Luddites: now these are increasingly central themes among even the most techno- enthusiastic (Roose 2019; Syvertsen and Enli 2019).

These extensive, in some ways epochal, changes have demanded major revisions and updates in every chapter. This has meant “killing my darlings” – many darlings. Dozens and dozens of important references in the literatures, along with several case studies and pedagogical exercises, have been dropped in favor of newer material throughout – beginning with chapter 2 on privacy, as increasingly threatened by many of these more recent developments. The reference list is now c. 30 percent larger than its predecessor, and new topics have been added, such as “death online” in chapter 4 and sexbots in chapter 5, along with discussion of #Gamergate and more recent empirical evidence regarding the harms and benefits of violent and sexually explicit materials in games.

Virtue ethics has become even more central, including its increasing role in design of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and in EU policy development regarding AI. Affiliated developments in “ethical design,” including “slow technology” and the Fairphone as a case study, are added in chapter 4.

Of course, all of this will change – certainly dramatically, perhaps well before this book is printed. At the same time, as the ongoing applicability of these ethical frameworks and the success of this book’s approach attest, in some ways it is also true that plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose – the more things change, the more they remain the same. Hence my cautious optimism and hope that, as a teaching framework and introduction, this edition will continue to assist students, instructors, and general readers in gaining an overview of central ethical issues occasioned by (post-)digital media – and enhance our ethical insights and abilities (most centrally, our capacity for phronēsis) in ways that will help us all come to better ethical grips with these unfolding challenges in our daily lives.

Notes 1 Roughly: the whole complex of our lives as meaning-making and

relational beings, thoroughly informed by our co-evolving technologies (Verbeek 2017; cf. Coeckelbergh 2017).

2 To use Karl Jaspers’s concept, our existenz – as centering on experiences of frailty, suffering, and loss, including death ([Jaspers 1932] 1970: 185, cited in Lagerkvist and Anderson 2017: 554f.). We do all we can to avoid confronting these experiences (e.g., by “amusing ourselves to death” [Postman 1985]); but contemporary existential philosophers such as Amanda Lagerkvist show how our digitally mediated experiences of existenz are essential to our fully realizing our freedom to discern and/or create meaning for our existence (Lagerkvist 2018; cf. Vallor 2016b: 247). Cf. Ess (2018a, 2019).

Acknowledgments As with the previous two editions, there are simply far more people to thank than space allows.

First of all, a thousand thanks and more to my students and colleagues at the Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo, beginning with Department Heads Espen Ytreberg and then Tanja Storsul. They, along with numerous colleagues, administrative staff, and students, made for a very soft landing in Oslo in 2012: and in the subsequent seven years, all of these people cultivated a collegial environment par excellence. I am particularly grateful to Knut Lundby for his support and mentorship, especially in the domains of mediatization and Digital Religion.

Insofar as this book is good for students, this is due precisely to innumerable students over the past four decades of my teaching career. I remain deeply grateful for their contributions, beginning with their forcing me to be as clear as possible about often complex matters. Many have specifically commented on and critiqued early versions of the pedagogical elements of the book. Especially my Master’s students in our Department have been rich discussion partners and sources of insight.

Many wise and insightful colleagues have likewise helped shape and fill this volume. I’m especially grateful to Shannon Vallor, whose extensive work in virtue ethics now stands as primary source and reference. As discussed here, virtue ethics has enjoyed a remarkable renaissance over the past decade or so – so much so as to become central (along with deontology) to EU-level and global efforts by the IEEE to set the ethical standards for the design of AI and the Internet of Things. It is impossible to overstate the significance of this – for all of us. But it has not always been so: from my perspective, no one has done more to articulate, develop, defend, and extend virtue ethics in these ways than Shannon. All of us owe her very great thanks indeed.

Many other colleagues, too numerous to name, have contributed via

the conferences where many of these ideas and arguments were first introduced and worked through. These include AoIR (the Association of Internet Researchers), IACAP (the International Association for Computing and Philosophy), ETHICOMP (Ethics and Computing), CEPE (Computer Ethics: Professional Enquiries), and the Robo- philosophy conferences. The some 400+ researchers and scholars who constituted the CaTaC (Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and Communication) conference series (1998–2016) have been centrally helpful for better understanding how our ethical sensibilities interact with culturally variable factors, beginning with our conception of self. For this volume, Soraj Hongladarom’s work (Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok) has been especially significant: our now 20+ years of philosophical and intercultural dialogues continue to be most enjoyable and fruitful. Maja van der Velden (Institute for Informatics, University of Oslo) is likewise due very great thanks indeed for her multiple contributions, several of which are incorporated here.

The list goes on. Rich Ling (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) offered invaluable insight into the profound and multiple impacts of mobile devices, and thereby their ethical dimensions. Mia Consalvo (Concordia University, Montréal, Canada) remains most helpful concerning games and gaming. Susanna Paasonen and Kai Kimppa (University of Turku, Finland) and J. Tuomas Harviainen (University of Tampere, Finland) were especially generous sources of insight and resources regarding pornography. Several AoIR list members provided cross-cultural help on contemporary usages of CDs and DVDs as media: Dan Burk, Danielle Couch, Aram Sinnreich, Deen Freelon, Michael Glassman, Sam Phiri, David Banks, and Jakob Jünger.

I am equally grateful to my Polity editors Ellen MacDonald-Kramer and Mary Savigar, whose encouragement, support, and discipline were essential. Two anonymous reviewers were helpfully critical in turn, for which I am most grateful indeed.

My family continues to play the most important roles. Brother Robert provided most helpful technical insight as well as fundamental corporate perspectives. Sister Dianne Kaufmann remains constantly supportive and encouraging. My wife, the Reverend Conni Ess, wisely

and consistently calls me out to the beneficent worlds of art, music, food, and hiking: both I and this book are less nerdy as a result. Our son Joshua has provided vital insight into both arcane technical details and the contemporary digital and post-digital practices among younger folk. Our daughter Kathleen, pursuing classics and religious studies scholarship and translation, provided invaluable assistance with both Greek philosophy and English style.

The deepest gratitude remains with my parents, Bob and Betty Ess. They have now passed on beyond us. Like any mother, she was always pleased with and proud of her children’s accomplishments – especially those that sought to be of use to others. She was especially happy to see me working on the first edition of this volume. In many ways, she was also the person primarily responsible for my pursuing philosophy: she loved discussing ideas and current events from a variety of perspectives – a practice hence deeply interwoven in our lives. My father provided unfailing care and encouragement, including the most exemplary kind – namely, supporting my ethical and political choices even when they differed sharply from his own. My parents’ examples and practices thus remain the foundations of the core values motivating this book – beginning with keen interest in different approaches and views, and the spirit of enacting deep care for others.

Insofar as this volume reflects and helps foster such virtues – Mom, Dad: this is for you.

CHAPTER ONE Central Issues in the Ethics of Digital Media Morally as well as physically, there is only one world, and we all have to live in it.

(Midgley [1981] 1996, 119)

Chapter overview We open with a classic case-study of cyberbullying that introduces representative ethical issues evoked by digital media. This case-study is accompanied by one of the primary pedagogical/teaching elements of the book – questions designed to foster initial reflection and discussion (for individuals, small groups, or a class at large), followed by additional questions that can be used for further reflection and writing.

After an introduction to the main body of the chapter, the section “(Ethical) life in the (post-)digital age?” provides a first overview of digital media and their ethical dimensions. I also highlight how more popular treatments of these, however, can become counterproductive to clear and careful ethical reflection. We turn next to some of the distinctive characteristics of digital media – convergence, digital information as “greased,” and digital media as communication technologies – that occasion specific ethical issues treated in this volume. We then take up initial considerations on how to “do” ethics in the age of digital media. Finally, I describe the pedagogical features of the book and provide some suggestions for how it is designed to be used – including specific suggestions for the order in which the chapters may be read.

Case-study: Amanda Todd and Anonymous When Amanda Todd was 12 years old and “fooling around” with friends, including someone looking on via a webcam, the someone asked Amanda to show him her breasts. She lifted her top: the result was a video and pictures that began circulating on the internet – distributed in part as her stalker would develop a new Facebook profile when Amanda moved to a new school. Once friended with Amanda’s new friends, the stalker would distribute the video and photos again, as well as send them to teachers and parents. One of the consequences of the online stalking was offline bullying – not unusual for young adolescents, but now laced with taunts of “porn star”

(Bleaney 2012). At one point, Amanda made her first suicide attempt: part of the online response included a series of “jokes” facilitated by tumblr.

Her stalker did not go away, and Amanda’s responses became more and more desperate. In September, 2012, she posted a video on YouTube that described her experience (www.youtube.com/watch? v=KRxfTyNa24A). On October 10, Amanda, now 15 years old, committed suicide. Her death – including her video – attracted significant attention: by February, 2013, it had logged over 4 million views, and has now been seen by tens of millions. Alongside the initial official investigations, the group Anonymous claimed to have identified her stalker and published his name and address: not surprisingly, he received death threats. Meanwhile, “Amanda Todd jokes” – and, presumably, the original pictures and video – continue to circulate online (Warren and Keneally 2012).

FIRST REFLECTION/DISCUSSION/WRITING QUESTIONS

Amanda Todd’s experience of cyberbullying has become a classic case and example in digital media ethics, in part because of the multiple issues and responses it entails. In addition to cyberbullying, we will explore the privacy issues it raises in chapter 2. We will also take a look at two additional topics evoked here – namely, the risks of “moral panics” in media reporting on such events, and new forms of “vigilante justice” facilitated by internet-connected digital media.

1. Given your experiences – and those of your friends and family – how do you react to Amanda Todd’s suicide after some three years of cyberbullying? For example, does it seem to you that this is indeed a serious problem for those of us living in “a digital age” – i.e., as immersed in a world of digital media more or less seamlessly interconnected and interwoven with our offline lives? Remember here that part of Amanda’s difficulty was that, while she could – and did – physically move and change schools, her stalker was always able to find her again easily through her online profile and activities.

(A) Insofar as you agree that such cyberstalking is problematic – make a first effort at identifying more precisely just what’s wrong here. Of course, there are a wide range of ethical points you can make –

beginning with the exploitation (including sexual exploitation) of vulnerable persons (certainly including young girls, but plenty of young boys get bullied as well) by more powerful ones. Moreover, it seems clear that, if Amanda deserved privacy and anonymity – as we will see, argued by deontologists as basic rights of persons – she was not able to have such rights in her online environments. As a last suggestion, what about the ongoing taunts and “jokes” that circulated – and still circulate – in connection with Amanda’s video and suicide: are these sorts of responses ethically problematic, in your view, and/or, as a utilitarian might argue, simply the price to be paid for free speech online?

(B) Whatever your responses to “(A),” now go back and do your best to provide whatever reasons, grounds, feelings, and/or other sorts of claims and evidence that you can offer at this stage to support these first points.

2. A common phenomenon in reporting on new technologies in “the media” is that of a “moral panic” (Drotner 1999). That is, stories are often developed around sensational – and so very often the sexual – but risky possibilities of a new technology. Sometimes a panic ensues – e.g., cries for new efforts somehow to regulate or otherwise restrain clearly undesirable behaviors and consequences. Such panics are not always misplaced: they can sometimes inspire responses and changes that may effectively improve our social and ethical lives. But for us, the difficulty is that such a “moral panic” reporting style has us frame (if we don’t think about it too much) new technologies and their possibilities in an “either/or” dilemma: we are caught between having to reject new technologies – e.g., as they lead, in this case, to the stalking and suicide of a young girl – or defending these technologies wholesale (as, for example, the US National Rifle Association finds itself compelled to do in the wake of every new school shooting: Pane 2018).

Reflect on some of the examples of media coverage given here, as well as others that you can easily find on your own, perhaps with the help of the Wikipedia article on Amanda Todd (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Amanda_Todd). Compare these more popularly oriented accounts with more empirical research

on cyberbullying, e.g.:

Sonia Livingstone, Lucyna Kirwil, Christina Ponte, and Elisabeth Staksrud (2014). In their own words: What bothers children online? European Journal of Communication, 29(3), 271–88. DOI: 10.1177/0267323114521045.

Global Kids Online (2018). http://globalkidsonline.net/2018_summary.

The Pew Research Center. www.pewinternet.org/2018/09/27/a- majority-of-teens-have-experienced-some-form-of-cyberbullying.

Given the realities of young peoples’ experiences online (which, be sure to notice, vary considerably from country to country), does it seem to you that more popular coverage provides a much needed and useful service in calling our attention to the sorts of social and ethical problems that new media make possible? And/or: do you see any risks here of such coverage falling into a “moral panic” style of reporting? Either way, the key point is to provide evidence – including examples (carefully cited, please) that support your claims and observations.

3. Especially in the face of what seems to be (a) the clear injustice of stalkers and pedophiles using internet-connected digital media and the sorts of anonymity afforded in online communication, including popular social network sites (SNSs), to harass young people to the point of suicide, vis-à-vis (b) at least the initial inability of “traditional” law-enforcement agencies to identify and track down such perpetrators, it is tempting to applaud the efforts of Anonymous to do what the authorities apparently can’t. But, in this instance, rather than speeding up justice, the “trial by Internet” – beginning with the “outing” of the alleged stalker online, followed by quick condemnation – resulted in a second injustice. Despite their prodigious hacking abilities, Anonymous apparently erred, and the wrong man was targeted with death threats and other harassment (Warren and Keneally 2012).

(A) How do you respond to this set of problems? That is, does it sometimes seem justified for groups such as Anonymous to intervene in such cases – i.e., when the legal authorities initially appeared to lack

the technical sophistication needed to track down stalkers such as the one who pursued Amanda Todd? And/or: might the risks of such “trial by Internet” – beginning with the erroneous accusation of the wrong person – outweigh its possible benefits (such as – occasionally – getting the right person when the authorities can’t)?

Again, the key point is to provide support for your claims and observations, beginning with evidence (e.g., how often does a group such as Anonymous succeed where others fail?) and arguments that will hold up to critical scrutiny.

(B) In January 2014 (slightly over a year after her suicide in October 2012), Dutch police arrested Aydin Coban. Amanda Todd is alleged to be but one of his more than 30 victims; following Coban’s trial and conviction in the Netherlands on charges of internet fraud and blackmail, he is to be extradited to Canada to face charges related to the Amanda Todd case (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Amanda_Todd).

How do these subsequent developments affect or change (if at all) your initial reflections and arguments above on Anonymous and “trial by internet?” For example, given these more promising outcomes through the work of law enforcement authorities – when given enough time – what happens to initial (more short-term?) arguments in favor of “trial by internet?” Alternatively: what if, in the subsequent seven years following Todd’s death, these authorities had in fact failed to come up with a likely suspect and evidence to bring him or her to trial? The larger point here is to begin to reflect on how far into the future our ethical decision-making must stretch – e.g., in order to consider possible consequences several years down the road that might affect our current ethical decisions and judgments. (This is an important consideration in the discussion of utilitarianism in chapter 6.)

Introduction Most certainly, in the industrialized world, our lives are inextricably interwoven with what are sometimes called “New Media” or digital media. Current generations are sometimes referred to as “digital

natives,” indicating that they have been born into and grown up in a world saturated with these technologies. More broadly, an influential European Commission “Digital Futures” project used in its title the term “Onlife,” as developed by information philosopher Luciano Floridi (2015) to highlight how the once distinct domains of “life online” and “life offline” are now (more or less) seamlessly interwoven in an “Onlife.” At the same time, contemporary media coverage of digital media frequently highlights important, often frightening, ethical issues these entanglements entail. Beyond our opening examples of cyberbullying and “trial by Internet,” it is easy to find stories highlighting how violence in games appears to lead to horrific, real-world violence, ranging from school shootings to the July 22, 2011, killings in Norway, including 69 young people on the island of Utøya (Daily Mail Reporter 2012). Similarly, the long-standing debate over whether pornography consumption results in increased sexual aggression, especially toward women and girls, continues (e.g. Wright, Tokunaga, and Kraus 2016). More broadly, numerous episodes and developments have forced attention to how our immersion in digital media technologies renders us vulnerable to massive state and corporate surveillance and manipulation. Think: Edward Snowden and the US National Security Agency (Dahlberg 2017); Facebook’s secret mood manipulation of nearly 700,000 users (Kramera, Guillory, and Hancock 2014); foreign actors’ interference with elections and campaigns, including sophisticated hacking attacks along with “fake news” distributed along increasingly polarized “filter bubbles” fostered by social media (Pariser 2011); and a range of Facebook scandals, such as the discovery that Cambridge Analytica, a data firm affiliated with Donald Trump’s election campaign, scraped otherwise private data from some 87 million Facebook users for the sake of targeting and manipulating voters (e.g. Confessore 2018). And so on.

These are certainly critical ethical issues, ones that will only become more complex and pressing as our digital environment continues to expand and evolve – most obviously, through ever greater collection and analysis of our personal data in so-called Big Data approaches that will be fed ever more data about us in the emerging Internet of Things. Of equal importance: consider the increasing development and usage

of AI technologies and algorithms – whether in the form of recommender systems in our shopping and musical choices, or, more darkly, in increasing use of so-called pre-emptive policing systems that use AI and Big Data collections to predict individual criminal acts before they occur (Hildebrandt 2015, 191–9). Perhaps most ominously – at least for those of us who still hold to ideals of individual freedom and democratic norms and processes – such systems seem to drive inevitably toward Western equivalents of the Chinese Social Credit System (SCS). In its final form, SCS will use multiple technologies of surveillance and data mining to “assess citizens, businesses and other organizations in China with regard to their creditworthiness, adherence to law, and compliance with the government’s ideological framework” (Kostka 2018, 2). In light of such developments, it is no exaggeration to worry that our digital technologies may result in nothing less than “the end of law” as it has developed in modern democracies – where such law rests upon and primarily defends individual freedom and affiliated democratic norms (justice, fairness, equality) and rights – including rights to privacy, freedom of expression, and, most radically, rights to resist, contest, and disobey (Hildebrandt 2015, 10).

We – meaning everyone who makes use of, and is dependent upon, such digital technologies – are thereby confronted with a staggering range of ethical issues. This is to say: these issues – whether cyberbullying and pornography or foundational threats to privacy and democracy – present us with possible conflicts with our basic ethical norms, values, or principles; they thereby urge us to consider one or more alternative choices or routes of action in order to resolve the conflict. Many of these issues require the insight and assistance of professionals such as computer and data scientists, ICT designers, and philosophers specialized in these matters: but life in a (post-)digital era means that all of us are confronted with such issues, as inevitably catalyzed by our technologies.

These (and more) are compelling and urgent issues. Here, however, we can explore only a few, beginning with privacy (chapter 2). It is also important to notice how these issues are not solely pressing ethical concerns. In addition, some of the stories and accounts of these

(including some of the references included above) illustrate a tendency in popular media to call our attention to such issues in the frame of a “moral panic” (Drotner 1999). That is, in order to attract our attention, such stories sometimes simplify and sensationalize (and, whenever possible, highlight the sexual). They thereby appeal to a deep-seated fear in modern Western societies that our new technologies are somehow getting out of control. This fear has been thematic in the modern West since E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Der Sandmann ([1816] 1967) – an early story about a seductive robot – and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein ([1818] 1933). These stories and accounts highlight the fear that such new technologies will corrupt our ethical and social sensibilities.

These more popular approaches – in contrast with the far more nuanced and careful reflections of ethicists, philosophers of technology, and our colleagues in the relevant technical fields – appear to influence how “the rest of us” think and feel about these issues as they affect our own lives and existence. So it is important to first examine how “moral panic” reporting both furthers and frustrates careful ethical reflection on digital media. On the one hand, such reporting usually succeeds in getting our attention – and is thereby useful as it catalyzes more careful reflection on important ethical issues. On the other hand, by highlighting the negative effects and potentials of digital media, such reporting fosters a polarized way of thinking – a framework of “technology good” (because it brings us important benefits) vs. “technology bad” (because it threatens the moral foundations of society, most especially the morality of young people). As we will see, such simple either/or frameworks for reflecting on important ethical issues are simply misleading. Rather – and as most of us likely already know full well – whatever truths may be discerned about the ethics of digital media are more complex and often lie somewhere in the middle between these two extremes. But if presented only with the simple choice between “technology good” and “technology bad,” we may not look for further alternatives: hence, we get needlessly stuck in trying to decide between two compelling choices. Getting stuck this way short-circuits, that is, the more careful and extensive reflection required if we are to move beyond such either/or thinking.

So we begin by examining more carefully some of the important characteristics of digital media, along with the specific sorts of ethical issues that these characteristics often raise for us.

(Ethical) life in the (post-)digital age? In keeping with their increasingly central importance in our lives, “digital media” are the subject of an ever-growing range of analyses in a number of disciplines (e.g., Couldry 2012; Davisson and Booth 2016). At the same time, there has been something of a popular turn in our experiences with and sensibilities toward digital media in recent years. Broadly, a largely optimistic assumption that new technologies would make our lives better in many ways – whether as consumers satisfied with the latest convenience of, say, a voice-activated digital assistant or smart home, and/or as citizens in a world of increasing individual and collective freedom, democracy, and prosperity – is increasingly overshadowed by darker developments, such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal (Solon 2017). At the same time, more and more of us are becoming aware of how “our minds can be hijacked” (Lewis 2017) – in part, as more and more “tech dissenters,” including Justin Rosenstein, the coder who invented Facebook’s “like” button, have become increasingly and publicly critical of the very technologies they themselves have built.

Lastly, since as early as 2000 (Cascone), an increasing number of scholars and researchers argue that we are now living in a post-digital era (e.g., Berry 2014; Lindgren 2017; Ess 2019). Some obvious markers of this era are the increasing popularity of primarily analogue technologies, including analogue film, vinyl records, and rising interest in board games (Birkner 2017); we will explore additional examples, such as “slow technology” and “digital detox” (chapter 4). To be clear: “post-digital” does not mean “anti-digital.” It signals, rather, a broader shift from an exclusive focus on “the digital” – to the exclusion of “the analogue” – to a more nuanced balance and recognition of the roles and importance of each in our lives.

At the same time, digital media represent strong continuities with earlier forms of analogue communication and information media: the

latter include printed books, journals, and newspapers, what we now call “hardcopy” letters, and, for example, traditional forms of mass media such as newspapers and “one-to-many” broadcast media such as radio and TV. We will note and explore these continuities more fully in our efforts to evaluate one of the larger ethical questions we will confront – namely, do digital media present us with radically new kinds of ethical problems that thereby require absolutely new ethical approaches? Such questions are often driven by emphasizing instead important differences between earlier media and digital media. Such an emphasis, however, also drives the either/or approach underlying much popular media reporting. In any event, these differences often are part of why new ethical issues come up in conjunction with digital media. Exploring these differences at the outset is hence a good starting point.

Three especially relevant characteristics of digital media are: how digital media foster convergence; digital information as “greased”; and digital media as ubiquitous and global communication media.

1. Digital media, analogue media: convergence and ubiquity To begin with, digital media work by transforming extant information (e.g., voices over a phone, texts written on a word-processor, pictures of an impressive landscape, videos recorded and broadcast, etc.) into the basic informational elements of electronic computers and networks, using binary code (1s and 0s – bits on and off). By contrast, analogue media, such as increasingly popular vinyl records, capture, store, and make information accessible by producing specific material artifacts that are like (analogous to) the original. Music recording equipment, for example, begins with microphones that translate the vibrations of an original sound into magnetically stored information, corresponding to specific sound pitches and volumes; this is then “written” onto a tape that passes by a recording head at a specific speed. These analogues of an original sound are in turn transformed into further analogues: they are mechanically carved onto the grooves of a vinyl record in the form of bumps and valleys that correspond to the high and low frequencies and volumes of the original sound. These

physical variations are then translated by a phonograph needle back into electronic impulses that likewise mimic the original variations of a sound. Finally, these impulses are turned into sound once more by an amplifier and speaker(s) – again, as an analogue or copy of the original that, ideally, is as close to the original as possible.

One of the reasons digital media are so attractive is that analogue media, by contrast, always involve some loss of information across the various processes of collecting, recording, and storing it. This means – and this is particularly critical to the ethical discussions of copying – that each analogue copy of an original is always less true to the original; and the more copies that are made – e.g., a tape copy of a record as a copy of a tape of an original performance – the less faithful (and satisfying) the resulting copy will be. By contrast, once information is transcribed into digital form, each copy of the digital original will be (more or less) a perfect replica of the original. Copy an MP3 version of your favorite song a thousand times and, if your equipment is working properly, there will be no difference between the first copy and the thousandth.

Even more importantly, analogue media are strongly distinct systems: how information is captured and replayed on a vinyl record is not immediately compatible – and hence not easily exchangeable – with how information is captured and replayed in a newspaper or printed book. But once information is translated into digital form, such information – whether destined for an MP3 player as an audio recording or a word-processor as text – can be stored on and transmitted through a shared medium. Hence the same computer or smartphone can capture, create, process, and distribute digital photos and music, along with a thousand other forms of information held distinct in analogue media, from simple emails to word-processing files to maps to ... “you name it.”

To be sure, these distinctions between analogue and digital media are only one side of the coin. As advocates of the post-digital remind us (Cascone 2000; Berry 2014), however much our media technologies have changed in recent decades, the human eyes, ears, and voices have not: we as embodied beings still generate and receive information in resolutely analogue form. The digital codes, for example, that pass

between two computers or smartphones, whether in the form of a Skype call, Facebook update, or phone call, begin and end for their human users as analogue information. The emergence of “the digital,” in short, does not mean the quick and complete end of “the analogue” (cf. Massumi 2002). This is critical to keep in mind especially from an ethical perspective: as digital media build on and enhance – rather than replace – our analogue modes of communication and experiences, they thereby call into play experiences and communication that have been part and parcel of human ethical reflection and frameworks for millennia. This is good news, ethically. That is, it is sometimes argued – and tempting to think – that the ethical experiences and challenges of digital media are so strikingly new that they require entirely new frameworks (e.g., Braidotti 2006). But these continuities with our experiences as analogue and embodied beings argue that the emergence of digital media does not require us to throw out all previous ethical reflections and views and somehow try to start de novo – from the beginning. On the contrary, we will see several examples of how older forms of ethical reflection (perhaps, most notably, virtue ethics) – however transformed through their applications within digital media – are often key in helping us analyze and successfully resolve contemporary ethical dilemmas.

Nonetheless, as once-distinct forms of information are translated into a commonly shared digital form, this establishes one of the most important distinguishing characteristics of digital media – namely, convergence (Jenkins 2006). Such convergence is literally on display in a contemporary webpage containing text, video, and audio sources, as well as possibilities for sending email, remotely posting a comment, etc. These once-distinct forms of information and communication are now conjoined in digital form, so that they can be transmitted entirely in the form of 1s and 0s via the internet. Similarly, a contemporary smartphone exemplifies such convergence: as a highly sophisticated supercomputer, it easily handles digital information used for a built-in camera (still and/or moving video), audio and video players, a web browser, GPS navigation, and many other sorts of information. (Oh yes, it will also make phone calls.)

Digital media thus conjoin both traditional and sometimes new sorts

of information sources. In particular, what were once distinct kinds of information in the analogue world (e.g., photographs, texts, music) now share the same basic form of information. What does this mean, finally, for ethics? Here’s the key point: what were once distinct sets of ethical issues now likewise converge – sometimes creating new combinations of ethical challenges that we haven’t had to face before.

For example, societies have developed relatively stable codes and laws for the issue of consent as to whether or not someone can be photographed in public. (In the US, generally, one can photograph people in public without asking for their consent, while, in Norway, consent is required.) Transmitting that photo to a larger public – e.g., through a newspaper or a book – would then require a different information system, and one whose ethical and legal dimensions are addressed (however well or poorly) in copyright law. But, as many people have experienced to their regret, a contemporary smartphone can not only record their status and actions, but further (more or less immediately) transmit the photographic record to a distribution medium such as Snapchat or an even more public website (e.g., as in revenge porn). The ethics of both consent in photography and copyright in publication are now conjoined in relatively novel ways. (In fact, technological convergences toward the end of the nineteenth century – specifically, the ability of newspapers to print photographs – occasioned some of the foundational arguments for privacy in the contemporary world. This innovation led to the demand for celebrity photos – and thereby intrusions into the lives of the famous that violated “the obvious bounds of propriety and of decency” (Warren and Brandeis 1890, 195, cited in Glancy 1979, 8).

2. Digital media and “greased information” A second characteristic of digital media is that digital information is “greased.” That is, as James Moor (1997) has observed, “When information is computerized, it is greased to slide easily and quickly to many ports of call” (27). As anyone who has hit the “post” button on a status update too quickly knows all too well, information in digital form can spread more or less instantaneously and globally, whether we always want it to or not.

As the example of uploading embarrassing photos or videos from a smartphone suggests, the near-instantaneous and potentially global distribution of digital information raises especially serious ethical issues surrounding privacy. Where it was once comparatively difficult to capture and then transmit information about a person that she or he might consider private, digital media, beginning with computer databases that store and make easily accessible a vast range of information about people, have resulted in an extensive spectrum of new threats to personal and private information. Moreover, digital information as “greased” likewise makes it easy to copy and distribute, say, one’s favorite songs, movies, or texts. To be sure, it has always been possible to copy and distribute copies of a given text, song, or film. But the ease of doing so with digital media is a primary factor in the central problems of copying, copyright, and so on.

3. Digital media as communication media: fluidity, ubiquity, global scope, and selfhood/identity The emergence of digital media – along with the internet and the Web as ways of quickly transporting digitized information – thus gives rise to strikingly new ways of communicating with one another at every level. Emails, SNSs (Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, etc.), photo and video distribution sites (YouTube, etc.), and personal blogs provide ways for people – especially in the developed world, but also increasingly in developing countries – to enhance existing relationships and develop new ones with persons often far removed from their own geographical/cultural/linguistic communities. Especially as the internet and the Web now connect over half of the world’s population (Internet World Stats 2018), they thereby make possible cross-cultural encounters online at a scope, speed, and scale unimaginable even just a few decades ago.

Along these lines, two additional features of digital media become crucial. To begin with, digital media enjoy what Phil Mullins (1996) has characterized as a kind of fluidity: specifically, a biblical text in digital form – either on one’s smartphone or as stored on a website – becomes, in his phrase, “the fluid Word.” In contrast to a biblical text as fixed in a strong way when inscribed on parchment (the Torah)

and/or printed on paper, a biblical text encoded on a flash memory or server hard drive in the form of 1s and 0s can be changed quickly and easily. This fluidity is highlighted by a second characteristic of digital communication media – namely, interactivity. Both a printed Bible and the daily newspaper are produced and distributed along the lines of a “top-down” and “one-to-many” broadcast model. While readers may have their own responses and ideas, they can (largely) do nothing to change the printed texts they encounter. By contrast, I can change the biblical text on my smartphone if I care to (e.g., if I think a different translation of a specific word or phrase might be more precise or illuminating) – and, by the same token, a community of readers can easily amend and modify an online text; they might also be able to post comments and respond to a given text in other ways that are in turn “broadcast” back out to others. (Such matters, along with many others evoked by digital media, are the foci of Digital Religion, a now mature field of internet studies: Campbell 2017.) In other words, digital communication media offer multiple new possibilities of “talking back”: posting comments, or even a blog, in response to a newspaper story, now reproduced online; voting for a favorite in a TV-broadcast contest by way of SMS messaging; organizing “smart mobs” via the internet and smartphones to protest against – and, in some cases, successfully depose – corrupt politicians, etc.

Secondly, the diffusion of internet and Web-based connectivity by way of smartphones and other digital devices (e.g., the sensor devices a jogger wears to track and record a run in exquisite detail, including precise location, time, speed, etc.) makes increasingly real for us the ubiquity of digital media. We are increasingly surrounded by an envelope of interacting digital devices – meaning first of all that we are “always on,” always connected (unless we take steps to go offline – steps that are increasingly difficult to accomplish but also increasingly recognized as important to our health and well-being in a post-digital era, e.g. Roose 2019). The ubiquity of our interactive devices means that we are increasingly both the subjects and the objects of what Anders Albrechtslund (2008) early on identified as “voluntary surveillance.” To be sure, such voluntary or lateral surveillance can certainly be enjoyable, even life-saving – e.g., as we keep up with

distant friends and family through a posting on a social networking site such as Facebook. At the same time, however, the mobile or smartphones we carry with us into more or less every corner of our lives – including the (once) most intimate spaces of the bathroom and the bedroom – open up our lives in those spaces to new possibilities of tracking and recording in exquisite detail.

On the one hand, social scientists (among others) can thereby use smartphones as primary conduits into the lives of their informants and subjects of study – often on a massive scale. Such research – especially as enhanced through Big Data collection and AI-/algorithmic techniques of analysis – has dramatically expanded our insights into just about every facet of human behavior (for an overview, Ling 2017). On the other hand, carrying these devices renders us immediately vulnerable to governmental and corporate surveillance, various forms of governmental and private actors’ hacking (e.g., the phone hacking scandal in the UK – CNN 2018), parental efforts to track their children (Gabriels 2016), partners’ ability to track one another’s sexual activities and infidelities (Danaher, Nyholm, and Earp 2018), to engage in sexting as well as revenge porn, etc. In particular, as we will explore more fully below, when such surveillance is not voluntary, our online and offline lives risk becoming more and more like those in a medieval village in which “everybody knows everything about everybody.” As the phenomena of “trial by Internet” and cyberbullying make clear, our increasing inability to hide or get away from those who seek to do us harm in such a medieval village – including, worst case, a self-righteous mob inspired by unproven allegations, for example, of sexual assault – opens up a number of critical ethical (and political) concerns (Jensen 2007).

Moreover, our personal data are being collected in ever increasing amounts through the emerging “Internet of Things” (IoT) – e.g., in the name of so-called Smart Cities which promise greater energy efficiencies, better traffic flow, etc., through constant monitoring of individuals and our devices (including, for example, our cars, our electric meters, our smart assistants, and so on), coupled with a growing web of cameras and sensors embedded in the environment around us. It is not difficult to see that the IoT thereby presents still

more threats to individual and group privacy (e.g., Rouvroy 2008; Bunz and Meikle 2018, 123–5) – especially as the IoT threatens to easily morph into a total surveillance system, as exemplified in the Chinese SCS.

Thirdly, fluid and interactive digital media enjoy a global scope, which leads to still more urgent ethical issues. Our communications can quickly and easily reach very large numbers of people around the globe: like it or not, our use of digital technologies thus makes us cosmopolitans (citizens of the world) in striking new ways. We are forced to take into account the various and often very diverse cultural perspectives on the ethical issues that emerge in our use of digital media. So I will stress throughout this book how the assumptions and ethical norms of different cultures shape specific ways of reflecting on such matters as privacy (chapter 2), copyright (chapter 3), pornography, sexbots, and violence (chapter 5).

Finally, our engagements with digital media have consequences for nothing less foundational than our most basic conceptions of selfhood and identity – of who we are as human beings. To be sure, questions such as “Who am I – really?” and “Who ought I to be?” are among the most abstract and difficult ones we can ask as human beings. Indeed, outside of an occasional philosophy class or, perhaps, a mid-life crisis, we may rarely raise such questions with the sort of sustained attention and informed reflection that they deserve and require. But there are strong theoretical and urgently practical reasons for taking up such questions here. To begin with, the Medium Theory developed by Harold Innis, Elizabeth Eisenstein, Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong (1988), and Joshua Meyrowitz (1985), and, more recently, Naomi Baron (2008) and Zsuzsanna Kondor (2009), demonstrates strong correlations between our diverse modalities of communication and our sense of selfhood. These correlations begin with the stage of orality and what is characterized as a relational sense of selfhood: such a self is made up of and thus dependent upon multiple relationships – beginning with the family (as child, sibling, cousin, etc.) and then the larger social relationships that define one. The emergence of literacy appears to correlate with more individual understandings of selfhood – so much so that Foucault has

characterized writing as a “technology of the self” (1987, 1988). Emphases on individual aspects of identity further emerge in conjunction with the printing press and the expansion of literacy- print, initially via the Protestant Reformation, and then as underlying both much of modern ethical theory and political theories justifying democratic regimes. With the rise of the “secondary orality” of electric media – beginning with radio, movies, and TV and then extending into the age of networked digital media – there appears to be a shift in Western societies (back) toward more relational emphases of selfhood and identity (Ess 2010, 2012, 2017a). There are also important middle grounds here – namely, conceptions of the self as a relational autonomy that conjoin more individual emphases on freedom (autonomy) and the realities of our relationships with one another: relational autonomy is applied, for example, in recent critiques of so- called Quantified Relationship (QR) apps (Martens and Brown 2018).

It is a commonplace in philosophy that our sense of human nature and selfhood drives our primary ethical assumptions and frameworks. In particular, we will begin exploring more fully below how questions of identity immediately interact with our most basic assumptions regarding ethical agency and responsibility. We will further see in our ethical toolkit (chapter 6) that our emphases on either more individual or more relational aspects of selfhood and identity are definitive for (more individually oriented) utilitarian and deontological ethics, in contrast with (more relationally oriented) virtue and feminist ethics and the ethics shaped by Buddhist, Confucian, and African traditions, for example. Like it or not, while questions of identity are, again, among the most difficult we can raise and seek to resolve, our responses to those questions are crucial if we are to make coherent choices regarding the ethical frameworks we think best suited to help us analyze and resolve the ethical challenges evoked by digital media.

Lastly, our assumptions regarding identity and selfhood have immediate significance for how we begin to think about the nature of privacy – specifically, if what we feel and think we need to protect is a more individual and/or more shared or collective sense of privacy (chapter 2). Similar questions hold for our understandings of who should have – and should not have – access to our intellectual

property: i.e., whether we hold to more traditional (meaning, more individual and exclusive) conceptions of property, so that we transfer rights to its use to others only in exchange for monetary or other sorts of considerations, or to more inclusive notions of property, e.g. as an inclusive good to be shared freely, as we routinely do when giving copies of our favorite music and films to friends, for example (chapter 3). By the same token, our underlying notions of selfhood and identity will prove critical to our analyses of the issues surrounding friendship, death online, and democracy (chapter 4) and those evoked by pornography and violence in digital environments, including sexbots (chapter 5).

Digital media ethics: How to proceed? At first glance, developing such an ethics would seem to be an impossible task. First of all, digital media often present us with strikingly new sorts of interactions with one another. So it is not always clear whether – and, if so, then how – ethical guidelines and approaches already in place (and comparatively well established) for traditional media would apply. But again, as emphasized in the term “post-digital,” digital media remain analogue media in essential ways – the music arriving at our ears remains analogue, etc. And so the lifeworlds of human experience that digital media now increasingly define remain connected with the analogue lifeworlds of earlier generations and cultures: this means that there remain important continuities with earlier ethical experience and reflection as well.

In addition, digital media as global media thus force us to confront culturally variable views – regarding not simply basic ethical norms and practices but, more fundamentally, how ethics is to be done. In particular, we will see that non-Western views – represented in this volume by Confucian, Buddhist, and African perspectives – challenge traditional Western notions of the primary importance of the individual, and thereby Western understandings of ethical responsibility as primarily individual responsibility. That is, while we in the West recognize that multiple factors can come into play in influencing an individual’s decision – e.g., to tell the truth in the face

of strong pressures to lie, to violate another’s rights in some way, etc. – we generally hold individuals responsible for their actions, as the individual agent who both makes decisions and acts independently of others. But, these days, our interactions with one another predominantly take place via digital media and networks. This means, more specifically, that multiple actors and agents – not only multiple humans (including software designers as well as users) but also multiple computers, networks, bots, etc. – must work together to make specific acts (both beneficent and harmful) possible. Hence, in parallel with the distribution of information via networks, our ethical responsibility may be more accurately understood in terms of a distributed responsibility (Simon 2015). That is, ethical responsibility for our various actions via digital media and networks is “stretched” across the network. This understanding of distributed responsibility is, in fact, not an entirely new idea; rather, it is one shared with both pre- modern Western philosophies and religions and multiple philosophies and religions around the globe.

Certainly, this is a Very Good Thing: it suggests important ethical norms and practices that can be shared among the multiple cultures and peoples now brought into digital communication with one another. But it represents a major challenge, especially, to Western thinkers used to understanding ethical responsibility in primarily individualistic terms.

Is digital media ethics possible? Grounds for hope These challenges are certainly daunting. Indeed, when we first begin to grapple with digital media ethics, especially with a view toward incorporating a range of global perspectives and changing notions of selfhood and responsibility, the tasks before us may seem to be overwhelming and perhaps simply futile. But both our collective experience with earlier technological developments and more recent experience in the domain of information and computing ethics (ICE) suggest that, despite the considerable challenges of developing new ethical frameworks for new technologies, we are nonetheless able to do

so. Indeed, this experience provides us with a number of examples of ethical resolutions that “work” both globally (as they involve discerning shared norms and understandings) and locally (as they further involve developing ways of interpreting and applying shared norms in specific cultural contexts – and thereby preserving the distinctive ethical differences that define diverse cultural identities).

As a primary example: the European Union has drawn up and now implemented more rigorous privacy protections than were defined under previous data regulations (GDPR 2016; Berbers et al. 2018). In 2015, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) established an Ethics Advisory Group, assigned to develop a “new digital ethics” to help guide the specific implementations of the GDPR, including sustaining the rigorous EU privacy protections vis-à-vis the emerging Internet of Things and growing uses of Artificial Intelligence (AI). This new digital ethics, however, turns squarely on two ethical frameworks we have begun to explore here – namely, deontology (roughly, an insistence on human autonomy and thereby basic rights, including the right to privacy) and virtue ethics (briefly, a focus on achieving good lives of flourishing through the development of our best capacities). For example, the EDPS Ethics Advisory Group (EAG) foregrounds the central importance of autonomy and freedom, including as these are grounded in the philosophical work of Immanuel Kant (Burgess et al. 2018, 16). Similarly, both the EAG report and the more philosophical account of the key ethical pillars of a “Good AI Society” (Floridi et al. 2018, 689f.) foreground the central aims of virtue ethics – namely, flourishing, well-being, and good lives (Burgess et al. 2018, 21; Floridi et al. 2018, 690f.). At the same time, these ethical frameworks are (also) applied in a pluralistic fashion. So the EAG asserts that basic norms and values – such as autonomy, dignity, equality, and so on – are both central “to the European project” (Burgess et al. 2018, 16). Indeed, these are claimed to be universal – while recognizing that “these values must be understood and implemented in the social, cultural, political, economic and not least, technological contexts in which the crucial link between personal data and personal experience is made” (Burgess et al. 2018, 9).

Similar comments hold for the long-term experience of the Association

of Internet Researchers’ (AoIR’s) development of internet research ethics guidelines since 2000 (Ess 2017b). Taken together, these examples suggest that digital media ethics – as likewise requiring us to address the ethical dimensions evoked by developing new technologies, including how these implicate diverse cultural norms and traditions – is nonetheless a doable project.

Moreover: extensive evidence argues that with few exceptions, as enculturated human beings, we are already deeply ethical (at least by the time you are reading a book such as this). In Aristotelian terms, you are already experienced with confronting ethical difficulties; you are already equipped with important foundations and, most importantly, phronēsis as a central skill of ethical judgment (more on this below). Be of good courage!

How to do ethics in the new mediascape: Dialogical approaches, difference, and pluralism These examples of the AoIR guidelines and recent EU law and ethics further offer important suggestions for how to proceed – specifically, as both examples share two elements in common. To begin with, they each incorporate what we can think of as dialogical approaches – approaches that emphasize the importance of listening for and respecting differences between our diverse ethical views.

Ordinarily – especially if our thinking is shaped by a polarized either/or common in popular media reporting – we tend to understand the difference between two views in only one possible way: if the two views are different, one must be right and the other wrong. Again, as we will explore more carefully in chapter 6, such approaches are called ethical absolutism or ethical monism. These may work well in certain contexts and with regard to some ethical matters. But, especially in a global context, a severe consequence of such ethical monism is to force us into thinking that one – and only one – particular ethical framework and set of norms and values (usually, those of the culture[s] in which we grew up) are right, and those that

are different can only be wrong.

In the face of such monism and its intolerance of different views, we are often tempted to take a second position – one called ethical relativism. Ethical relativism argues that beliefs, norms, practices, frameworks, etc., are legitimate solely in relation to a specific culture, time, and place. In this way, ethical relativism allows us to avoid the intolerance of ethical monism and to accept all views as legitimate. Such an approach is especially attractive as it prevents us from having to judge among diverse views and cultures: we can endorse all of them as legitimate in at least a relative way (i.e., relative to a specific culture, etc.).

But the examples of ethical pluralism in both internet research ethics and EU law and ethics surrounding privacy and data privacy protection show how such pluralism stands as a third possibility – one that is something of a middle ground between absolutism and relativism. That is, to begin with, such pluralism avoids the either/or of ethical monism – an either/or that forces us to choose between two different views, endorsing one as right and the other as wrong. Rather, pluralism shows how different views may emerge as diverse interpretations or applications of shared norms, beliefs, practices, etc. To be sure, not all of our differences can be resolved so neatly; but, when pluralism succeeds, the differences between two (or more) views thus do not force us to accept only one view as right and all the others as wrong. Rather, we can thereby see that many (but not necessarily all) different views may be right, insofar as they function as diverse interpretations and applications of shared norms and values.

In addition, ethical pluralism thereby overcomes a second either/or – namely, the apparent polarity between ethical monism and ethical relativism themselves. That is, when we first encounter these two positions – and, once more, especially if our thinking has been shaped by prevailing dualities in the thinking of those around us, including popular media reports – our initial response may again be either/or: either monism is right or relativism is right, but not both. In important ways, ethical pluralism says that both are right – and both are wrong. From a pluralist perspective, monism is correct in its presumption that universally valid norms exist, but mistaken in its insistence that the

differences we observe between diverse cultures in terms of their practices and behaviors must mean that only one is right and the rest are wrong. Similarly, from a pluralist perspective, ethical relativism is correct in its attempt to endorse a wide range of different cultural norms and practices as legitimate, but mistaken, first of all, in its denial of universally valid norms.

We will explore these theories of absolutism, relativism, and pluralism in more detail in chapter 6. Here it suffices simply to introduce these possibilities of thinking in an initial way to help us move beyond the either/or thinking that tends to prevail in popular media – and thereby, perhaps, our own thinking.

Given this first introduction, perhaps we can now see more clearly why the either/or underlying many popular media reports – especially of the moral panic variety – works against our best thinking. Ethical pluralism requires us to think in a “both/and” sort of way, as it conjoins both shared norms and their diverse interpretations and applications in different cultures, times, and places. But if the only way we are able to think about ethical matters is in terms of the either/or of ethical monism, then we literally cannot conceive of how to move beyond the right/wrong dualisms with which it often confronts us. That is, we will find it difficult conceptually to move toward pluralism and other forms of middle grounds, because our either/or thinking insists that we can only have either unity (shared norms) or difference (in interpretation/application), but not both.

Stated differently: in dialogical processes, we emphasize learning to listen for and accept differences – rather than rejecting them from the outset because different views must thereby be wrong (ethical monism). But we also do not come to endorse all possible views as correct (ethical relativism), because not every view can be understood as a legitimate interpretation or application of a shared norm. Rather, dialogical processes help us sort through, on the one hand, which views may stand as diverse interpretations of shared norms in a pluralism and, on the other, those views (e.g., endorsing genocide, racism, violence against women as inferior, etc.) that cannot be justified as interpretations of shared norms.

Further considerations: Ethical judgments Another difficulty with the “moral panics” approach to ethical issues in the new mediascape is that it suggests that “ethics” works like this:

1. There are clear, universally valid norms of right and wrong that we can take as our ethical starting points – as premises in an ethical argument.1

2. All that “ethics” really involves is applying these initial premises to the particulars of the current case in front of us – in a straightforward deduction that concludes the right thing to do, as based on our first premises.

3. Once we have our ethical answers in this way, we can be confident that our answers are right; those who disagree with us must be wrong.

This approach to ethics is not necessarily mistaken; on the contrary, it seems that much of the time, most of us in fact do not perceive an ethical problem or difficulty in the situation we’re facing – because our ethical frameworks already provide us with reasonably clear and straightforward answers along just these lines. Most of us, for example, do not routinely lie, steal, or kill – despite sometimes what may be considerable temptations to do so – because we accept the general norms and principles that forbid such acts.

At the same time, however, this initial understanding of ethics obscures a number of important dimensions of ethical reflection.

To begin with, this initial approach runs counter to what seems actually to happen when we encounter genuine ethical problems and puzzles. Take, for example, the problem of downloading music illegally from the internet. We all know that this is illegal, but we are also influenced in our thinking by other considerations, e.g.:

I’m not likely to get caught, so there’s virtually no possibility that this will actually hurt me in some way.

The internationally famous musicians – and the multinational companies that sell their music as product for profit – are certainly

wealthy enough. They won’t feel the loss of the 2 cents profit they would otherwise enjoy if I paid for the music.

Copyright laws are unfair in principle: they are written for the advantage of the big and already wealthy countries. Thus, I think illegal downloading by a struggling student in a developing country is a justified form of protest against multinational capitalism and its exploitation of the poor.

Whatever the law says, the law is the law: I think it should be respected so far as possible – not only in order to avoid punishment, but in order thereby to contribute to good social order.

Even if the chances of getting caught are vanishingly small, if I do get caught, the negative consequences would be enormous (fines, possibly problems at work, maybe even jail time). It’s not worth breaking the law to save a few bucks on music.

While internationally famous artists may not miss my contribution to their royalties, local and/or new artists certainly will. I’ll not rip them off by illegally copying their music – I’ll just order the song online or buy the CD instead.

The point here is not only that we are often pulled in competing directions by values and principles that appear to contradict one another. In addition, the more fundamental problem is: given the specific details of our particular situations, how do we know which principle, value, norm, rule, etc., is in fact relevant to our decision?

That is, in direct contrast to the “top-down” deductive model of ethical reasoning – i.e., one that moves from given general principles to the specifics of our particular case – this second ethical experience begins with the specifics of our particular case, in order then to try to determine (“bottom-up”) which general principles, values, norms, etc., in fact apply.

This second maneuver is thereby far more difficult, as it first requires us to judge – based on the particulars of our case – which general principles, norms, values, etc., apply to our case. Clearly, without such general principles, we cannot make a reasoned decision. But the great

difficulty is this:

there is no general rule/procedure/algorithm for discerning which values, principles, norms, approaches apply; rather, these must be discerned and judged to be relevant in the first place, before we can proceed to any inferences/conclusions about what to do.

Aristotle referred to this kind of judgment as phronēsis – often translated as “practical judgment.” For Aristotle (and for many ethical traditions around the world), the development of this sort of practical judgment – i.e., one that can help us discern in the first place just which norms and values do apply to the particulars of a specific case – is an ongoing project that continues throughout one’s entire life. This is in part because it requires experience – both of successes and of failures – as these help us learn (oftentimes, the hard way) what “works” ethically and what doesn’t. The first time we try to learn a new skill or ability – say, ice-skating – we are certain to stumble and fall, perhaps catastrophically, and almost certainly more than once. Analogously, our first efforts to grapple with difficult ethical issues that require phronēsis do not always go well: we are caught in the ethical “bootstrapping” problem of needing precisely the ability to judge that will be robust enough to help only after it has been developed and honed through many years of (sometimes hard) experience.

The good news is that – however daunting all of this might seem – the Aristotelian view (among many others) argues that the vast majority of us are already ethical beings equipped with phronesis, and thereby the foundations and abilities for taking on these challenges.

Overview of the book, suggestions for use By now, readers should have a reasonably good idea of the features of digital media that lead to specific sorts of ethical issues that we will explore more fully in subsequent chapters. I also hope that you are beginning to have a sense that, especially with regard to digital media that interconnect us globally, it is important to do so in ways that go beyond the either/or polarities that tend to dominate popular media

reporting.

Chapter arrangement, reading suggestions The book is organized in a somewhat unusual way, but one that has proven to be effective and useful. I use a “circle” approach to exploring and teaching ethics, one that intentionally moves back and forth between: (a) specific, real-world examples from how we actually use digital media, and thereby encounter specific ethical problems and (on a good day) legitimate resolutions; and (b) a number of theories that often help resolve such ethical challenges and difficulties. This differs from a more common approach in ethics texts – namely, beginning with a listing and discussion of important theories, on the sensible presumption that students can best come to grips with concrete ethical difficulties only after such a comprehensive introduction to ethical theories. Instead, I’ve placed ethical theory at the end of the text (chapter 6). The idea is to encourage students and instructors to take up just two or three of these theories at the beginning and apply them to the specific cases explored in the opening chapters. After students acquire greater facility with how two or three theories work in their application to real-world cases, they can return with their instructor to take up additional theories – and then apply these in turn to additional cases. Placing the theory/meta-theory chapter at the end of the text thereby gives students and instructors greater flexibility in determining for themselves just how much theory they wish to absorb vis-à-vis specific issues and problems. At the same time, it remains perfectly possible to take the more usual approach, if one wishes, by starting with chapter 6 and then turning to any one of the specific cases taken up in chapters 1 through 5.

This circle organization reflects a key discovery in my own teaching experience. After some years of the more usual “first, all the theories, then the applications” approach, my students made it clear that they were more likely to acquire facility with both central ethical theories and their application if we instead began with just a few theories and then applied these to specific cases. Whatever the disadvantages of initially confronting specific examples with a more limited set of theories, it also often happens that students will thereby discover

precisely through these applications that their initial theories are somehow inadequate. Specifically, the first theories often do not allow them to resolve the problems in ways that closely fit their own ethical intuitions and sensibilities. This is pedagogical gold: students see on their own the need for further theory/theories, and so, as we return from specific cases to more theories (making the circle from praxis to theory), they are characteristically more interested in new theories than if we had simply worked through all of them from the outset.

By the same token, nothing prevents us from going back to reconsider earlier cases in light of more recently acquired theories – and thereby seeing these cases in a new light (making the circle from theory to praxis). Indeed, doing so often helps us discern new and more satisfying resolutions of the ethical problems involved. Such resolutions thereby enhance our appreciation not only for how a specific theory may offer distinctive advantages vis-à-vis a specific case, but also for how a now greater range of theories work in their application to real-world issues and problems.

Instructors and their students who want to follow this approach can begin with the opening sections of chapter 6 on utilitarianism, deontology, and ethical relativism, absolutism, and pluralism, and then move on to chapter 2 (privacy) and, perhaps, chapter 3 (copyright and intellectual property). Chapter 3 further explores virtue ethics, Confucian ethics, and the (Southern) African framework of ubuntu: again, taking up the relevant sections in chapter 6 along with these components of chapter 3 should be helpful. These elements, along with feminist ethics and ethics of care from chapter 6 should be completed prior to chapters 4 (friendship, death online, and democracy) and 5 (pornography, sexbots, and violence). But some readers, depending on their interest in the specific topics of each chapter, may prefer to go to chapter 5 before chapter 4 (or 3, for that matter), as more concrete and specific in certain ways, before taking up chapter 4 (or 3).

Case-studies; discussion/reflection/writing/research questions Each chapter includes real-world examples intended to elicit initial

reflection; these are accompanied by a series of questions and suggestions for “reflection/ discussion/writing/research.” These questions and suggestions can be used by students and classes as initial catalysts for reflection, discussion, and perhaps informal writing. Instructors may also find useful suggestions here for questions and material that they can develop into formal writing and research assignments more precisely tuned to their own curriculum and goals. But these are only starters and examples. Instructors and students will certainly come up with their own preferred questions, case-studies, etc.

OK – enjoy!

Notes 1 Here I use the terms “premise,” “argument,” “conclusion,” etc., in

their logical sense. An understanding of the basic element of logic is essential for undertaking ethics – and many ethics texts include an introduction to logic (e.g.Tavani 2013, ch. 3, etc.). For the sake of brevity, I have chosen instead to introduce and discuss a minimal number of logical elements: analogy and questionable analogy in chapter 3; the distinction between exclusive and inclusive “or”s in chapter 5; and the basic fallacy of affirming the consequent in chapter 6. Otherwise, in addition to any preferred resources of instructors, I would further recommend Weston (2018) as an excellent introduction to logic.

CHAPTER TWO Privacy in the (Post-)Digital Era? Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

(Council of Europe, The European Convention on Human Rights, Section I, Article 8 [1950])

Under ubuntu [an African worldview emphasizing connectedness and community welfare over individual welfare] … personal information is common to the group, and attempts to withhold or sequester personal information are viewed as abnormal or deviant … ubuntu lacks any emphasis on individual privacy.

(Burk 2007, 103)

Every teenager wants privacy. Every single last one of them, whether they tell you or not, wants privacy. – “Waffles”

(boyd and Marwick 2011)

[T]he majority of the communications in our [NSA] databases are not the communications of targets, they’re the communications of ordinary people…. They’re the most deep and intense and intimate and damaging private moments of their lives, and we’re seizing [them] without any authorisation, without any reason … their cell phone locations, their purchase records, their private text messages, their phone calls, the content of those calls in certain circumstances, transaction histories – and from this we can create a perfect, or nearly perfect, record of each individual’s activity, and those activities are increasingly becoming permanent records.

(Edward Snowden in Rusbridger and MacAskill 2014)

Chapter overview These diverse perspectives on privacy lead us into initial reflections and then exercises on privacy and anonymity online. Following some cautions regarding the notion and possible (mis)uses of “culture,” we explore how different people in different cultures understand and value “privacy” and private life in different ways. We then examine the important meta-ethical positions of ethical absolutism, ethical relativism, and ethical pluralism. These positions shape our responses to the diversity of cultural views and beliefs regarding privacy – diversity that must be preserved, in my view, alongside any effort to establish a global ethics of norms and practices that are shared around the world.

Information and privacy in the global digital age “Privacy” and anonymity online – is there any? These days, most of us are so accustomed to being tracked one way or another – including by our smartphones, health-tracking devices, GPS-equipped digital cameras, etc. – that we may not give any of this a second thought. Whether for managing our health, finding our way in a new place via Google maps, or keeping track of our children (Gabriels 2016) or partners (Danaher, Nyholm, and Earp 2018) – having our rather precise physical location constantly monitored and known to at least selected apps makes contemporary life more convenient, healthier, and safer.

Mostly. Many of these apps can also be used for darker purposes, starting with various forms of stalking, harassment, and worse. And there are times and circumstances in which we very much want to protect our identity and locational privacy. Constant tracking – ramped up in recent years with the rise of so-called smart assistants (Alexa, Siri, Google Voice, etc.) – for the sake of selling our data, feeding us advertisements, or serving up the next shopping or music

recommendations can sometimes be more irritating and creepy, if not downright scary, than helpful.

Specifically, receiving death threats from those who vehemently disagree with us politically or ideologically is no laughing matter. Such attacks – dramatically exemplified in the “#Gamergate” controversies, beginning in 2014 – have become more extensive and more prominent, in part as they can be easily organized through any number of anonymous and pseudo-anonymous communication venues such as Reddit, 4Chan, and others. In #Gamergate, primarily women – including “female and minority game developers, journalists, and critics” (Massanari 2017, 330) – were targeted with “doxxing,” i.e., collecting and then publishing online personal information such as home addresses and phone numbers, followed by ongoing campaigns of rape- and death-threats (Massanari 2017, 333– 4. Such attacks are now increasingly common for politicians and other public figures, whatever their political or ideological affiliation. Such events – along with the Snowden revelations – have made it painfully clear that privacy is increasingly difficult to sustain in an “always on” digital era.

In order to get a better understanding of how online communication works – in part, so as to develop a better sense of how such communication can be protected when needed – let’s play a bit with good old-fashioned email (still one of the primary and most widely used applications of the internet). The goal here is to see how much information your email contains about you that is essentially open and public – and to reflect on how far you may prefer that some of this information remain private.

To begin with: most email clients (i.e., the software packages such as Outlook, [Apple] Mail, and Thunderbird) are set to show users only the basic contents of an email: sender, recipient, cc’s, subject line, and email body. But look again: these clients also allow you to review the complete contents of your email. In current versions of Thunderbird, for example, after selecting a given message, go to the “View” menu and then click on the option “Message Source.”

INITIAL REFLECTION/DISCUSSION/WRITING QUESTIONS

1 Select a recent email from a friend, and then view the complete source of the email as outlined above. (NB: if you use a webmail application such as Gmail, you may not be able to see the complete source in any easy or straightforward way. As we are about to see, there is good reason for this.)

(A) What strikes you about the information contained here in the lines before the usual information about sender and receiver addresses?

(B) Notice that each email includes here a history of how it was sent, usually in a format like this (from a recent email between two of my accounts):

Received: from mail-mx01.uio.no (129.240.169.59) by mail- ex03.exprod.uio.no

(129.240.52.6) with Microsoft SMTP Server (TLS) id 15.0.1395.4 via Frontend

Transport; Fri, 11 Jan 2019 12:28:31 +0100

Received: from aibo.runbox.com ([91.220.196.211])

…

Received: from [10.9.9.210] (helo=mailfront10.runbox.com)

by mailtransmit03.runbox with esmtp (Exim 4.86_2)

(envelope-from <[email protected]>)

id 1ghuzG-00011o-Kw

for [email protected]; Fri, 11 Jan 2019 12:28:30 +0100

In particular, notice the first IP (Internet Protocol) address: 129.240.169.59. What, if anything, does this IP address tell you?

To get a quick idea: copy and paste the address into the relevant field on the “WhatsMyIP” website: www.whatsmyip.org/ip-geo-location. In this case, the resulting identification placed me rather precisely in the university building where my office – and thus the source of this email – are located.

(NB: if you are not able to find this information easily using your mail

client and/or in a specific email – i.e., depending on how your friend’s email service works – again, we are about to see there may be a very good reason for this.)

Certainly, most of my students are quite familiar with VPNs (Virtual Private Networks), primarily as they use these to access streaming and other services in another country. They are thus somewhat familiar with the fact that all communication via the internet depends entirely on IP addresses. But very few of them seem to be aware that their IP addresses are also included in relatively open ways in their email (depending, as we have seen, on the mail provider).

And what about your web-browsing?

SECOND REFLECTION/DISCUSSION/WRITING

2 If you use the web browser Firefox, download and install the add-on “Lightbeam.” (Under the “Tools” menu, select the “Addons” tab, which should take you to an introductory page that explains what add-ons are. Look for the link that allows you to “Browse all add-ons”: this will take you to a second page that includes a search box. Type in “Lightbeam” and follow the directions from there.) As Lightbeam runs, it tracks the websites that are tracking you as you navigate through the Web – and presents its findings in a graph that shows the increasingly complex set of links to the sites you have visited and the services they use to record your browsing activities.

After a few days of letting Lightbeam run, have a look at the graph. And/or: if you are interested in seeing more of the details of how such tracking works, you can install an add-on such as “NoScript,” “Privacy Badger” from the Electronic Freedom Foundation (https://www.eff.org/privacybadger), along with “Ublock Origin” (Wallen 2018). These add-ons give you control over the mini- programs or scripts that are required for many of the conveniences a given website offers, such as search functions – as well as those used to track your web-browsing. The add-on specifically warns web servers that you do not want to be tracked, thus giving you the possibility to “opt in” to such tracking, rather than accede to it unawares and without explicit consent (the current default in the US– one we will explore more fully below).

At the same time, however, you will notice that these add-ons will often “break a page” – that is, render it unusable past initial browsing. Such experiences thus highlight one of the central conundrums of living in a post-digital era: we enjoy the conveniences such sites offer us – are these conveniences (sometimes, indeed, necessities) worth the trade-off of our personal information?

(C) What strikes you about the resulting patterns and connections that Lightbeam (and/or NoScript and Privacy Badger) presents to you? Are there any surprises here?

(D) As we will explore more fully below, “privacy” online is not simply a matter of protecting our own personal or sensitive information. Moreover, in an age dominated by our use of social networking sites, microblogging services such as Twitter, shared video sites such as YouTube, etc., our internet use and web-browsing also reveal a great deal about those to whom we are closest. In at least some cultures and contexts, such as Denmark and Norway, what we want to protect is not solely the personal or sensitive information of an individual but also the personal information of those within our “intimate sphere” (intimsfære) – our close circle of friends and family. In these contexts, what is important to protect is not simply individual privacy but our “private life” (privatlivet) as made up by these close relationships.

So, before going much further in thinking about privacy, we need to be clearer about just what we want protected and/or what we have a right to have protected. Hence two questions here:

(i) In terms of the information available about you as you send email and use the Web, just what do you think/feel needs to be kept within your control? Personal and sensitive information about you – and, if so, what counts as such information? And/or personal and sensitive information about those with whom you communicate and interact in various online environments, beginning with your close circle of friends and family?

(ii) Given the amount of information you supply – in the form of your IP address that accompanies your email, and especially the picture of your web-browsing habits and patterns created as various websites and services record your IP address along with your specific visits –

how much “privacy” do you appear to have online? More specifically: given your response to the first question above, do online environments allow you to control and protect the kinds of information you think/feel should be protected, e.g., as a right?

(E) Whatever your responses in (D), explain why. That is, what arguments/evidence/reasons and/or other grounds, including feelings or intuitions, can you appeal to that would justify your response(s)?

Of course, it is no surprise (at least to most of us) that companies, governments, and some savvy individuals have access to extensive databases that record and document individual web-browsing: when coupled with other databases that record, say, your purchases at your favorite store (whether online or offline) and increasingly powerful “data-mining” techniques that cross-correlate this information, such institutions (and at least some hackers) thus learn an astonishing amount of detail about you as an individual consumer. And so it is that Amazon or Facebook, for example, along with thousands of other corporations, are able to “micro-target” advertising precisely to you and tailored to meet your apparent interests and needs.

While much of this may be useful to interested shoppers, or at least benign, it is certainly not without its risks and discomforts. To cite a now classic case: early in 2012, the US chain store Target sent coupons for baby cribs and clothes to a high-school girl. Target’s sophisticated software analysis of the young girl’s shopping activities indicated a high probability that she was pregnant – but the coupons came as a less than pleasant surprise to her father who, until the coupons’ arrival, had not been informed of the situation (Duhigg 2012).

All of this makes clear that IP addresses are indeed “sensitive and personal” (to use the language of EU data privacy protection laws): this is all the more so in an era of Big Data techniques of aggregating the thousands and tens of thousands of “digital breadcrumbs” we leave behind on a daily and weekly basis. But this further helps to highlight the fact that there are important differences between how diverse countries and cultures decide to treat IP addresses. US-based Google has long held that IP addresses are not “personal information”: by contrast, European Union data commissioners ruled in 2008 that IP

addresses are indeed personal information and thus require data privacy protection (White 2008). More recently, the EU has drafted and implemented even more stringent data privacy regulations as implemented in the GDPR (2016). This is in part as “the maximum fines [for violation of privacy regulations] are now very high” – i.e., up to 4 percent of global gross income (Berbers et al. 2018, 23f.). In fact, Google has now been fined c. US$57 million for violation of these new regulations (Romm 2019). Stay tuned …

More broadly, we have begun to see that there are indeed strong cultural influences on how we understand and value “privacy” – beginning with strong differences between the United States and the European Union, as these examples make clear. However these contrasting views may be resolved (if at all), here we can continue by noting that it is possible to establish and sustain at least some level of anonymity online: in addition to using security add-ons such as NoScript, you can explore using “anonymizer” software and webmail and web-browsing services that hide this sort of information, beginning with Tor (www.torproject.org/index.html.en). As well, by using encryption software (e.g., the freely available “Pretty Good Privacy” software), users can send emails that can be easily deciphered and read only by recipients who have been given the required encryption key, thereby assuring themselves a reasonably strong degree of privacy. But unless users take these unusual – and, in my experience, not widely familiar – steps, their transmissions across the internet will thus be more or less open to anyone who cares to look.

Similar comments hold, by the way, for people using their computers to share information through peer-to-peer (p2p) networks – for example, in downloading and uploading music and other files through a network such as BitTorrent, but also in instant messaging exchanges, including the use of video cameras for video chat and conferencing. Not to mention doing all of this more and more on your smartphone. (Tor, for example, is available for Android devices, along with encrypted messaging services such as WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, and others.)

Finally, you can easily check whether your information, beginning with your email account(s), has been hacked or “pwnd” (as someone

has taken over its control): https://haveibeenpwned.com. The reality these days is that, in all likelihood, yes, you have been hacked. And especially outside the more protected spaces of the EU and Scandinavia, this means increasing obligation on individuals to take such measures to protect their information.

REFLECTION/DISCUSSION/WRITING

“PRIVACY”: A MATTER OF CULTURE

As the examples of Google vs. the EU suggest – and as we might expect – our understandings of privacy vary widely, not simply from individual to individual but also from culture to culture. The following exercise is intended to give you and your cohorts an initial set of indicators of where your sensibilities regarding privacy might lie upon a continuum of possibilities. It may also help you begin to think about what you mean by “privacy” as a concept or notion.

Consider the “smart ID” project in Thailand – a project that aimed to create and issue national identity cards that contain the following information:

Name

Address

Date of Birth

Religion

Blood Group

Marital Status

Social Security

Health Insurance

Driver’s License

Taxation Data [income bracket, taxes paid/owed]

Health-care Entitlements

Officially Registered Poor Person?

Educational Attainment

Utilities User Info [how much water/electricity you have used, etc.]

Credit Bureau Info [whether you have defaulted on loans, how much you owe, etc.]

Log-in Information through Govt’s App Center

Bank Account Number

[The last two bits of information will allow whoever can read the card to check your bank account as well.]

(Kitiyadisai 2005, 22; Soraj Hongladarom, personal communication, 2019)

REFLECTION/DISCUSSION/WRITING

(A) Where do you draw the line? Beginning with your own responses, which of the elements of identity would you be comfortable having encoded on a chip in a national ID card? Which of these elements do you think/feel/believe should not be included in a national ID card?

(B) Why? In both cases, what arguments/evidence/reasons and/or other grounds, including feelings or intuitions, can you appeal to that would justify your response(s)?

(C) You may want to compare your and your cohorts’ sensibilities with the following, which I’ve observed in using this example with students and faculty from a variety of cultural backgrounds.

Roughly, reactions/responses range from a minimum to a maximum amount of information being designated as public or private. These variations, moreover, appear to correlate with several values and sensibilities that are known to vary from culture to culture. One of the most important is suggested in the set of quotations at the beginning of this chapter – in the contrast between the Council of Europe’s articulation of what amounts to individual privacy as a human right vis-à-vis a lack of emphasis on individual privacy in the worldview of ubuntu, for example. Indeed, we will see that this lack of emphasis on individual privacy – in part because of a greater emphasis on community harmony and integration – is characteristic of a wide range of non-Western cultures and traditions.

And within the domain of Western countries and cultures, there are

further variations in our expectations regarding privacy that correlate with often very different understandings of the role of the state vis-à- vis the life of the individual.

So, for example, most US students – if they accept the idea of a national identity card at all – are moderately comfortable with a card that would contain name, address, date of birth, and Social Security number. Perhaps religion. Perhaps blood group (in case of a medical emergency). Perhaps driver’s license. Perhaps marital status. But it becomes unclear how much the federal government – or anyone else, for that matter, besides the person who handles my medical bills – needs to know about my health insurance. As for taxation data, including income data – no, thank you! (And, of course, while there are plenty of poor people in the US, they are not “officially registered” – nor, I imagine, would anyone be eager to have that registration included in their identity card.) In Norway, by contrast, everyone’s tax records are published annually online – in part, I am told, so that everyone can see that everyone else is contributing their fair share to the common good.

Danish students and faculty draw the line quickly at religion. This is in keeping with a strong Danish sensibility – encoded in Danish data protection laws (and those of the European Union) – that insists on a (more or less) absolute freedom of belief and viewpoint in matters of political ideology and religion. But if we are to enjoy such freedom (as we will explore more fully below), our beliefs and viewpoints must be protected as personal information.

What about Thai people? Roughly speaking, while there is a strong opposition among some activists and academics to the national “smart ID card,” they have been accepted by the majority of the population as necessary – in part, for example, as such cards, the government has argued, will help in the fight against domestic terrorism. By the same token, while there has been some resistance in the People’s Republic of China regarding the emerging SCS – one that is far more comprehensive in terms of the information it collects – there is also broad support for the system as it promises to reduce corruption while rewarding those who obey the larger social rules: such a system will contribute to “law-abiding and ethical conduct in Chinese society and

economy” (Kostka 2018, 3).

Finally, if you come from a culture shaped by emphases on community harmony – as the ubuntu example suggests, you may see no (good) reason at all for wanting any form of individual privacy.

Overall, then, there emerge these points along a continuum of possible responses:

Minimal info ... Moderate info ... Maximum info (Denmark) (US) (Thailand) (ubuntu)

(Chinese Social Credit System)

Given this continuum and set of points for the sake of specific national/cultural references, where have you and your cohorts drawn the line?

So far as you can tell at this point, how might your sensibilities regarding privacy be connected with the larger national, political, and cultural environments in which you find yourselves?

Interlude: Can we meaningfully talk about “culture?” Q: How do you tell the difference between an introverted Norwegian and an extroverted Norwegian?

A: The extroverted Norwegian looks at your shoes when he’s talking to you.

Johnny Søraker told me this joke in 2005, in response to a joke I passed on from Minnesota: “Did you hear about the Norwegian man who loved his wife so much he almost told her?” Both jokes trade on the cultural stereotype of Norwegians as very reserved; both are funny, in my view – especially if they are told by Norwegians (or their descendants) as a way of poking fun at their own tendencies and habits.

These jokes help make a larger point: there are behavior patterns (beginning with language), norms and values, preferences,

communication styles, and judgments regarding what counts as beauty, good taste, etc., that are characteristic of one group of people in contrast with others. Since the nineteenth century, anthropologists have accustomed us to thinking of these sets in terms of “culture.” So, in the exercise above, we’ve seen associations between specific attitudes and beliefs regarding privacy and larger (primarily national) cultures. “Culture” is a constant thread throughout this volume, but it is critical to make clear from the outset: (a) how far such references are useful; and (b) in what ways these uses of “culture” are limited and, indeed, potentially misleading – even destructive.

To begin with, as I hope these Norwegian jokes suggest, such generalizations about (national) cultures contain at least some grains of truth. In this case, that is, it seems safe to say – as a generalization – that indeed many (if not most) of the people born and raised in Norway are, in comparison with, say, the average Midwestern American, more shy and reserved. Such generalizations are useful, first of all, as starting points for thinking through our differences and similarities. Indeed, for many (most?) people, our culture (however difficult it is to define) usually serves as a core component of our identity, one that demarcates in various ways how we are both alike (in relation to those who share at least many of the elements of the same culture) and different (from those shaped by different cultures).

For example, as a Midwesterner, I know that (most of) my US East Coast friends will speak and walk more quickly than is the norm in Middle America. These sorts of differences are then the occasion for our judging – or, as frequently happens, misjudging – one another on the basis of what is “normal” (in at least a statistical sense) for our own culture. For example, in many US Midwestern small towns, the norm is to be “friendly” with cashiers and sales clerks, so as to spend a little time in conversation during the course of an otherwise commercial exchange. This friendliness is often (mis)interpreted as time-wasting superficiality by some of my US East Coast friends. In turn, their tendency to avoid such small talk often tempts Midwesterners to (mis)judge them as abrupt, unfriendly, aloof, perhaps arrogant.

And, of course, as we move across national cultures, the differences become even more striking. So, as the jokes above suggest,

Norwegians tend to be much more reserved, for example, than Southern Europeans. And so on.

These examples illustrate three critical points to be kept in mind whenever “culture” appears in this text. First, up to a point at least, these sorts of generalizations are useful – indeed, at points, essential – if we are to understand and communicate respectfully with one another. Simply, the better we understand such cultural differences, the better we can anticipate how to interpret and communicate appropriately with those who do not share our own cultural values and communicative preferences. For example, I am less likely to misinterpret my East Coast friend’s curt response (curt as compared with the norm for a Midwesterner) as rude or unfriendly, and more likely to understand it as intended – that is, as efficient, to the point, and thereby respectful of our time as a limited and thus valuable commodity.

More broadly, these differences are interesting and enriching, as they make us aware of what deeply shapes our individual identities and group norms, and thereby of the incredible richness and diversity of human societies. In particular, these generalizations should thus be helpful to us in coming to understand both ourselves and the multiple Others around us, as we are both similar and irreducibly different in critical ways. Doing so, finally, is necessary if we are to overcome the twin dangers of ethnocentrism (assuming our own ways of doing things are universal), and then judging Others as inferior because their ways are different from our own. Human history is too full of the sorts of warfare, colonization, enslavement, and imperialism that follow upon such ethnocentrism. As Ames and Rosemont put it: “the only thing more dangerous than making cultural generalizations is the reductionism that results from not doing so” (1998, 20). That is, as risky, difficult, and inevitably incomplete as an attempt to characterize culture may be, it seems a necessary exercise if we are to avoid assuming that all others must be like us, and that they are less than fully human if they are not.

But, second, when we use such generalizations, we obviously risk turning them into simple and unfair stereotypes that can foster unjust prejudices. Please remember: every generalization, most especially the

generalizations that we think may help characterize a given “culture,” by definition entails multiple exceptions to the general rule. In statistical terms, there are always “outliers” – those people who stand outside the statistical norm as defined by the standard bell curve. So: many Midwesterners may seem friendly, open, and extroverted as compared with many Norwegians – but, of course, there are more than a few introverted Midwesterners as well as extroverted Norwegians who simply confound the generalization. In other words, we must never mistake a generalization for anything other than a generalization or heuristic, an initial and provisional guideline for first interpretations – not, for example, some sort of universal category that somehow captures an eternal and immutable essence of Midwestern- ness, Norwegian-ness, etc. (cf. Rohner 1984).

Third – however far such generalizations may capture elements true of many, but not all, people shaped by a given culture – we must further keep in mind that, for every individual who may share such national characteristics, she or he is further shaped by a very complex range of additional differences and variations both within and beyond national categories. Folk in Eastern Oklahoma are clearly distinct from folk in Western Oklahoma, just as people in Aarhus (Denmark) have distinct (and not always positive) impressions of how Copenhageners, while clearly Danes, at the same time differ from them (and vice versa, of course). Immigrant communities are distinct in multiple ways, while simultaneously including people seeking either to assimilate to or hybridize with the larger national culture. Indeed, in any given city, a specific neighborhood features a specific set of cultures or subcultures as affiliated with age, ethnicity, and class. And then, of course, gender – generally – makes a difference as well. Oh yes: all of these change over time, of course – some elements more quickly than others – complicating the picture still further.

All of this means, again, that any generalizations we make about a culture can be taken only as starting points – as heuristics open to change, not static concepts. That is, while potentially useful for our initial reflections and encounters with one another, further exploration almost always leads us to more complex and nuanced understandings. As a result, we will almost always modify and perhaps

reject altogether elements of these starting points. In fact, we are about to see an example of this sort of modification shortly, in Soraj Hongladarom’s account of Buddhist understandings of the person and privacy – an account that will nicely complicate the basic differences between Thai and US culture that we have started with here (see pp. 45–9). At the same time, however, some notion of culture remains useful when handled with care, beginning with current work in intercultural communication (e.g., Cheong et al. 2012; Vignoles et al. 2016).

By keeping these comments and caveats in mind, I hope that readers will never be tempted to mistake what I intend as an initial, dynamic, always incomplete, and exception-laden generalization and heuristic for a stereotype.

“Privacy” in the global metropolis: Initial considerations In the developed world, we increasingly are the digital information that facilitates our lives and engagements with one another. Luciano Floridi made this point most strongly early on: a person is her or his information.

“My” in “my information” is not the same as “my” in “my car” but rather the same as “my” as in “my body” or “my feelings”; it expresses a sense of constitutive belonging, not of external ownership, a sense in which my body, my feelings, and my information are part of me but are not my (legal) possessions.

(2005, 195)

In some ways, this claim may seem too strong. But there is no question that, as more and more of our entertainment and communication take place via digital media, and as more and more of our lives are captured in digital form, our “digital footprint” – basically, everything you do online, from social media use to searching and exploring websites, shopping and banking, etc. – expands dramatically.

But is all of this information primarily our property in the sense of an

external, legal possession – and/or is Floridi correct to suggest that at least some elements of “our” information are who we are, in the same way as we think of ourselves in terms of our own bodies and feelings, for example?

Floridi’s claim becomes all the more persuasive when we consider how much of our lives in the developed world – beginning with, but by no means limited to, important governmental identity information (e.g., Social Security numbers in the US, CPR numbers in Denmark, Fødselsnummer in Norway, etc.), bank and credit card accounts (e.g., the RIB number in France, IBAN and SWIFT numbers, etc.), and so forth – is digitized, processed, and transmitted electronically. Couple this with the metaphor introduced by James Moor (chapter 1): our information is “greased” – it is (almost) as easily copied and transmitted to those whom we may not want to see it as to those whom we do want to see it. As the aptly named phenomenon of identity theft suggests, losing these sorts of information about ourselves – what we think of as private information – to others may well feel and result in harms more like a direct assault on our own bodies and feelings, rather than solely the theft of external property.

To use another example: simply ask your neighbor if you can have access to his or her mobile or smartphone – that is, to the text messages, contact list, phone numbers, perhaps emails, documents, etc., that are stored there. Especially if you ask this of a relative stranger, it seems likely that he or she will refuse: you’re asking for information that is private – information that increasingly defines our sense of identity in a digital age.

You don’t have to be paranoid – but it helps ... Whatever our individual ethical assessments of and responses to these situations may be, many threats to privacy are well known. Most of us know, for example, to be careful with passwords to important accounts, with PINs for debit and credit cards, and so forth. Indeed, after any number of increasingly spectacular hacks – e.g., of some 500 million customer records, including passport and credit card information (Perlroth, Tsan, and Satariano 2018) – most of us know that both commercial and governmental databases containing our

personal information are increasingly vulnerable targets. Once a database is broken into, others are then able to use this information about us – enacting what is rightly called identity theft not only to take money from our bank accounts and charge purchases to our credit cards, but also thereby, in some cases, to jeopardize our own claims to our own identity.

In addition, we are constantly vulnerable when we may think that we are safest – that is, sitting in front of our computer, tablet, or smartphone, sending information via email, engaging in web-browsing (perhaps for shopping), perhaps doing banking transactions. We face a growing barrage of Trojan horses, worms, and viruses that can, for example, capture and then transmit critical banking information to a third party – or, more ominously, lock up our devices until we pay a significant fee to the unknown attacker (so-called ransomware). Hacking opportunities have also exponentially increased with the diffusion of wifi networks – including home routers that can be exploited in various ways (Khandelwal 2018). And then there’s the emerging Internet of Things and so-called Smart Cities, which rely on the diffusion of small, inexpensive sensors and devices (e.g., home electrical meters) – all of which are thereby hackable with comparative ease (Berbers et al. 2018, 36–9).

To be sure, in what amounts to an ongoing arms race, improved security software and expanded privacy protections are likewise developed and made available. Password managers that assign distinct and hard-to-guess passwords to specific accounts are increasingly common (if not essential); by the same token, two-step verification – confirming a log-in attempt by way of a security code sent to a second device – is more or less the default these days. But, despite these advances, we remain vulnerable – in part because of our own attitudes and practices. The so-called privacy paradox demonstrates that we are often our own worst enemy in these matters. Very simply: most of us say we’re concerned about privacy – but when given possibilities of protecting our privacy at even modest cost or inconvenience, most of us prefer not to (e.g., Hargittai and Marwick 2016).

If you’re not paranoid yet ... terrorism and state

surveillance Many of us are further aware that, beyond criminals and hackers, as citizens we face additional threats to our privacy – for example, from corporations that collect data on individual purchasing choices (usually by consent in exchange for modest discounts or other economic incentives). Especially in light of corporations such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, and (even) Facebook going to ever greater lengths to protect consumer privacy (e.g., Apple’s refusal to help the US FBI hack into an alleged terrorist’s iPhone – Holpuch 2016), governments may be the worst culprits. On the one hand, the modern liberal state exists to protect basic rights – including rights to privacy; but, to protect our rights – especially so-called positive or entitlement rights, e.g. to education, health care, disability assistance, family benefits such as child support, maternity and paternity leave, and pension payments, etc. – governments clearly require a great deal of personal information about us. How governments ought to and actually do protect that information from illicit and potentially devastating use against their own citizens varies widely from country to country. Somewhat more darkly, especially following the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, governments throughout the world justify ever greater surveillance of their own (and other) citizens in the name of fighting terrorism. And so, especially as Edward Snowden made crystal clear, unknown (because secret) quantities of personal information – as transmitted through emails, phone calls, etc. – are collected and scrutinized for potential threats. By the same token, surveillance of citizens through security cameras – distributed ever more densely throughout the world – continues to expand. Such surveillance – e.g., as it identifies you while jaywalking – appears to play a role in Western “predictive policing” programs (Burgess et al. 2018, 29; Hintz, Dencik, and Wahl-Jorgensen 2018, 55f.) as well as in the emerging Chinese SCS.

The SCS is being cobbled together from several dozens of smaller versions – both public and private, including currently private credit- rating companies such as Sesame (Kostka 2018, 2-3). Like credit- rating systems in the West, data are collected on income, debt, purchasing patterns – but also matters such as being a parent (a plus)

or playing video games (a minus). Other versions track deductions such as whether or not you have paid fines, misbehaved on a train, stood up in a taxi, cheated in videogames, jaywalked, run a red light, or failed to show up for a restaurant reservation. These deductions can be countered by good behavior, such as donating blood, contributing to a charity, or doing a certain number of hours of volunteer work (Xu and Xiao 2018; Kobie 2019).

A sufficiently low score can get you blacklisted – as some 7 million people have already experienced. Once blacklisted, you can further be prohibited from applying for a loan, buying property, buying plane tickets, and “banned from travelling some train lines” (Kobie 2019). Alternatively, a sufficiently high score will “redlist” you, giving you easier access to governmental services and tax reductions, for example (Kostka 2018, 3).

The Chinese government argues that the intention is to stamp out corruption and reward socially beneficial behavior, and so build trust within the larger society. But Western researchers and observers counter that the aim of such positive and negative reinforcement is “to create a citizenry that continually engages in automatic self- monitoring and adjustment of its behavior” (Hoffman 2017, cited in Kotska 2018, 3). Anyone familiar with Foucault’s famous account of the Panopticon – and/or the Black Mirror episode “Nosedive” – will find all of this chillingly familiar. The upshot will be that “the Communist Party will possess a powerful means of quelling dissent, one that is comparatively low-cost and which does not require the overt (and unpopular) use of coercion by the state” (Kostka 2018, 3)

At the same time, all of this again illustrates crucial differences in cultural assumptions about the self and privacy. In keeping with suspicions of – if not hostility toward – what modern Westerners presume about individual privacy as a positive good, Genia Kostka reports high levels of public approval of these systems in China (2018).

Lastly: the SCS is especially significant not only for the citizens of China, but potentially for the rest of us. Most starkly, according to Freedom House, the past six years have marked the rise of “Digital Authoritarianism” as diverse regimes have expanded various forms of

online censorship and surveillance – in part by way of copying the Chinese model (Shahbaz 2018).

“Privacy” and private life: Changing attitudes in the age of social media and mobile devices These manifest threats to personal privacy and private life are further accompanied by changing attitudes toward privacy in both “Western” and “Eastern” societies – perhaps as an artifact of our growing use of digital media (Ess 2010). For example, in sharp tension with worries about hierarchical forms of surveillance by states and corporations, the terms first introduced by Albrechtslund (2008) – “voluntary” and “participatory surveillance” – are now commonplace understandings of our always-on behaviors. Lateral surveillance of one another is apparent on any given social media site (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.) as well as on video sharing sites such as YouTube. Still more recently, our efforts to sustain some version of privacy are increasingly shared: we want to share what was once seen as primarily individually private information – but now within specific groups. “Group privacy” or “collective privacy” are terms that further refine and describe these changing privacy sensibilities – especially in an era increasingly dominated by “Big Data” approaches (Taylor, Floridi, and van der Sloot, 2017).

Similarly, the mobile phone and then tablets invert our earlier contexts as well: being “on the grid” is now the norm – and so these devices have turned traditional notions of “public” and “private” upside down. Earlier, privacy in the form of being “off the grid” of a public communications network was commonplace. And, especially for the sorts of philosophical and political reasons we will explore more fully below, the capacity to be incommunicado was seen to be essential to being human. First of all, such privacy makes possible the sort of space and time needed for the development of an autonomous self, one capable of reflecting on and carefully choosing among the multiple acts and values available to human beings, both in solitude and in community with others. As Virginia Woolf (1929) famously advised, women seeking their own self-development, creativity, and

freedom need “a room of one’s own.” In this way, privacy is an essential condition for our creating our very selves. (We will see a clear example of this below in how the right to privacy is justified in the German constitution [Grundgesetz] in part as it protects our further “right to personality” [Persönlichkeitsrecht] – Whitman 2004, 1180ff.). Such autonomy, moreover, is not only a necessary condition for our being suited to living and acting in a democratic society; most fundamentally, as modern political theory emphasizes, only such autonomous selves can justify the existence of democratic societies.

But in the contemporary world, mobile phones, tablets, and other GPS-equipped devices have made publicity our default setting. Again, being “always on” inverts or turns upside down earlier understandings of who we are and of our relationships with others. We will now see how this inversion and transformation means, first of all, that we have to rethink our conceptions of privacy in dramatic ways. It may also well mean that we will likewise need to revisit and perhaps revise our earlier ethical and political philosophies. All of this is because, most fundamentally, these developments are profoundly reshaping our most basic assumptions about human selfhood and identity.

“Privacy” and private life: Cultural and philosophical considerations As “Waffles” reminds us at the opening of this chapter, individual privacy remains a core concern of contemporary teenagers – whatever their worried parents may think. Indeed, younger people have led the way in abandoning Facebook altogether in favor of more closed social media sites – including Snapchat and Instagram whose default is the erasure of postings within 24 hours. While the generations may disagree on the nature and limits of privacy, the key question is: what do we mean by “privacy?”

In the US context and tradition, the conception of privacy begins with primarily physical notions: as the examples of bedroom and bathroom privacy exemplify, what we initially wanted to protect was the privacy of spaces, first of all our homes (Whitman 2004, 1161). That is, “privacy” does not appear as a basic right in the US Constitution or Bill

of Rights: rather, it emerges only gradually, beginning with the seminal paper by Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis in 1890. As Bernhard Debatin points out, the concept is rooted in Fourth Amendment protections against “unreasonable search and seizure” of private property (2011, 49).

Such a conception may have worked well in the days before electric media, such as telegraph, radio, and then the internet. But with the advent of phone calls or radio transmissions that could be intercepted and recorded unbeknownst to their primary senders and receivers, it gradually becomes clear that “privacy” is not simply a matter of protecting specific spaces. Rather, as we have seen, Luciano Floridi makes clear that what we want protected in an information age is precisely our information – information that, in digital form, is that much easier to access, copy, and distribute. But why would we worry? As Judith DeCew points out: “The expectation of privacy is grounded in the fear concerning how the information might be used or appropriated to pressure or embarrass one, to damage one’s credibility or economic status, and so on” (1997, 75). In short, we are afraid that someone and/or some organization will be able to use information about us to harm us – and/or those close to us – in some way.

We will explore the legal and philosophical dimensions of privacy more fully below. Here we’ll continue with the cultural aspects, remaining with “Western” societies. To begin with, in German, Norwegian, and Danish, for example, there are certainly counterparts to the English term “privacy” – namely, Privatheit (German) and privathet (Norwegian, Danish). But, especially in Denmark and Norway, “privacy” discussions focus much more on privatlivet – “private life.” Such private life encompasses not simply the interests and pursuits of a solitary individual: in addition, privatlivet is understood to involve one’s intimsfære, an “intimate sphere” of close friendships and relationships. These concepts thus do not map neatly onto earlier US notions of privacy as primarily an individual private space. In contrast to such a static or substantive conception, these notions of privatlivet and the intimsfære bring to the foreground our close relationships – relationships that are ongoing, evolving, and in some important ways negotiated over time. (A once distant stranger

becomes accepted as an important member of one’s intimsfære; a parent or sibling or child or close relative may suddenly pass away; a long-time friend may move to a distant country, making it difficult to sustain a sense of closeness and intimacy.) In these cultural contexts, then, it is not simply important to protect “privacy” for the individual – specifically, to find ways to ensure that personal or sensitive information about the individual is not taken up by those who would use it to harm that individual. At the same time, what we want to protect from harm includes these close relationships and the private life they constitute. So it is, then, that among the guidelines issued in Norway by the National Committee for Research Ethics in the Social Sciences and the Humanities is “The obligation to respect individuals’ privacy and close relationships” – i.e., not simply an individual’s privacy (NESH 2006, 17).1 We will further see that these more relational understandings of “privacy” not only cohere with emerging practices of group and collective privacy: in addition, they are articulated in the increasingly influential account of privacy as “contextual integrity” as developed by Helen Nissenbaum (2010).

As the example of ubuntu suggests, when we turn to what we once thought of as “non-Western” cultures and traditions, what counts as even a rough approximation of “privacy” becomes still more complicated. As we will explore in the next section, in cultures shaped by Buddhist and Confucian conceptions, the stress is on the self as a relational self – i.e., a sense of identity that is more or less fully constituted precisely by the extensive relationships that define us as members of families and larger communities. To use the example of a once classic form of Chinese introduction: such an introduction would recount my primary relationships, beginning with my parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, and (perhaps) children. This sense of selfhood thereby stresses the importance of sustaining harmonious relationships with the family and larger community, and includes an exquisitely developed attention to the moods and wishes of others. The Japanese version of such attention, wakimae or “situated discernment,” has been described by one of my Japanese students as the need to “read the atmosphere” or even to “read the minds” of those around one, with the goal of attuning one’s behavior so as to avoid conflict or disharmony (cf. Hildebrandt 2015, 117–21). In this context,

some notion of individual “privacy” – a desire to hold something of oneself apart from the group – can be seen only in negative terms. As in the Western Middle Ages – that is, before the rise of modern conceptions of individuals as rational autonomies who thereby require privacy – the notion seems to be rather: “the only reason you would want privacy is if you have something bad (or illegal) to hide.”

At the same time, however, the shifts we are starting to see in “Western” societies toward the “publicly private / privately public” (Lange 2007) and “group privacy” (Taylor, Floridi, and van der Sloot, 2017) suggest a correlative shift in our underlying assumptions regarding selfhood and identity – namely, from an earlier emphasis on strongly individual notions of selfhood toward a greater emphasis on more relational notions of selfhood. In this sense, (recent) “Westerners” are becoming more like (older) “Easterners.” At the same time, we will see more fully below that (recent) “Easterners” are likewise shifting – from a greater emphasis on relational selfhood to a greater emphasis on more individual selfhood: this shift is apparent first of all in the changing demands in “Eastern” cultures for (older) “Western” notions of individual privacy as a positive good. Finally, we will explore an important middle ground between these two – namely, conceptions of the self as a relational autonomy, that is, a self that conjoins more individual notions of the self as a freedom or autonomy alongside the relationality that increasingly defines “Westerners,” especially as taken up within social media.

For the moment, however, we see another continuum emerging here:

(Strongly) individual conception of self → relational autonomy → (strongly) relational conception of self

Individual privacy → Group privacy →“Publicy” (no privacy)

US (protection of spaces) . . . Norway (protection of privatlivet) . . . Confucian, Buddhist societies

REFLECTION/DISCUSSION/WRITING

(A) In light of the above discussion, what are your intuitions regarding:

your sense of selfhood or identity, and

your sense of privacy (and/or private life) – that is, what kind(s) of privacy (if any) and/or private life (if any) do you feel/think requires protection?

(B) Are your intuitions consistent with your historical/linguistic/communicative backgrounds – i.e., as shaped primarily by the “culture(s)” of a specific nation-state such as the US, Scandinavia, “Eastern” societies, etc.?

(C) Whatever account of selfhood and privacy you offer, can you further provide arguments, evidence, and/or some other forms of support that would somehow justify these conceptions?

(As we will see, these conceptions further correlate with our assumptions regarding the most appropriate or desirable forms of social structures and governance – broadly, a continuum that emphasizes equality and democracy vis-à-vis hierarchy and more authoritarian regimes. Our preferences in these domains may provide us with an important set of arguments for the kinds of selves and privacies / private lives we think are justified.)

“Privacy” and private life: First justifications, more cultural differences – transformations and (over-?)convergence As we have seen, strongly individual notions of “privacy” have emerged in the modern West as one of the basic rights of individuals. But justifications for this right vary. As Deborah Johnson (2001) has pointed out, in the United States privacy is seen as an intrinsic good (something we take to be valuable in and of itself) and as an extrinsic good – something valuable as a means for another (intrinsic or extrinsic) good.2 In particular: we need privacy to become autonomous selves. That is, we need privacy to cultivate and practice our abilities to reflect and discern our own ethical and political beliefs, for example, and how we might enact these in our daily lives. Privacy is thus a means for the autonomous self to develop its own sense of

distinctive identity and autonomy, along with other important goods such as relationships. Only through privacy, then, can the autonomous self develop that has the capacity to engage in debate and the other practices of a democratic society (Johnson 2001, ch. 3). In Germany, rights to privacy are likewise considered as a basic right of an autonomous person qua citizen in a democratic society. Privacy is also seen as an instrumental good – primarily as it serves to protect autonomy, the freedom to express one’s opinion, the “right of personality” (Persönlichkeitsrecht), and the freedom to express one’s will (Whitman 2004, 1180ff.).

By contrast, “privacy” in many Asian cultures and countries has traditionally been understood first of all as a collective rather than an individual privacy – for example, the privacy of the family vis-à-vis the larger society (Kitiyadisai 2005). Insofar as something resembling individual privacy was considered, such privacy was looked upon in primarily negative ways. For example, Japan’s Pure Land (Jodo- shinsyu) Buddhist tradition emphasizes the notion of Musi, “no-self,” as crucial to the Buddhist project of achieving enlightenment – precisely in the form of the dissolution of the “self,” understood in Buddhism to be not simply an illusion, but a most pernicious one. As the elemental “Fourfold Truths” of Buddhism put it, our discontent or unhappiness as human beings can be traced to desire that can never be fulfilled (because either we will never obtain those objects or, if we do, we will lose them again, especially as time and death take them from us). But such desire, in turn, is generated by the self or ego. Hence, to eliminate the unhappiness of unfulfilled/unfulfillable desire, all we need do is eliminate the ego or self. The Buddhist goal of nirvana, or the “blown-out self,” thus justifies the practice of what from a modern Western perspective amounts to intentionally violating one’s “privacy”: in order to purify and thus eliminate one’s “private mind” – thereby achieving Musi, “no-self” – one should voluntarily share one’s most intimate and shameful secrets (Nakada and Tamura 2005).

Similarly negative attitudes toward individual privacy have marked China for most of its history – in part because of the Confucian emphasis on the good of the larger community (see the discussion of Confucian ethics in chapter 6). Hence, until only relatively recently,

the Chinese term correlating with individual “privacy” (Yinsi) held only negative connotations – that is, of a “shameful secret” or “hidden, bad things” (Lü 2005). Finally, a similar emphasis on community is apparent in many indigenous traditions. So ubuntu, as we saw Dan Burk characterize it at the beginning of this chapter, understands personal identity as “dependent upon and defined by the community” – in part, as we will see in more detail in chapter 6, as this African tradition shares with Confucian thought an understanding of the individual as a relational being: as defined by the multiple relationships with others in the larger community. In this light, it makes sense that:

Within the group or community, personal information is common to the group, and attempts to withhold or sequester personal information are viewed as abnormal or deviant. While the boundary between groups may be less permeable to information transfer, ubuntu lacks any emphasis on individual privacy.

(Burk 2007, 103)

But, as we have seen, these understandings of privacy are undergoing dramatic changes. This is in part because globalization, as itself driven by the rapid diffusion of digital media, often thereby increases our awareness of and interactions with one another cross-culturally. This in turn leads to a hybridization of diverse cultural values and practices. In particular, as young people in Asia enjoy a growing material wealth and thereby a growing physical personal space (i.e., their own room in a family dwelling – something more or less nonexistent a few decades ago), and as they are ever more aware, thanks to global media, of Western notions and practices regarding individual privacy, they increasingly insist on personal and individual privacy in ways that are baffling (at best) and frustrating (at worst) to their parents and their parents’ generation (Hansen and Svarverud 2010; Yan 2010).

These shifts can be seen most dramatically in terms of the laws surrounding privacy – indeed, following these changing understandings of selfhood, and thus what counts as “privacy” in both “Western” and “Eastern” countries, privacy laws have changed so much over the past decade or so that the two cultures move, in effect,

ever closer to one another. To see how this is so, we take a brief look first at the European Union and then at the United States.

As we have seen, the European Union has encoded in law since 1995 very strong personal data privacy protections (European Union 1995; GDPR 2016). The EU Data Privacy Regulations define what counts as personal and sensitive information: “personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs; trade-union membership; genetic data, biometric data processed solely to identify a human being; [and] health-related data.”3 The GDPR further requires that individuals be notified when such information is collected about them; individuals then have the right to review and, if necessary, correct information held about them. As Dan Burk (2007, 98) emphasizes, individuals have the right to consent – they must agree to the collection and processing of their personal information. And, as we have seen, recent legislation makes these rights to consent – to “opt in” to, for example, data collection as you browse a website – even stronger. Finally, the Regulations insist that the transfer of personal information to third parties outside the EU can occur only if the recipient countries provide the same level of privacy protection as that encoded in the EU directives. As Burk further explains, this last requirement has meant that the EU approach to privacy began to spread more quickly around the world than its US counterpart (ibid., 100f.). As we will see, this requirement made especially dramatic impacts in Asia – but only to be overshadowed by more recent developments.

Finally – in ethical terms that may now be familiar to you from chapter 6 – Burk characterizes the EU approach as strongly deontological: it rests upon a conviction that privacy is an inalienable right – one that states must protect, even if at considerable economic and other sorts of costs. In particular, as we will explore more fully below, privacy is essential to democratic processes: to compromise privacy for any reason is thereby to compromise democracy itself.

In the United States, by contrast, data privacy protection is something of a patchwork. In general, national or federal regulations address privacy issues with regard to health matters (e.g., the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, 1996

[www.hhs.gov/hipaa/index.html]) and some financial information (e.g., banking and credit information), leaving the rest to individual states and/or businesses to work out (the latter through so-called aspirational models of good practice – see Burk 2007, 97; Debatin 2011, 49). The default setting here is the exact opposite of the EU model: rather than asking individuals to “opt in” to having their information collected, processed, and distributed in specific ways, the US approach requires individuals to “opt out” if they have reservations about how information about them is being collected and possibly used (Burk 2007, 97). So it is, then, that, if you are sitting in the US and would like the “opt-in” approach more characteristic of the EU codes, you’ll need to install the sorts of security software discussed above.

Burk further observes that this “business-friendly” attitude is in part the result of a utilitarian approach to the issues of data privacy protection. Simply put, the US preference is for minimal governmental involvement and maximum freedom for businesses: the hope is to minimize the economic – and other – costs of implementing and enforcing more rigorous data privacy protections, such as those of the European Union, and thereby maximize business efficiencies and profitability. Presumably, doing so will lead to the utilitarian goal of realizing the greatest good for the greatest number – at least in terms of economic gains and benefits (Burk 2007, 98f.). According to James Whitman, this US approach is further rooted in nineteenth-century “emphasis on consumer sovereignty” (2004, 1182), coupled with the late nineteenth-century enthusiasm for laissez-faire market ideologies (2004, 1208).

As a last piece in the US patchwork: in the absence of any further developments in US privacy law, California has moved forward to develop more EU-style approaches to privacy (Wakabayashi 2018).4

Finally, we take up Asia – meaning, here, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and surrounding countries, including the two special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao. As we would expect in light of the greater emphases in these societies on a relational self, the greater priority of community harmony, and hence traditional attitudes toward individual “privacy” as only something hidden or bad

(see above, p. 64), legal definitions of and protections for individual privacy rights have emerged only relatively recently. In Hong Kong, for example, individual privacy protections were first introduced as a means necessary to the development of e-commerce (Tang 2002) – that is, not, as in earlier Western justifications, for the sake of individual autonomy, etc. But the Supreme Court of the PRC established individual privacy rights as “attached” to “reputation right” – that is, the right to have one’s reputation protected from slander or defamation. Privacy violations that lead to serious damage to reputation are thus considered a tort, a personal injury for which the agent can be sued for damages in a civil court. By 2001, the Supreme Court established privacy as its own independent right, justified in part by the view that a violation of individual privacy amounted to a “spiritual harm.” By 2010, new tort liability law was enacted that established privacy as a right among other civil rights (Sui 2011). To be sure, critical caveats must be made here regarding the crucial difference between a law on the books and its enforcement in society. Moreover, the emerging Chinese SCS seems to throw all of these privacy protections into very serious question indeed. However the SCS turns out, these shifts nonetheless represent remarkable transformations over a relatively short time (cf. Greenleaf 2011).

In sum, while “Westerners” thus head in what was a more “Easterly” direction in terms of selfhood, privacy, and law, at least some “Easterners” such as Japan, if not the PRC, appear to be heading in what was a more “Westerly” direction in those same terms. The resulting pattern thus suggests, if not a convergence, then at least a closer resonance between basic conceptions of selfhood (as both individual and relational), privacy (as individual but also group), and, perhaps, the laws defining privacy and its protections. At the same time, however, the emergence of ever more stringent individual privacy protections in the EU GDPR (2016) and the apparent erasure of all such protections in the emerging Chinese SCS make clear that fundamental, and perhaps irreducible, differences will remain.

“Privacy” and private life: Cultural differences and ethical pluralism

Whatever the long-term influence these important resonances may have, the striking differences between – especially – the EU and China on matters of privacy force us to confront the obvious ethical question: who’s right?

We first explore this question – and primary ethical responses to it – by way of an example provided by Soraj Hongladarom, a Thai Buddhist philosopher. Hongladarom (2007) points out that, while earlier cross-cultural discussions of privacy tended to emphasize these sorts of contrasts, there are also important similarities between, say, Western and Buddhist views. First, Buddhism must emphasize at least a relative role and place for the individual: while, from an ultimate or enlightened standpoint, the individual is a pernicious illusion, the individual remains squarely responsible for his or her realization of enlightenment. For its part, Western thought – both in premodern traditions such as that of Aristotle and in modern philosophical streams such as that of Hegel – includes emphasis on the community, not simply the individual. From this perspective, Hongladarom has argued for a Thai conception of individual privacy – one that ultimately disagrees with Western assumptions regarding the individual as an absolute reality, but nonetheless retains a sufficiently strong role and place for the individual. Such a Buddhist individual, again, is the agent of its own enlightenment, but also serves as a citizen of a struggling democratic state in Thailand. In this way, Hongladarom argues, there are strong philosophical grounds for granting such an individual privacy rights similar to those enjoyed by Westerners – even if, by comparison, these rights will be more limited in light of the greater role of the state and greater importance (on both Buddhist and Confucian grounds) of the community.

In ethical terms, Hongladarom hereby articulates for us an important ethical pluralism regarding the nature of privacy. Such a pluralism, as we will explore more fully in chapter 6, stands in the middle ground between ethical relativism and ethical absolutism. Most briefly, the important point is that, in such pluralism, it is possible to hold together both shared norms and values (in this case, privacy) while these norms and values are understood, interpreted, and/or applied in diverse ways – that is, in ways that reflect the distinctive values and

norms of diverse cultures. In this way, pluralism allows for a shared global ethics, on the one hand, while avoiding, on the other hand, a kind of homogenizing ethics that ignores or obliterates all important cultural differences. And so, ethical pluralism provides the possibility of a global ethics made up of shared norms and values while preserving the essential differences that define diverse cultural identities.

In the case of “privacy,” these cross-cultural comparisons can thus be understood to constitute an example of such an ethical pluralism. This is to say: US-style conceptions of “privacy” as strongly individual and (earlier) Thai notions of “privacy” as primarily familial privacy thus present us with strongly different ideas of “privacy.” For the ethical relativist, these differences would be one more example arguing that there are no universal values or norms: the validity of ethical norms and values is solely relative to a given culture and time. In this instance, the US notion of individual privacy as a positive good is legitimate – but only if you’re a member of the US culture; and the (earlier) Thai emphasis on familial privacy alone as ethically acceptable is also legitimate if you were born and raised in Thai culture in those days. This is fine – at least as long as people from both cultures have nothing to do with one another and thus require no shared norms or values.

For the ethical monist, we can establish a shared norm or value rather simply: one of these values or norms must be true – absolutely, finally, and universally – and hence any different value or norm can only be false. Again, if we had nothing to do with one another, this might be a workable solution: but in today’s world, it is more or less impossible to live in such splendid isolation. And so, if the ethical monist has his way, we must choose which norm or value is right and which is thereby wrong. This approach seems to condemn us to intolerance and conflict – not very useful either for genuine understanding of the Other as Other5 or for efforts to avoid cultural imperialism, much less warfare.

The ethical pluralist, finally, hopes to avoid such intolerance and conflict by way of arguing that both cultures share a notion of “privacy,” but this notion is understood and practiced in different ways

– ways that are directly shaped by each culture’s distinctive traditions and assumptions. Ethical pluralism thus argues for a middle ground between relativism and monism. Yes, norms and values vary from culture to culture – but, contra monism, this does not necessarily mean that only one cultural norm can be right and the other wrong: both can be correct as instances of different interpretations of a shared norm. Contra relativism, because varying cultural norms may thus instantiate a shared norm, cultural variations of this sort do not necessarily mean that there are no universally legitimate values or norms. Rather, the pluralist can argue that in this way privacy – however widely understood and practiced in diverse cultures and times – indeed appears to be a human universal (Hongladarom 2007, 110f.).

More recently, Hongladarom has argued for a similar pluralistic approach to the irreducible differences between Buddhists (again, who regard the self as a pernicious illusion) and Confucians (who believe in some form of the self as a reality) vis-à-vis the basic ethical norm of respect: both can agree that “an individual person is [to be] respected and protected when she enters the online environment” (2017, 155). To be sure, not all of our ethical differences will be resolved through pluralism: again, the contrast between the EU and China on this point may well be simply irresolvable. But, given that ethical pluralism works in at least some cases, including the case of privacy, whenever we encounter strong differences in cultural norms and practices, we cannot simply assume that our options for dealing with them are either ethical relativism or ethical monism.

Philosophical and sociological considerations: New selves, new “privacies?” These dramatic changes in our conceptions of selfhood, privacy, and privacy law are part of a still larger discussion. Not surprisingly, there is considerable debate among philosophers in information and computing ethics regarding the nature and possible justifications of privacy, justifications for its protection, etc. (e.g., Rachels 1975; Tavani 2013, 131–73). Herman Tavani helpfully summarizes three basic kinds

of privacy. The first of these is accessibility privacy (freedom from unwarranted intrusion). This notion of privacy, also formulated as the right to “being let alone” or “being free from intrusion,” was defended in the landmark paper by Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis (1890) – who thereby made the first explicit claim in the United States that privacy exists as a legal right (Tavani 2013, 135; cf. Glancy 1979). Second, decisional privacy is defined as a freedom from the interference from others in “one’s personal choices, plans, and decisions” (Tavani 2013, 135f.). Such privacy, Tavani points out, has been crucial in the US context in defending freedom of choice regarding contraception, abortion, and euthanasia. Finally, informational privacy is a matter of our having the ability to control information about us that we consider to be personal (ibid., 136).

Tavani goes on to point out that both James Moor (2000) and Helen Nissenbaum (2010) have developed accounts of privacy that seek to include these three forms (Tavani 2013, 136–8). Moreover, from my perspective, what is most helpful about both Moor’s and Nissenbaum’s accounts is that they move us away from earlier, more spatial and static conceptions of “privacy,” and foreground instead the relational dimensions of privacy and private life – namely, the intuitions developed above that our senses of “privacy” in “Western” societies are shifting toward notions of “partial privacy” and “group privacy.” Again, what we think/feel needs protection are those aspects of our close relationships, as increasingly mediated through (analogue) digital media, that increasingly define our sense of selfhood as more relational than individual. In particular, Nissenbaum’s increasingly influential theory of privacy as “contextual integrity” builds on an explicitly relational conception of selfhood as introduced by the philosopher James Rachels (1975). Nissenbaum thereby shows that what is at stake in our privacy concerns is, first of all, precisely the context of specific relationships within which a given bit of information is exchanged. These contexts or “spheres of life” include education, the marketplace, political life, etc. (Tavani 2013, 138). Each of these contexts entails, first, its own “norms of appropriateness” that “determine whether a given type of personal information is either appropriate or inappropriate to divulge within a particular context” (ibid.). At the same time, each context is further accompanied by its

own “norms of distribution [that] restrict or limit the flow of information within and across contexts” (ibid.).

Moreover, these relational contexts are not fixed but, as with relationships themselves, dynamic: the multiple contexts of our relationships are subject to constant renegotiation and reformulation. This happens, for example, when one or more of the persons constituting a communicative cohort feels his or her “privacy” or private life has somehow been breached by disclosures others have made. A common example of how this works in practice is documented by Stine Lomborg (2012). Lomborg analyzed the communicative interactions of a prominent Danish blogger and her audience. On occasion, either the blogger or one of her readers revealed something that was received as rather too personal, too individually private. This occasioned a renegotiation process that, in response to the violation of the contextual norms of the blog (to use Nissenbaum’s term), more articulately redefined the “line between what is appropriate to share and what is too private” (Lomborg 2012, 429).

Such relational conceptions of privacy are further consistent with a third understanding of selfhood and identity – namely, that of relational autonomy. As the name implies, relational autonomy stands as a middle ground between more strongly individual and more strongly relational senses of self. Recall here that a strongly individual autonomous or free self is the foundation of modern Western conceptions of democratic norms (equality, respect, fairness, justice), rights (life, liberty, the pursuit of property – as well as freedom of expression, privacy, and so on), and thus the defining processes of debate and deliberation. To fully abandon such a self in favor of a purely relational self is thereby to eliminate any grounds for holding to such norms, rights, and processes. Especially, feminist philosophers worry about such a loss: whatever the enormous sins and faults of modern liberalism (e.g., as “hyperindividualist,” exclusively rationalist, and thereby overly “masculine” [Christman 2003, 143]), since the Enlightenment articulation of this freedom and affiliated rights, women’s emancipation and gradual moves toward greater equality have centrally depended on these conceptions.

Relational autonomy thus emerges in order to sustain the emphasis on autonomy while recognizing the realities and benefits of relationality. So John Christman characterizes relational autonomy as taking on board “relations of care, interdependence, and mutual support that define our lives and which have traditionally marked the realm of the feminine” (Christman 2003, 143). Andrea Westlund adds that the capacities for reflective endorsement of both one’s own acts and the acts of others as one such set of skills or abilities, noting that these “must be developed during a relatively long period of dependence on parents and other caregivers” (2009, 26). Moreover, autonomy itself remains relational as it “requires an irreducibly dialogical form of reflectiveness and responsiveness to others” (ibid.). Contra more strongly individualistic conceptions of freedom that stress that we are free only as we are free from the influences of and commitments to others (e.g., in early modern philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes), relational autonomy foregrounds ways in which we are more free through relationship with others: “Some social influences will not compromise, but instead enhance and improve the capacities we need for autonomous agency” (ibid., 27). (We will also see in chapter 6 that relational autonomy, along with more traditional relational selves, is tightly conjoined with virtue ethics as an increasingly central ethical framework that complements utilitarianism and deontology in critical ways.)

Is all of this complicated? Yes, of course – especially as we keep in mind that all of this is thus continuously under further development and refinement. But as the development and expansion of Chinese- style surveillance and Social Credit Systems – largely supported by more fully relational selves – should make chillingly clear, nothing less is at stake here than how we understand ourselves as human beings, and thereby what kinds of freedoms and rights we may – or may not – have and make claim to. Thereby, nothing less is at stake than how we are best to live, including determining what social and political institutions are best suited to the best possible lives.

And so, to paraphrase Socrates: whether we find ourselves in a swimming pool or the ocean, we must start swimming nonetheless. Happy swimming!

REFLECTION/DISCUSSION/WRITING QUESTIONS

1 How would you define “privacy” and/or private life? It may be helpful here to think of what sort of “things” – acts, events, behaviors, internal notions, imaginations, “information flows” (what kinds?), etc. – you think of as:

“private” in a strongly individual way;

“publicly private” / “privately public” (e.g., as shared in what Lomborg characterizes as “public personal spaces” [2012, 428]), and/or what you would share within a specific group, e.g., via Snapchat, WhatsApp, etc.; and

“public.”

It may be further helpful to review the following selection from the EU Data Privacy Directives, as a detailed listing of what sorts of “things” are considered private and thus as protected information: it is forbidden to process personal data revealing “racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs; trade-union membership; genetic data, biometric data processed solely to identify a human being; [and] health-related data.”6

That is, would you agree with or want to modify this list – if the latter, how?

2 Discuss, as clearly and precisely as possible:

(a) What kind(s) of privacy (and private life) do you believe to be most important – especially in terms of the three sorts of privacy described by Tavani?

(b) Given your account of privacy, do you want to justify privacy as an intrinsic and/or an extrinsic good? If extrinsic, then what is privacy “good for” – that is, for what other (and, ultimately, intrinsic) goods does it serve as a means?

(c) What additional sorts of justification(s) can you provide for privacy as you have defined it?

3 Discuss, as clearly and precisely as possible, how far your understanding of privacy and private life (privatlivet and intimsfære)

seems to be dependent on:

more individual notions of selfhood and/or more relational notions – and/or both, i.e., some form of relational autonomy?

more static conceptions of (individual or familiar) spaces and/or more dynamic conceptions (such as Nissenbaum’s) of “privacy” as contextual – that is, referring to specific “personal spaces” constituted by a given set of communicative engagements between a (relatively defined) set of (relational) persons?

4. Can you discern how far your approach to privacy is shaped by utilitarian arguments (such as those at work, especially, in the US context) and/or by deontological arguments (as more characteristic of EU approaches, for example)?

5. We have seen that Soraj Hongladarom argues for a Thai notion of privacy that rests on especially Buddhist understandings of the self. As we might expect, Hongladarom goes on further to argue for correlative data privacy protections – protections that might seem limited as compared with contemporary Western (especially EU) laws, but are nonetheless recognizable as protections justified for the sake of participating in democratic governance, for example.

But Hongladarom goes still further. He draws on the Buddhist analysis of human discontent as rooted in the ego-illusion to point out:

Violating privacy is motivated by what Buddhists call mental defilements (kleshas), of which there are three – greed, anger, and delusion. Since violating privacy normally brings about unfair material benefits, it is in the category of greed. In any case, the antidote is to cultivate love and compassion. Problems in the social domain, according to Buddhists, arise because of these mental defilements, and the ultimate antidote to social problems lies within the individuals themselves and their states of mind.

(Hongladarom 2007, 120)

In other words, from a Buddhist perspective, if we want to enjoy privacy protections, then we must go beyond (negative) laws that largely tell us what not to do (most simply, don’t violate others’ rights

to privacy) to important positive ethical injunctions that tell us what to do – namely, to pursue enlightenment (in the form of overcoming the ego-illusion), in part through cultivating love and compassion for others.

As we will see in chapter 6, this recommendation is characteristic not simply of Buddhism but of virtue ethics in the Western tradition. It further resonates, of course, with “the Golden Rule” – in Christian formulation: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. But, of course, the Golden Rule is central to the three Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – and, indeed, some argue, is found throughout the world, beginning with Confucian traditions. At the same time, this recommendation reflects a Buddhist understanding of identity as primarily relational. As with the Japanese injunction to attune our acts toward the harmony of the group, the approach here resolves privacy issues first by having us (re)shape ourselves to harmonize better with others by reducing greed and increasing compassion and love.

(A) How persuasive (or not) do you find Hongladarom’s arguments and recommendations regarding privacy – including the positive injunction to minimize greed and maximize compassion? Be as clear as you can about your arguments/ evidence/reasons and/or other grounds for your response(s).

(B) As we have seen, the national and cultural traditions surrounding us have a significant influence on our conception of selfhood (more individual, more relational?) and thereby on our ethical values and approaches to ethical decision-making. How far can you trace your (dis)agreements with Hongladarom to the cultural and national traditions that have shaped your ethical views and sense of selfhood?

That is, if you agree with Hongladarom, is this solely because you likewise have grown up in a culture more shaped by relational emphases of selfhood and/or because you are already convinced of the truths of Buddhism? And/or, if you disagree with Hongladarom, is this solely because you have grown up in a culture shaped by more individual emphases of selfhood and/or remain convinced of the truths of other traditions?

And/or: can you find other reasons/grounds/evidence, etc., for your (dis)agreement(s) with Hongladarom, beyond those reasons, etc., that may hold legitimacy primarily in one culture but not in another?

SUGGESTED RESOURCES FOR FURTHER RESEARCH/ REFLECTION/WRITING

1. Culture? We have begun to explore how diverse cultures (including as they change over time) correlate with our basic assumptions regarding selfhood and human nature (beginning with more individual vis-à-vis more relational) and thereby our likely initial attitudes toward “privacy.” In the next chapter, we will expand on these correlations regarding our basic assumptions about property (as a start, whether more individual-exclusive vis-à-vis more relational-inclusive). At the same time, I have emphasized that we should always keep in mind that “culture” and such cultural characterizations are to be treated as heuristics – initial rules of thumb that are useful, indeed essential, for how we first encounter and interpret the behaviors, choices, actions, etc., of those from cultural backgrounds different from our own. They are not to be treated, that is, as some sort of “essentialist” or deterministic generalization that categorizes all members of a given “culture” wholesale within the same box.

It will then be helpful to reflect more carefully on what you think “culture” may be, and how your own background culture shapes your own basic assumptions, behaviors, etc. – and how it may not: perhaps you’re an exception to the generalizations – perhaps because you have consciously reflected on and rejected one or more aspects of your background culture?

For example, many people in my class and generation grew up within the strongly racist environments of the 1950s–60s United States. But many of us also consciously chose to reject racism as best we could, in the name of basic democratic norms and values such as equality and respect. More broadly, especially those of us privileged to travel and study abroad often find that these experiences give us a new perspective on our “culture of origin” – and while we may embrace

certain aspects of our home culture all the more warmly as a result, we may also seek to reduce or eliminate one or more elements of that culture. In my case, the Scandinavian countries, while by no means perfect on this point, enjoy the highest levels of equality and gender equality in the developed world (World Economic Forum 2016, 9f.). Living and experiencing with what this means in everyday practices and attitudes – for example, a much higher proportion of women in politics and other forms of cultural leadership, as well as in everyday workplace roles, from bus driver to police woman – starkly contrasts with the more hierarchical cultures of the US (as well as Germany, the UK, etc.). Experiencing such equality as an everyday reality thus helps fuel my efforts to reject various norms and practices of gender inequality as part of my background culture.

One of the most comprehensive and intriguing accounts of such cultural norms and differences has been developed over the past 30 years or so by the World Values Survey (WVS: worldvaluessurvey.org). Review WVS “Findings and Insights” (www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSContents.jsp), including the discussion of:

Traditional values versus Secular-rational values

How Culture Varies

Aspirations for Democracy

Empowerment of Citizens

Globalization and converging Values

Gender Values

Religion, and

Happiness and Life Satisfaction

Identify on the most recent “Cultural map” – namely, “WVS wave 6 (2010–14)” – where you, and/or your cohort in a discussion group, come from.

A. Given your understanding of what the map indicates regarding basic cultural attitudes – especially in contrast with other neighboring

and/or distant countries/cultures:

How far do you agree and disagree with the characterizations of your home culture(s)?

B. Presuming you’ve had the opportunity to explore one or more of the “other” countries/cultures represented in the WVS:

How far do you agree and disagree with the characterizations of these “other” culture(s)?

C. What does all of this tell you regarding how far such cultural generalizations may and/or may not be accurate (e.g., for whom and how many in a given country/culture)?

D. What does all of this tell you regarding how far such cultural generalizations may – and may not – be useful or helpful in our efforts to understand not only our own backgrounds, but also those we may be privileged to meet in the course of our travels, life, and work?

E. Is there anything else that strikes and/or occurs to you here?

2. The privacy paradox Although survey results show that the privacy of their personal data is an important issue for online users worldwide, most users rarely make an effort to protect this data actively and often even give it away voluntarily.

(Gerber, Gerber, and Volkamer 2018, 226)

A. The privacy paradox has now been extensively researched and documented – and not only in Western societies which have traditionally emphasized (individual) privacy rights. In addition, as discussed above, Chinese attitudes toward privacy have shifted in more individual directions – and so a recent paper uses classical Western privacy theorists to explore the privacy paradox at work in users of the prominent Chinese social media venue WeChat (Chen and Cheung 2018).

(1) Wherever you may come from, then – what are your experiences and impressions of “the privacy paradox?”

(2) In particular, what sorts of steps do you take to protect your privacy – and how far do you likewise confirm the privacy paradox, i.e., shy away from taking the more active measures (e.g., using encryption technologies), financial costs (e.g., for better security software), and so on that would enhance your digital security and privacy?

(3) Some of your reasons may be culturally variable in important ways. For example, my Norwegian students – living in a country with the highest trust levels in the developed world7 – often say quite simply that they trust the Norwegian state, the telecom operators, and their ISP providers to protect their privacy adequately. More broadly, citizens of EU states may also have some trust (though demonstrably lower than in Norway) that they are being protected – first of all, by the increasingly stringent regulations of the GDPR. By contrast, US citizens are split on whether or not they can trust the Federal Government to protect their privacy adequately (Smith 2017). Given your specific national/cultural background – do you believe you have good reason to trust your nation-state and your service providers to protect your privacy and security adequately?If so, this would be a good reason to worry less (perhaps). But if not – what other reasons might you give for acting less to protect your privacy than might be ideal and most desirable?

(See also the article by Hargittai and Marwick [2016] listed below as an additional suggestion for reading and discussion.)

B. Given your views on what counts as privacy and private life, and their relative importance:

(1) Are the current regulations in the country in which you find yourself adequate for protecting what you take to be your rights to privacy and private life? Or should there be stronger protections of anonymity and privacy – whether by governments and/or by corporations and service providers – even at the cost of (some) ease of use and convenience?

(2) Are you, like most of the rest of us, prey to “the privacy paradox” – and/or: are there more steps you might take to increase your privacy

and data security?See, e.g.:

*privacy not included: Shop Safe This Holiday Season, https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded

Surveillance Self-Defense: Tips, Tools and How-tos for Safer Online Communications, https://ssd.eff.org

SUGGESTED RESOURCES FOR FURTHER RESEARCH/REFLECTION/WRITING

Fuchs, Christian (2011) An Alternative View of Privacy on Facebook, Information, 2(1): 140–65.

Fuchs takes up a critical ethical concern, namely, how far our identities are commodified – turned into material for sale, first of all in the form of marketing information – through our use of social networking sites (SNSs) such as Facebook. Drawing on both Marxian frameworks of political economy and theorists such as Hannah Arendt and Jürgen Habermas, Fuchs’s analysis is further important for connecting privacy matters with central issues of democratic governance.

Debatin, Bernhard (2011) Ethics, Privacy, and Self-Restraint in Social Networking, pp. 47–60 in S. Trepte and L. Reinecke (eds.), Privacy Online. Berlin: Springer.

Debatin provides an excellent summary of privacy conceptions and law as background for discussing privacy matters on SNSs – again, including the importance of privacy to democratic processes, especially as influenced by the work of Habermas. His arguments for a “privacy literacy” and an “ethics of self-restraint” can be usefully compared to the approaches developed in this chapter, and especially the recommendations from virtue ethics offered by Vallor (2009, 2011) and Hongladarom (2007) explored above.

Hargittai, Eszter and Marwick, Alice (2016) “What Can I Really Do?” Explaining the Privacy Paradox with Online Apathy, International Journal of Communication, 10 (2016), 3737–57 1932– 8036/20160005.

Hargittai and Marwick find that, while young people very much understand and care about privacy and privacy risks online, they

largely feel that they have little ability to manage these. This article may further be helpfully compared with the more extensive and international surveys reported by Gerber, Gerber, and Volkamer (2018), as well as the Chinese case documented by Chen and Cheung (2018).

Notes 1 I remain grateful to Niamh Ní Bhroin, University of Oslo, for first

pointing me toward this resource.

2 We easily recognize that some things are valuable primarily as they serve as means to other goods or ends: so, commonly, many students value their education as an extrinsic good – that is, something that is valuable as a means to achieving some other good, such as a job, a high salary, etc. But these in turn may be simply extrinsic goods – that is, goods that are likewise valuable not so much in themselves (e.g., few of us – unfortunately – think of our work as an intrinsic good, as something worthwhile in itself, whether or not we are paid for it). So it seems that, somewhere, the chain of justifications for extrinsic goods must come to a rest at an intrinsic good – something that is simply worthwhile in and of itself. Or else, as Aristotle famously argued, we are faced with an infinite regress of an extrinsic good being justified by a further extrinsic good, etc. Then the difficulty becomes one of finding such an intrinsic good – indeed, one that all of us would agree is valuable in and of itself. But, as Aristotle further argued, eudaimonia – often translated as “happiness,” but better translated as “contentment” – is a good we all recognize as intrinsically valuable. That is, we may well ask someone why they want to attend university – i.e., what further good justifies such attendance if she or he believes that attending university is only an extrinsic good. But we don’t seem to need to ask why someone would want to be happy or content: that is, happiness or contentment appears to be good in itself, and thus does not require further justification as a means to some further end.

3 Article 4(13), (14), and (15), and Article 9 and Recitals (51) to (56) of the GDPR: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data- protection/reform/rules-business-and-organisations/legal- grounds-processing-data/sensitive-data/what-personal-data- considered-sensitive_en.

4 My thanks to Dan Burk for pointing me toward this resource.

5 The phrase “Other as Other” is intended to suggest that we recognize the Other as fully equal, fully human, while simultaneously irreducibly different from us. This draws from Emmanuel Levinas’s analysis of “the Other as Other,” as a positive “alterity” (e.g., Levinas 1987). By contrast, I use “other” – i.e., without a capital – to signal a viewpoint or perspective on the “other” whose difference from ourselves at least initially inspires suspicion, fear, and/or contempt for the other seen as inferior, etc. This interpretation of difference between “us” and “them” is familiar as the viewpoint of ethnocentrism and related perspectives of racism, sexism, etc.

6 See note 3, above.

7 As measured in the World Values and European Values Surveys, trust levels in the Scandinavian countries are the highest in the world: 76 percent of Danes and 75.1 percent of Norwegians agree that “most people can be trusted,” in contrast with, e.g., 35.1 percent for the United States (Robinson 2016).

CHAPTER THREE Copying and Distributing via Digital Media: Copyright, Copyleft, Global Perspectives [W]hen you share, post, or upload content that is covered by intellectual property rights (like photos or videos) on or in connection with our Products, you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub- licensable, royalty-free, and worldwide license to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate, and create derivative works of your content (consistent with your privacy and application settings).

(Facebook Terms of Use [January 19, 2019], www.facebook.com/terms.php)

We work closely with our member record companies to ensure that fans, parents, students, and others in the business have the tools and the resources they need to make the right listening, purchasing and technical decisions. We also work hard to protect artists and the music community from music theft.

(Recording Industry Association of America [RIAA], “About Piracy,” www.riaa.com/resources-learning/about-piracy)

“Free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.”

(The Free Software Definition [Richard Stallman / GNU Operating System], www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html)

[C]opying may be an important living process for a Confucian Chinese to understand human behaviour, to improve life through self- cultivation and to transmit knowledge to the posterity.

(Yu 2012, 4)

Chapter overview I begin with an example that is likely far removed from the everyday experiences of contemporary students in the so-called developed world – namely, a CD as a music medium. This example is an important starting point, however, for two reasons. One, CDs remain a primary medium for music consumption in Latin America and Africa, for example, and so the case-study will be directly useful for students and readers in such domains. Two, the example remains foundational for how we reflect and argue about intellectual property, property rights, and thereby the conditions under which copying such materials may or may not be ethically legitimate, whether in simple peer-to-peer sharing networks or in the more complex discussions concerning remix (cf. Latonero and Sinnreich 2014; Ess 2016). As a start: is copying a digital soundfile like / the same as stealing a physical artifact: and/or is copying (at least in some forms) not like stealing a physical artifact, and so ethically justifiable, at least under some conditions? This example is thus pedagogically useful as it introduces the logical matters of analogical arguments and questionable analogy.

I then describe US and European approaches to copyright law and their important ethical differences. This leads to discussion of the so- called copyleft approaches and important examples of their application in the Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) movements. The terms and players in these debates have shifted somewhat in recent years, but these movements and their arguments remain central to contemporary debates over copyright. A second set of reflection/discussion/writing questions helps us practice applying these diverse approaches in conjunction with the ethical frameworks of utilitarianism and deontology.

Lastly, we take up the cultural backgrounds and diverse cultural traditions at work here – specifically, Confucian thought and the (Southern) African framework of ubuntu. A set of reflection/discussion/writing exercises attends to the ethical questions occasioned by these cultural considerations, along with virtue ethics as

an increasingly prominent complement to utilitarianism and deontology. Finally, a set of additional resources and advanced exercises provides entry points into more contemporary debates over copyright vis-à-vis remix, etc.

INITIAL REFLECTION/DISCUSSION/WRITING QUESTIONS: STEALING VS. ILLEGAL DOWNLOADING

(A) You and a friend are leaving a concert featuring local bands, one of which really appeals to you. Happily, the band has a CD for sale at a table at the back of the concert venue; less happily, at the moment you can’t afford the purchase. No problem, your friend tells you: I’ll buy one, and while the salesperson is distracted with recording the purchase, I can easily take a second copy without anyone noticing. No worries, I’ve done this before a million times, and never gotten caught, s/he assures you.

As you consider the above scenario carefully ...

1. What seem to be your options? That is, the scenario suggests an either/or: either you steal the CD and, presuming you don’t get caught, get to enjoy some great music for free – or you don’t. These may well be your two primary options, but, in ethical analysis especially, it is always a good idea to see if we are clear about all the realistic options, not just the most obvious ones. (Note: after you’ve done this exercise, you may want to review section 4 in chapter 6 on feminist approaches to ethics and an ethics of care; see pp. 255f.)

2. Develop – individually, perhaps in group discussion, and/or as a class – as fully as you can, the arguments, evidence, reasons, and/or other grounds that support each of the options you describe in (1) above.

3. Given that you have likely described at least two possible options, each with reasonably strong supporting arguments, at this point, can you provide any additional arguments, evidence, reasons, and/or other grounds for a specific choice that help justify that choice as the better of the available options?

4. (Optional: You may want to review at least the first two ethical frameworks discussed in chapter 6, consequentialism/utilitarianism

and deontology. After doing so, return to the arguments, etc., that you’ve provided above. Do you notice whether your arguments are more consequentialist, perhaps utilitarian, and/or more deontological in some way?)

OK, hold those thoughts ...

(B) A good friend of yours is in a band that is struggling to gain recognition and an audience. All the band members are just getting by on their day jobs – the band as such doesn’t make enough money to support any of the members full-time. The band has just produced a new album, and they’re hoping that it will become a major hit. Like most musicians, they offer a free sample track on their website – hoping, of course, that this will lead to sales of the full album at the going price of US$15.00. You are no stranger to illegally downloading music from the internet. But, since you want to support the band, you’ve gone ahead and paid the US$15.00 for your legal copy of the full album.

1. While, in this circumstance, you are willing to pay the US$15.00 required for downloading a legal copy of the album, presume that you also think that under some circumstances it’s OK to download music from the internet illegally. With regard to the later case(s), what are your arguments, evidence, reasons, and/or other grounds for justifying such illegal downloading? (NB: this question assumes that a strong ethical justification both is distinct from, and, indeed, may override, arguments based exclusively on current law.)

2. Presuming that you’ve now marshalled some good arguments, etc., that justify at least some sorts of illegal downloading – what arguments, evidence, reasons, and/or other grounds come into play in the instance of your deciding not to download illegally the full album of your friend’s band?

3. (Optional: Again, you may want to review at least the first two ethical frameworks discussed in chapter 6, consequentialism/utilitarianism and deontology. After doing so, return to the arguments, etc., that you’ve provided above. Can you discern whether your arguments are more consequentialist, perhaps utilitarian, and/or more deontological in some way?)

(C) Another friend who likes the band’s free sample track asks you if you’d mind making a copy of your copy of the album, so that he can either:

(i) highlight the band’s music at an upcoming party where he’s going to provide the music – in part, so that the album might generate a few more sales; and/or

(ii) make copies of the album to give to friends of his who are also interested in the music; and/or

(iii) put a copy of the album on his computer so that it is available to others on the internet, using one of the current peer-to-peer file sharing networks; and/or

(iv) all of the above.

1. If you think that you might agree to (i), but not to (iii), explain as best you can:

(a) what the relevant differences are between these two scenarios; and

(b) what arguments, etc., you can provide that can justify your ethical position in both cases.

2. What is your response to (ii) – that is, something of a middle ground between (i) using copies of music to help the band, it is hoped, by generating sales; and (iii) making copies freely available to anyone interested on the internet, which might well lead to a reduction of the band’s sales of its new album? Again, for our purposes, whatever your response here, what is important is your analysis of the choice/action and the arguments, etc., that support it.

3. (Optional: Again, as with the optional questions above, you may want to review the arguments developed here vis-à-vis the ethical frameworks of consequentialism/utilitarianism and deontology, if only to discern which set of arguments you tend to use – so far.)

4. It is likely that at least some of your class would have responded to the scenario described in (A) – i.e., the possibility of stealing a CD after a local concert – by arguing that this would not be a good idea. There are at least two likely arguments here: one consequentialist

(even if the risk of getting caught is small, the consequences of getting caught are potentially catastrophic, and so it’s better not to take such a chance); and a second, more deontological argument (stealing is simply wrong, even if by stealing you might gain something desirable and enjoyable).

By contrast, there will likely be many members of the class who are perfectly happy to download, say, a song track or two from a famous (and wealthy) artist whose work is distributed by equally well-to-do multinational corporations. Here, at least in my experience, the arguments tend to be primarily consequentialist – for example, the chances of my getting caught are extremely small, and the very modest profit that both the artist and the multinational corporation lose by my not paying for a legal copy will never be missed by either, since both are already so financially well-off.

(a) Are there any additional arguments that occur to you and/or others in your group/class that work to justify not stealing in the first case, but do justify illegal downloads in the second case?

(b) Given the arguments that you uncover here, do these arguments always derive from the same framework? Again, it may be that the arguments against stealing a physical copy of a CD include deontological arguments, while arguments for illegal downloading are primarily consequentialist.

If this is the case, then the disagreement between these two cases runs beyond the first-order level of what we are to do in a particular instance: the disagreement includes a second-order or “meta- theoretical” difference as to which ethical framework(s) we are to make use of (i.e., either consequentialism and/or deontology – and/or any of the additional frameworks described in chapter 6).

(c) At this point, it may be sufficient simply to notice these differences, so far as they seem to be at work – and observe that, if our arguments do derive from different frameworks, then perhaps there is not quite the contradiction that may first appear to be the case (i.e., between disapproving of stealing a CD physically while approving of illegally downloading a virtual copy of one).

That is, if our arguments against and for (respectively) these forms of stealing derive from different frameworks, then to say that there’s a contradiction here is like saying that there’s a contradiction between the rules of American baseball and the rules of European soccer. This doesn’t make immediate sense: it seems rather that, because these are two different games played under two different sets of rules, there can be no serious contradiction between them.

While this observation would relieve us of a first-order contradiction, it nonetheless still leaves us with a second-order question – namely, how do we justify – or, to use Aristotle’s suggestion, judge (i.e., use phronēsis) – using a specific framework in one instance and another framework in a different instance?

Thoughts?

(D) As we proceed in applying familiar ethical frameworks to the ethical challenges evoked by new technologies, we inevitably proceed by way of analogy. And so, in the scenarios described above, I have suggested an analogy between physically stealing a copy of a CD following a local concert and illegally downloading a copy from the internet.

Just to make it explicit – an analogy argument based on the above scenarios might look like this:

We agree that stealing a physical CD after a concert is wrong.

Downloading an illegal copy of a music album is like stealing a physical CD.

Therefore, downloading an illegal copy of a music album is also wrong.

But, as good logicians know, every analogy runs the risk of becoming questionable. Such an analogy, rather than helpfully leading us to justifiable conclusions, may instead mislead us. Happily, you don’t have to be a logician to see how this is so: rather, as a start, we can draw on the idiomatic phrase “comparing apples and oranges.” That is, we sometimes recognize rather easily that a given analogy or comparison is actually false or misleading somehow – in part because the comparison in fact holds together two radically different sorts of

things (the apple and the orange). Given that the argument here rests on such a questionable comparison – its conclusion (in this case, downloading an illegal copy is also wrong) is hence not strongly supported.

So, especially if you disagree with the conclusion in the above argument – that illegally downloading a copy of an album on the internet is ethically wrong – you might be able to make your case by arguing for one or more important differences between the two scenarios that are held together in the analogy argument.

So: are there important, ethically relevant differences between these two scenarios – and, if so, what are they?

The ethics of copying: Is it theft, Open Source, or Confucian homage to the master? Intellectual property: Three (Western) approaches As we saw in chapter 1, there are a number of characteristics of digital media that make the copying and distribution of various kinds of information – whether representing software, a text, a song, or video, etc. – much easier than with analogue media. That is, once we have access to the various components required – access that, despite the grave difficulties of the “digital divide,” is likewise growing rapidly around the world – copying and distributing a file in digital format is both trivially easy and all but cost-free.

Moreover, the general rules, guidelines, and laws applicable to such copying are wide-ranging and frequently shifting. In its ongoing battle against illegal music downloading, the entertainment industry relentlessly lobbies for more stringent laws intended to stop (or at least slow down) widespread distribution of music and video files on the internet via peer-to-peer (p2p) file-sharing networks. These industries have likewise pushed for digital rights management (DRM) and copy protection schemes also designed to prevent illegal copying or piracy. Such efforts are backed in the United States by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998. According to critics such

as the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF), “DRM has proliferated thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA), which sought to outlaw any attempt to bypass DRM” (www.eff.org/issues/drm). They go on to note:

Corporations claim that DRM is necessary to fight copyright infringement online and keep consumers safe from viruses. But there’s no evidence that DRM helps fight either of those. Instead DRM helps big business stifle innovation and competition by making it easy to quash “unauthorized” uses of media and technology.

(Ibid.)

And worse: Boetema Boateng (2011) is but one of many severe critics of DRM as a means of maintaining US dominance in the entertainment industry, especially to the disadvantage of developing countries, as we will explore more fully below.

A potentially important development in these struggles is the establishment of the Pirate Party. Most readers will know that Pirate Bay is one of the primary sites for sharing files via peer-to-peer (p2p) networking, using BitTorrent or similar file-sharing software. Despite ongoing blocking efforts worldwide, the Pirate Bay website is alive and well – sort of. The site itself is often down or blocked; alternative approaches via proxies pop up on a daily basis (Moseley 2019). Along the way, the Pirate Party was founded as a political party, first in Sweden in 2006. The basic principles of the Party are clear: reform of copyright law, abolition of the patent system, and respect for the right to privacy (www2.piratpartiet.se/international/english). The Party’s most striking success has been in Iceland: in 2016, the Party won 10 Parliamentary seats out of 63 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party_(Iceland)). Since then, however, the Party has apparently receded somewhat. How far the Pirate parties might manage to transform the current laws regarding copyright and patents thus remains very much an open question.

The polarities exemplified by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) vs. the EFF and the Pirate parties in fact entail at least three major positions or streams of response that we can consider as ethical responses to these sorts of dilemmas.

(a)Copyright in the United States and Europe To start: as Dan Burk (2007) characterizes it, intellectual property (IP) law in the United States is shaped by a utilitarian ethic (see chapter 6), one that argues that copyright and other forms of intellectual property protection are justified as these contribute to the larger public good over the long run. That is, proponents of this view believe that authors, artists, software designers, and other creative agents will take the trouble to innovate and develop new products and services that will benefit the larger public only if those agents can themselves be assured of a significant personal reward in terms of money or other economic goods. This means in practice, however, that it is principally the industries that have a strong economic interest in copyright and other protections that hence argue and lobby for such protections. Indeed, the interests and possible benefits of the individual agent are secondary in this view. Given its utilitarian framework, “The rights of the author should at least in theory extend no further than necessary to benefit the public and conceivably could be eliminated entirely if a convincing case against public benefit could be shown” (Burk 2007, 96).

By contrast, European approaches to copyright can be characterized as more deontological in character. As Burk puts it:

copyright is justified as an intrinsic right of the author, a necessary recognition of the author’s identity or personhood. ... the general rationale for copyright in this tradition regards creative work as an artefact that has been invested with some measure of the author’s personality or that reflects the author’s individuality. Out of respect for the autonomy and humanity of the author, that artefact deserves legal recognition.

(Ibid.; emphasis added)

Burk suggests that we are thus caught in an international competition between the US and the EU as to which of these approaches to copyright will prevail – with the US currently dominating (ibid., 99– 100).

The US dominance in these domains is criticized across the globe for numerous reasons – including, for example, how the US frameworks

and market dominance work to the disadvantage of developing countries and especially indigenous peoples. Specifically, the US presumptions of music, film, and so on as individual and exclusive property directly contradict cultural frameworks and traditions that treat many forms of property as public goods instead: these, by default, are openly sharable by community members (Boateng 2011). Such conceptions of property as shared and inclusive rather than as individual/exclusive are at the heart of a third ethical response to these sorts of dilemmas – namely, copyleft/FLOSS.

(b)Copyleft/FLOSS Alternatives to what are seen as excessively restrictive conditions, especially on the development and use of computer software, have been developed – initially under the rubric of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). The more inclusive acronym, FLOSS – Free/Libre/Open Source Software – now predominates, in recognition that much of the interest and work here operates in Latin-speaking countries (primarily Latin America and the francophone countries).

This rubric, in fact, conjoins two important but conflicting philosophical and ethical frameworks – those of the free software (FS) movement, affiliated with Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation, and those of the subsequent Open Source Initiative (OSI), begun in 1998 by Eric Raymond and others. Both share the common goal of fostering the development of software to be made freely available for others to copy, use, modify, and then redistribute. But the free software movement began in conscious opposition to commercial development of profit-oriented proprietary software and the copyright schemes seen to protect such software. By contrast, the Open Source Initiative aimed toward making free software more attractive to for- profit businesses. These differences are significant for more recent shifts from copyleft to “pragmatic openness” (Aufderheide et al. 2019). But, for now, we can begin to explore FLOSS by way of Stallman’s basic definition of what “free” in “free software” means:

Free software is a matter of the users’ freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the software:

The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).

The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).

The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

A program is free software if users have all of these freedoms. Thus, you should be free to redistribute copies, either with or without modifications, either gratis or charging a fee for distribution, to anyone anywhere. Being free to do these things means (among other things) that you do not have to ask or pay for permission.

(The Free Software Definition [Richard Stallman / GNU Operating System], www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html)

Ethically, what is interesting here is the justification for such freedom in terms of benefits to the whole community. Rather than relying on copyright schemes as oriented toward either economic incentives (US) or protecting authorial rights (EU), the free software movement begins with the community good as justifying the conviction that the potential benefits of computer software (and information more generally) should be shared as broadly and equally as possible.

To understand this properly, we first need to understand that “property right” primarily means a right to access and use something – whether a material item (your pen, backpack, computer, bicycle, etc.) or something less material, including “intellectual property” (an author’s words or a computer programmer’s code). Our increasing preferences to use streaming services for music and films, such as Spotify or Netflix, highlight such rights to access: consumers of such services seem less interested in owning physical entertainment sources such as CDs or DVDs – but instead are satisfied with access to entertainments on demand. Given that property means first of all a right to access, we can distinguish between copyright and

copyleft/FLOSS approaches in terms of exclusive and inclusive property rights. Briefly, the US and European copyright approaches tend to presume individual and exclusive property rights. That is, property rights (of access and use) belong to the individual owner: the “default setting” of such exclusive rights is that the owner has the right to exclude others from use of and access to his or her property. Copyleft/FLOSS approaches, by contrast, involve notions of inclusive property rights. So, in Richard Stallman’s definition of free software (quoted above), the starting point is the users’ freedom – i.e., a community of software users – not the individual’s right to exclude others from use and access.

Similarly, the Creative Commons (CC) approach, while recognizing and protecting individual rights (“some rights reserved”), does so in a way that is inclusive: “by default” CC recognizes the rights of others to access and use property. So the Creative Commons “Attribution- Noncommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States” license reads:

You are free to:

Share – copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format

Adapt – remix, transform, and build upon the material

The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.

Under the following terms:

Attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

NonCommercial – You may not use the material for commercial purposes.

ShareAlike – If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.

No additional restrictions – You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything

the license permits. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us)

That is, individuals retain their “moral rights” – including a right to exclude others from using one’s property for others’ commercial advantage. At the same time, however, others’ rights of access and use, such as copying, distributing, and remixing an individual’s property, are likewise granted under this license: the individual owner’s rights are in this way inclusive rather than exclusive.

We will see as we turn to the cultural backgrounds at work here that a wide range of non-Western traditions and approaches to property – beginning with the (Southern) African tradition of ubuntu (next section) – likewise stress inclusive rather than exclusive rights. We will further see a striking middle ground in Scandinavian laws and practices concerning “all peoples’ rights” (allemannsretten) regarding access to “nature” at large – including otherwise private property.

FLOSS in practice: the Linux operating system In the early 1990s, Linus Torvalds developed a variant of the UNIX operating system (OS)1 that was intended for free distribution from the outset – and this in the free software sense: Torvalds distributed his software under Stallman’s GNU General Public License. Subsequently, a great deal of FLOSS work focused on the development and distribution of the Linux operating system and affiliated applications.

Linux has become an increasingly mainstream OS, in part driven by an ever-growing array of diverse software packages and applications. Linux distributions, as compared with Windows and Macintosh operating systems, demand less computing power and are hence well suited to increasingly popular computers such as the Raspberry Pi. Linux also (usually) runs well on older computers that can no longer run current versions of Windows or Macintosh: Linux thus contributes to extending the lifetime of these devices and thereby reducing “eWaste” – the highly problematic stream of discarded electronic devices whose disposal and recycling can result in devasting human and environmental consequences (BusinessGhana 2018).

The Ubuntu distribution is one of the most popular “distros” of Linux. The Ubuntu website defines its mission as follows:

To bring free software to the widest audience. In an era where the frontiers of innovation are public, and not private, the platforms for consuming that innovation should enable everyone to participate.

(www.ubuntu.com/community/mission)

This mission is justified in part by an appeal to ubuntu as a term and concept:

Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning “humanity to others”. It is often described as reminding us that “I am what I am because of who we all are.”

(www.ubuntu.com/about)

To say this a little more fully: such “humanity to others” and our understanding that our identity is inextricably interwoven with those around us express the relational senses of identity we have seen to be characteristic of non-Western (and, increasingly, Western) societies.

Ubuntu Linux is developed and delivered by Canonical Ltd. (among its other FOSS projects). Canonical is explicitly rooted in: (a) Open Source and the ten “core principles of open-source software” as defined by the Open Source Initiative; and (b) the four freedoms of the Free Software Foundation (www.ubuntu.com/community/mission).

The clear intersection between Open Source, Free Software, and the ubuntu tradition is precisely the emphasis on inclusive rather than exclusive property rights – and for the sake of benefiting one’s neighbors and the larger (indeed, now worldwide) community. Ubuntu Linux hence directly reflects the greater emphasis on community well-being that characterizes indigenous (Southern) African cultural values. At the same time, you may remember that, in chapter 2, we saw this emphasis on the larger community as a characteristic of other cultural traditions – especially Confucian and Buddhist traditions – and its consequences for non-Western conceptions of privacy. We are now starting to see how this emphasis on community well-being has equally crucial consequences for our notions of property, and thereby such common acts as copying and

distributing via digital media. We will return to culture and ethics in the next section, as we consider Confucian thought and copyright.

FLOSS in practice Beyond operating systems such as Linux, the FLOSS movements have produced even more popular applications such as the Firefox web browser and the Thunderbird email client, which run on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux machines. The contemporary office suite LibreOffice extensively duplicates the functionalities of Microsoft’s Office software – and again runs on all three operating systems. Such software is hence attractive not only to young people and university students with limited finances; it is further argued to be critical to overcoming the “digital divide” and to exploiting digital media for the sake of development – while also preserving cultural diversity contra the dominance of Western, especially US-based, corporations (www.libreoffice.org/about-us/who-are-we). Strikingly, LibreOffice is used by governmental agencies in Latin-speaking countries – as well as in Taiwan (www.libreoffice.org/discover/who-uses-libreoffice).

But the ethical sensibilities and applications of FLOSS are not limited to computer applications: they have generated other fruitful – perhaps even essential – kinds of sharing online. The obvious example is Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org). Wikipedia invites more or less anyone to not simply read, but also actively write for and contribute other forms of media to, a given webpage. The motto “Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge” (https://wikimediafoundation.org) is clearly in the spirit of FLOSS – and has resulted since its founding in 2001 in a remarkable resource: by 2015, the website hosted “more than 40 million articles in 301 different languages” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).

In contrast to traditional copyright schemes, Wikipedia uses a hybrid scheme – one that incorporates the GNU Free Documentation License (version 1.3) developed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), but prioritizes the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia#Content_licensing).

While Wikipedia is clear that it is not to be used as a primary resource for academic research (you have been warned!), it is now de facto one of the first stops for research. In particular, because the materials here may be updated and corrected much more quickly than printed sources, Wikipedia articles may be especially useful (at least as a starting point) for looking into current events, recent changes in a field, and so forth.

In these ways, Wikipedia – along with other “products” of the FLOSS movement – serves as a paradigmatic fulfilment of the philosophical claims and assumptions underlying these alternative approaches to copyright. In doing so, it provides strong justification for the ethical frameworks and approaches at work in its licensing schemes. It thereby serves as an important counterexample to proponents of more traditional (either US or EU) copyright schemes, especially as such proponents might argue that FLOSS approaches are somehow utopian, excessively idealistic, impracticable, etc.

REFLECTION/DISCUSSION/WRITING QUESTIONS: INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, ETHICS, AND SOCIAL NETWORKING

We’ve now seen a range of possible approaches to how intellectual property may be treated:

(i) US, property-oriented copyright law (consequentialist);

(ii) EU, copyright law, oriented toward authorial rights (deontological);

(iii) Open Source/FLOSS/“copyleft” schemes, including Creative Commons and GNU General Public (GPL) and Free Documentation (FDL) licenses.

1. Given your own country/location, which of these licensing schemes seems to be prevalent in your experience?

2. In your view, what are the most important – but, especially, ethically relevant – differences between these three approaches? Be careful here, and, insofar as you are now familiar with one or more of the ethical frameworks discussed in chapter 6 (beginning with utilitarianism and deontology), try to discern how far a distinctive

ethical characteristic of a given licensing scheme may be seen to depend upon a given ethical framework.

3. Return to your responses to one or more of the scenarios introduced at the start of this chapter – e.g., stealing a CD from a music store, making an illegal copy of new music for a friend, making your music library available for others online through a p2p network, etc.

(i) Which of these three approaches to IP seems closest to your own responses to such scenarios and the ethical justifications for those responses that you have developed?

(ii) Which of these three approaches to IP most clearly contradicts your own responses and justifications?

(iii) Develop a summary of the arguments, evidence, and/or other reasons offered in support for the approaches you have identified in (i) and (ii). Now: in light of the contrasts here between the arguments, evidence, etc., can you discern additional arguments, evidence, etc., that might support one of these approaches more strongly than the other?

4. Presuming you have an account on a social networking service such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and/or others:

(i) When you signed up for the account, did you review the “Terms of Use” or equivalent legal/ethical agreements required of you as a user of the site and its affiliated software? If so, why? If not, why not?

(ii) Review the “Terms of Use” for your networking site – looking particularly for the important claims it makes regarding your ownership of the materials that you post on the site. (For Facebook users, the pertinent section of the “Terms of Use” is reproduced at the beginning of this chapter.)

(iii) Are there claims here that

(a) surprise you, and/or

(b) upon reflection, you may not be comfortable agreeing to?

If so, identify these (both for your own reflection and, perhaps, for class discussion and further writing).

(iv) Can you discern which of the three approaches to IP that we have examined are presumed in these claims? If so, is part of your discomfort with the claims made upon you here because you have a strong ethical disagreement with the approach to IP presumed here? That is, can you argue – most easily, from a different ethical approach to IP – that the claims made upon you are somehow wrong?

(v) Social networking sites depend on acquiring as many user accounts as possible in order to make money (primarily through advertising, the sale of at least aggregated information about its users, etc.). In this way, they are at least somewhat sensitive to the interests, needs, and opinions of their users.

If you find that the “Terms of Use” of your favorite social networking site conflict with your own ethics and underlying assumptions regarding IP, it would be an interesting exercise to write to the site owners (either individually and/or as a larger group) and explain your disagreements and reasons for these. If nothing else, their response(s) to your communications might provide additional material for interesting ethical analysis!

2. Intellectual property and culture: Confucian ethics and African thought As the example of Ubuntu and the differences between US and EU approaches to copyright suggest, our attitudes and approaches to matters of intellectual property – specifically, how far, by whom, and under what circumstances such materials may be justifiably shared – are strongly shaped by culture. (Keep in mind, of course, the sense and limitations of any generalizations we may try to make about culture: see chapter 2, “Interlude,” pp. 49–53.)

As a further example: US copyright law is moderately clear with regard to what counts as “fair use” for teaching and research purposes – at least as far as printed materials are concerned.2 In particular, under most circumstances, it is illegal for me to make, say, photocopies of an entire book that I would then distribute to my students at the beginning of the semester for their use during the course. On the other hand, in the US I would be allowed to place original materials, such as

articles or book chapters, on reserve for my students in the library; they are then free to check out these materials and make copies of them – as part of their “fair use” of these materials as students.

By contrast, European copyright law makes no equivalent provisions for “fair use.” And, on the third hand, in Thailand I received a now highly cherished gift from some graduate students: a nicely photocopied version of an important book in philosophy of technology, complete with a carefully crafted cover, on which the students inscribed their names. In US circumstances, this could only be seen as a crass violation of copyright law: in the Thai context, this copying was seen to be a mark of respect, both for the (famous and well-known) author of the text and for me as the recipient of the gift.

In the latter case, the gift from the students reflected not simply relatively limited economic resources – a (consequentialist) reason often cited as a justification for making illegal copies of materials. In addition, it reflected the influence of Confucian tradition: as Dan Burk has summarized it, Confucian tradition emphasizes emulation of revered classics – and, in this way, copying (as it was for medieval monks in the West) is an activity that expresses highest respect for the work of the author (Burk 2007, 101). By the same token, a master philosopher or thinker is motivated primarily by the desire to benefit others with his or her work – rather than, say, to profit personally through the sale of that work – and so she or he would want to see that work copied and distributed widely rather than restricted in its distribution. As Peter Yu summarizes, “copying may be an important living process for a Confucian Chinese to understand human behaviour, to improve life through self-cultivation and to transmit knowledge to the posterity” (2012, 4).

In this light, Confucian tradition and practice thus closely resemble what we have already seen of ubuntu as a (Southern) African cultural tradition. While, of course, distinct from one another in crucial ways, they share the sense that individuals are relational beings, ones centrally interdependent with the larger community for their very existence and sense of meaning as human beings. Compared with Western systems emphasizing individuals and the individual’s exclusive property rights, both Confucian and ubuntu traditions

downplay the importance of the individual and individual interests, stressing instead the importance of contributing to and maintaining the harmony and well-being of the larger community. (We will explore these matters more fully in chapter 6, but it is important to stress here that this emphasis on the community does not mean – as it sometimes seems to my Western students – the complete loss of “the individual.” On the contrary, individual human beings retain significance and integrity in these views, precisely as they are able to interact with others in ways that foster community harmony and well-being.)

Hence, whether it is copying and giving an important text out of respect and gratitude (my Thai students), or making available an OS such as Ubuntu for free (in more than just the economic sense of being without cost), in both cases the understanding of property is inclusive: the right to access and use these materials belongs to the community, not exclusively to the individual.

In sum, we have now seen culturally variable understandings of property and the ethics of copying and distribution – initially within Western cultures (US and European copyright schemes, along with copyleft schemes affiliated with FLOSS), and now between Western and non-Western cultures and traditions. In this light, it should now be clear that the various software operating systems and applications developed under FLOSS are popular in the developing world not simply for economic reasons: that is, at least in terms of licensing arrangements (though not necessarily in terms of technical and administrative costs), FLOSS avoids the licensing fees charged by corporations such as Microsoft. In addition, we have seen what we can properly call the ethos or ethical sensibilities surrounding FLOSS: this ethos includes an explicit emphasis on one’s contribution to a shared work for the sake of a larger community. Moreover, this ethos resonates closely with the emphasis on community well-being that we have now seen to be characteristic of Confucian tradition and ubuntu, as but two examples of non-Western philosophical and ethical traditions.

And, presuming you read chapter 2 before this one, there is a larger coherency that, I hope, is also becoming clear: just as major cultural variations regarding our understanding of the individual vis-à-vis the

community shape our conceptions of privacy and expectations regarding data privacy protection, so these major cultural variations likewise shape our understandings of property and the ethics of copying and sharing.

Specifically, recall the discussion there regarding changing conceptions of selfhood in both “Western” and “Eastern” traditions. Most briefly, just as strongly individual notions of selfhood correlate with strongly individual notions of privacy, so it appears that these notions further undergird and correlate with strongly individual notions of property – including intellectual property – as primarily an exclusive right held precisely by the individual as copyright holder. And, just as more relational notions of selfhood correlate with more inclusive or shared notions of privacy – such as group privacy or familial privacy – so these notions, as manifest here especially in Confucian and ubuntu traditions, further correlate with shared or inclusive notions of property. In this light, the widespread and largely accepted practices – however illegal – of file-sharing, especially among younger folk, does not necessarily mean that there is some sort of rise of unethical behavior among the youth. And/or it may be that such behavior further reflects these foundational shifts in our basic understandings of selfhood and identity – that is, precisely toward more relational selves for whom such sharing is directly coherent with more inclusive notions of property grounded in the good of the community (Ess 2010).

Recall here, as well, the middle ground between these two positions staked out by notions of the self as a relational autonomy – that is, as a (more individual) freedom conjoined with relationality as also essential to our sense of self. It would seem that such a sense of self coheres especially well with various copyleft schemes of property as inclusive rather than exclusive. That is, these schemes do not, as we have seen, abandon the notion of individual property rights altogether – but rather transform exclusive conceptions to inclusive conceptions that include shared rights of access by a larger community.

We can also note that these middle-ground conceptions are not restricted to simply intellectual property or digital materials. Consider the examples of allemannsretten – “all people’s rights” – in

Norwegian law (as well as in Sweden and elsewhere: Øian et al. 2018, 41). These laws allow “non-owners” the right to “walk through uncultivated land at any time provided they exercise due care,” with the same rights applying “to cultivated land in the winter months” – and this without charge. Specifically, non-owners are allowed to pick berries, mushrooms, and flowers; and to pitch a tent for up to two nights, before needing to ask permission of the landowner ([Norwegian] Outdoor Recreation Act, 1957). To be sure, property owners – farmers, cabin owners, etc. – retain their individual property rights: in particular, they can charge for more specific activities on their land, such as hunting. But the protection of public access in these ways thereby shades these property rights into a more inclusive sort. These laws thereby recall and to some degree reinstantiate premodern Western notions of nature and defined lands as “commons,” as property jointly held by and accessible to all members of a community (Ess 2016). This is the sense of the “commons” as also invoked in the “creative commons” licensing schemes.

Readers may recall that, in chapter 1, I warned against the dangers of either/or thinking (pp. 10, 26–8). These examples of relational autonomy and allemannsretten are helpful in providing us critical middle grounds in what it might otherwise be tempting to treat as an either/or – whether between individual and relational selves and/or, correlatively, exclusive and inclusive conceptions of property. At the same time, allemannsretten shows that such middle grounds are not restricted to digital domains only. Rather, these examples of commons-like property stand as important real-world examples that further counter arguments against copyleft schemes as somehow utopian, excessively idealistic, etc.

REFLECTION/DISCUSSION/WRITING QUESTIONS

1. COPYING: LAW, CULTURE – ETHICS?

Does the legality of copying music make a difference ethically? And how do our cultural attitudes toward texts, authorship, and property affect our ethical analyses of copying?

We have now seen a continuum of possible approaches to notions of intellectual property and the ethics of copying and distributing such

properties. One way to schematize that continuum looks like this:

(Again, these generalizations about culture are starting points only.) As you review your initial arguments and responses to the questions concerning copying and distributing copyrighted materials:

(A) Can you now see one or more ways in which your views, arguments, etc., rested on one or more of the assumptions underlying these three diverse approaches to intellectual property? That is, how far (if at all) do any of your views, arguments, etc., rest on:

assumptions about the relative importance of the individual vis-à- vis the community

and/or

assumptions about the nature of property rights (exclusive or inclusive)?

If they do, identify the specific assumption(s) at work in your initial arguments and views.

(B) Does it appear that your relying on these assumptions is related to your culture(s) of origin and experience? That is, do the assumptions you’re making regarding either the individual/community relationship and/or the inclusive/exclusive character of property correlate / not correlate with these assumptions as characterizing the larger culture(s) of your origin and experience?

(C) Especially if there is a correlation between the assumption(s) underlying your views and arguments and the culture(s) of your origin and experience, what does that mean in terms of ethics? This is to say: recognizing the role of culturally variable norms, beliefs, practices, etc., in our ethical arguments characteristically leads to at least two sorts of questions:

(i) Are our ethical norms, beliefs, practices, etc., ethically relative – i.e., entirely reducible to the norms, beliefs, practices, etc., of a particular culture? If so, then we could say, for example:

for persons in a Western culture whose basic assumptions tend to support individual and exclusive notions of property and thus more restrictive copyright laws – if those persons violate more restrictive copyright laws (e.g., through illegally copying and distributing music), they thereby violate the basic ethical norms of their culture and should be condemned as wrong; but:

for persons in, say, a Confucian culture whose basic assumptions tend to support more community-oriented, inclusive notions of property and thus less restrictive copyright laws – if those persons violate the more restrictive copyright laws of Western nations, they are thereby simply following the moral norms and practices of their culture, and should not be condemned as wrong.

Consider/discuss/write: Does this approach of ethical relativism to the sorts of differences we have seen “make sense” to you as a way of how we are to understand and respond to these deep differences between cultures? If so, explain why. If not, why not?

(ii) If you do think there’s something mistaken about the above scenario – and, thereby, about ethical relativism – then additional questions arise:

(a) Do you want to shift to a posture of ethical absolutism

– claiming that the norms, beliefs, and practices of country/culture X are the right ones: those countries/cultures/individuals who hold different norms and beliefs are thereby wrong?

and/or

(b) Do you think it’s possible – as we saw in chapter 2 on privacy – to develop an approach to matters of copying and distributing digital media that works as an ethical pluralism?

As a reminder: ethical pluralism conjoins shared norms or values with diverse interpretations/applications/understandings of those norms and values – so as thereby to reflect precisely the often very different

basic assumptions and beliefs that define different cultural and ethical traditions.

Consider/discuss/write: given what we’ve seen regarding the current conflicts between US and European approaches to copyright law (above, pp. 100–1), do these conflicts point toward an ethically absolutist approach on the part of the different countries engaged in these conflicts? And/or: in light of those conflicts, do you see any possibility of an ethically pluralistic solution emerging?

(D) If you find that your beliefs, norms, and practices do not correlate with those underlying the culture(s) of your origin and experience, why might this be the case?

Are we – especially in terms of our ethical sensibilities – somehow capable of discerning and establishing moral norms apart from, perhaps even against, prevailing norms and assumptions of our culture(s) of origin and experience? If so, how does that “work” in your view? That is, how do we as human beings come to develop our own ethical sensibilities? On what grounds?

2. COPYRIGHT: DIFFERENT ETHICS FOR DIFFERENT COUNTRIES, CULTURES?

A student from a developing country justified the practice of pirating in that country – of illegally copying and selling imported music CDs – under the conditions that they were:

(a) the work of well-to-do (and primarily Western) artists, and

(b) distributed and sold in that country by equally well-to-do multinational corporations.

The student justified the practice of pirating in an interesting way:

(i) The widespread practice of pirating – of illegal copying and selling – imported music CDs effected an interesting change.

Originally, imported CDs cost around US$10.00. Pirated CDs were being sold for US$1.00. But, after a certain period of time, the prices of legal, imported CDs dropped to US$2.00 – thereby making them much more affordable for that country’s inhabitants, and thus allowing the multinational corporation and Western artist to make at

least more profit than they had before. This is to say: illegal copying and sales of CDs in effect broke a market monopoly, so that the market forces worked as they are supposed to – i.e., with free(r) competition leading to lower prices.

In addition, the student pointed out that, by contrast, many students and others of limited means consciously choose to pay full price for a CD produced by a local/regional/national music group. Again, the argument is, on first blush, utilitarian:

(ii) By paying full price for CDs produced by local/regional/national musicians, they thereby supported those who really needed it – and thereby helped boost their own economy.

In both examples, the student’s arguments echo the arguments I hear from many students in the developed world. Again, in the case of a nationally or internationally known musician whose work is distributed by wealthy and powerful corporations, the positive benefits or consequences of illegal copying and downloading (in terms of making the music more easily available for more people) outweigh the possible negative costs (of a modest amount of lost profit to the musicians and the companies). By contrast, many will make a conscious effort to “buy local” – to pay full price for CDs produced and distributed by local bands struggling to make a start.

Responses? In particular:

(i) Does it seem to you that, say, students and others in developing countries can make a greater/stronger case for pirating and other forms of illegal copying than students and others in developed countries?

(ii) Assume that the developing country in this example is a country marked by one of the more community-oriented traditions discussed above – for example, ubuntu or Confucian thought. And assume that the students in the developed world that I refer to live in the well-to-do countries such as the United States and Scandinavia – that is, countries and traditions shaped by Western conceptions of the individual and primarily exclusive property rights.

In light of the important differences between the cultural and ethical backgrounds, how do you respond to the claim that the students in the developing country (shaped by ubuntu or Confucian tradition) have a stronger justification for their illegal copying than Western students?

Or would you rather argue that everyone should follow the copyright laws – no matter what their location and culture?

3. COPYRIGHT AND DEONTOLOGICAL ETHICS

Deontological ethics, as emphasizing, for example, duties to respect and protect the rights of others – whatever the costs of doing so – can be invoked in these debates as offering reasons for obeying the law (e.g., RIAA – www.riaa.com/resources-learning/about-piracy). Even if the consequences of doing so may be unpleasant – e.g., not having access to music one would otherwise enjoy – doing so nonetheless reflects an important duty to respect the property rights of others. Such duties, however, crucially depend on establishing that the laws in question are just laws – that is, grounded in one or more sets of values and principles that are used to demonstrate that such laws are justified as means to higher ends.

And so, Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (not to mention, the signers of the US Declaration of Independence) famously argued that, while we are morally obliged to follow just laws, we are allowed, even morally obliged, to disobey unjust laws.

The trick, of course, is demonstrating that a given law is indeed unjust.

Some arguments I’ve heard in the debates over illegal copying sound as though people are attempting to construct a deontological argument along the following lines:

The laws established to “protect” the work of wealthy artists and marketed by wealthy and powerful corporations are unjust.

They are unjust because the laws are not the result of a genuinely democratic process, one in which the consent of those affected plays the deciding role. Rather, they are laws that result from a legislative process controlled by the powerful – those with the money to do so. Those laws thus represent and protect the interests of the wealthy and powerful – they do not represent or protect the

interests of the rest of us.

Given that these laws are unjust, I am allowed (perhaps even obliged) to disobey them.

Perhaps with the help of your instructor and/or cohorts, review some of the important deontological sources for arguments supporting disobeying unjust laws (King [1963] 1964); cf. Brownlee 2017). And/or review broader critiques of, especially, the US copyright system and dominance from the perspectives of indigenous peoples and developing countries (e.g., Boateng 2011). Can you find/develop deontological arguments along these lines that support disobeying prevailing copyright laws as unjust laws? And, if so, how closely do they parallel the sorts of arguments offered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for example? In particular, how good an analogy is there between:

the situation and context supporting King’s arguments that segregation laws are unjust – and thus must be disobeyed; and

the situation and context supporting the arguments you find/develop showing that copyright laws are unjust and thus can or must be disobeyed?

(It may be helpful to also review the discussion of analogy arguments above, pp. 97–8).

4. COPYRIGHT AND VIRTUE ETHICS

Herman Tavani (2013) develops a framework for analyzing intellectual property issues that rests squarely on Aristotle’s virtue ethics (see chapter 6). On this view, information is taken to have as its ultimate purpose both personal expression and utility; this further means that information is best understood as a common good, something to be shared – rather than treated as an exclusive property (as in the US and EU, as we have seen). At the extreme, a focus on information – whether as computer software or a popular song – as an exclusive property, the right to which can be controlled by one person or corporation, would lead to the end of “the public domain” – that is, a kind of “information commons” that benefits the whole community. (The analogy here is with the commons in preindustrial England, a parcel of land as inclusive property that is accessible to all for the

benefit of all, in contrast to individual and exclusive private property.)

Arguably, much good – both individually and communally – has come from the existence of such commons. Indeed, as Niels Ole Finneman (2005) has documented, part of the Scandinavian approach to information technologies and their supporting infrastructures is based on understanding these as common or public goods – ones that thus require and deserve the material support of the state. Direct state support of ICT infrastructure and development has thus contributed to the Scandinavian countries enjoying the highest presence and use of these technologies in their daily lives. (This approach obviously directly resonates with allemannsretten as well.)

From the perspective of virtue ethics, then, we would pursue excellence in our abilities to develop, manipulate, and distribute information as a common good – not primarily because doing so will benefit us personally in primarily economic terms; but rather, because, in doing so, (a) we foster and improve upon important capacities and abilities as human beings, including our ability to communicate with one another and benefit one another using these new technologies; and (b) doing so thereby contributes to greater community harmony and benefit. (Cf. Peter Yu’s account of copying as “an important living process for a Confucian Chinese to understand human behaviour, to improve life through self-cultivation and to transmit knowledge to the posterity” [2012, 4])

Tavani emphasizes that this approach is not opposed to individual economic gain. The ideal here would be to develop a system that could conjoin these notions of virtue ethics and the common good with a recognized need for “fair compensation” for the costs and risks individuals and companies take in developing products and making them available in the marketplace. Tavani sees the Creative Commons initiative (discussed above) as one way of institutionalizing such a virtue ethics approach to information (Tavani 2013, 252–60; cf. Ess 2016).

Responses? In particular:

(A) Are there important virtues or habits of excellence that might come into play in either:

(i) practicing obeying, for example, copyright laws (as well as other laws), at least as long as they are just laws?

(ii) practicing disobeying such laws?

(B) Are there important virtues or habits of excellence that might come into play in either:

(i) practicing obeying, for example, copyright laws (as well as other laws), even if they are unjust laws?

(ii) practicing disobeying such laws?

5. CULTURE – AGAIN

(Remember: the following generalizations are heuristic starting points only. There will be plenty of counterexamples, nuances, and greater complexities as we go along.)

In addition to culture correlating with basic assumptions regarding the individual/community relationship and the nature of property rights (inclusive/exclusive), we have seen that it may further correlate with the basic ethical frameworks we have been using:

Roughly, if you have been acculturated in a Western/Northern country such as the US and the UK, it may be that your arguments largely emphasize utilitarian approaches.

If you have been acculturated in a Western/Northern country such as the Germanic countries and Scandinavia, it may be that your arguments more likely include deontological approaches.

If you have been acculturated in a non-Western country – especially one shaped by the sorts of traditions we have explored so far (ubuntu, Confucian thought, and Buddhist thought) that emphasize the well-being of the community, you may have a stronger likelihood of appreciating virtue ethics approaches – i.e., beginning with questions about what kinds of human beings we need to become – and thus what sorts of habits and practices of excellence we must pursue, for the sake of both our own contentment and well-being (eudaimonia) and that of our larger community; and/or you may have a stronger likelihood of

appreciating the importance of doing what will benefit the larger community in any event, insofar as we as individuals are crucially interdependent with the other members of our community.(Similar comments may also hold for those acculturated in Scandinavian countries, as marked by strong traditions of shared public goods, as exemplified in allemannsretten and social democratic approaches to public infrastructure, including ICTs and the internet.)

What role – if any, so far as you can tell – does your own culture play in shaping your attitudes, beliefs, and practices in these matters? Stated differently: can you see whether or not your own arguments have been reinforced in one or more ways by the larger cultural tradition(s) that have shaped you? And/or do your own arguments tend to run against the prevailing ethics of the larger cultural traditions that have shaped you?

(After responding to these questions, you may want to revisit the questions regarding our meta-ethical frameworks – ethical relativism, absolutism, and pluralism – raised above in questions (1)(C)(i) and (1) (C)(ii), pp. 118–19.)

Notes 1 For non-geeks: the operating system, or OS, is the base-level

software required to make your computer “work” – including reading and writing files from various media (CDs, DVDs, memory sticks, hard drives) and through various communication channels and networks (phone lines, Ethernet connection, wireless networks), along with the many operations required to let you interact with and use that information (e.g., keyboards and mice and the computer screen). Application software, by contrast, is software that runs, so to speak, on top of the OS: this commonly includes applications for wordprocessing, email, spreadsheets, presentation, web-browsing, instant messaging, etc.

2 The US Copyright Act of 1976 was accompanied by the development of “Guidelines for Classroom Copying in Not-for-

Profit Educational Institutions with Respect to Books and Periodicals” (www.copyright.gov/circs/circ21.pdf). In the US, different universities are establishing guidelines and background materials for guiding students and faculty in applying fair use principles to digital materials (e.g., https://ogc.harvard.edu/pages/copyright-and-fair-use). But, especially from an international perspective, far from any sort of consensus emerging, discussion appears to be in flux, and policy- making and legislation even more so (e.g., Hick and Schmücker 2016).

CHAPTER FOUR Friendship, Death Online, Slow/Fair Technology, and Democracy Where the funeral used to be the primary ritual space of social mourning expressions, now social media networks offer an expansion of sociality (multiple social milieus), spatiality (multiple spaces) and temporality (multiple timeframes). … mourning etiquette is both challenging the online social scene as well as being redefined by it.

(Sabra 2017, 25)

[S]ocial media space is not a replacement for physical space in the making of contemporary social movements. … Isolated from other networks of communications and media, social media cannot make a revolution.

(Lim 2018, 128)

Chapter overview We explore four aspects of life online that offer remarkable new possibilities in our personal and shared lives while also confronting us with new ethical questions and challenges. We examine first how friendship is both amplified and threatened by social networking sites (SNSs) such as Facebook. A virtue ethics approach both raises serious ethical questions and offers helpful suggestions for resolving those questions.

We then take up the recent phenomena of “death online,” the emerging practices of announcing, grieving, and memorializing the death of those close – and those not so close – to us. The collapse of the divide between traditionally private rituals and grieving vis-à-vis the largely public venues of online communication evokes new ethical questions – as do our “digital legacies” we leave behind, from online profiles to our mobile devices.

These recent phenomena highlight ways in which especially young people are moving away from Facebook – and toward a “post-digital” era indexed by greater emphasis on the importance of our offline worlds, for example when grappling with deepest friendship and grief. Resonant with these developments are growing interests in “slow technology” and Fairtrade commitments as shaping the very design of our technologies. We will explore these specifically by way of the Fairphone as a case-study.

Lastly, we address our lives as citizens in – hopefully – democratic societies. Early confidence in the democratizing powers of digital media has been severely countered by the collapse of the Arab Springs into the Arab Winters. “Fake news” and the role of social media in fragmenting and polarizing democratic publics are additional ways of exploiting online communication that foster the global rise of “digital authoritarianism.” These darker developments are (somewhat) countered by recent uses of deontological and virtue ethics approaches.

Friendship online? Initial considerations At the time of this writing, the SNS Facebook (FB) claims that over 2.7 billion people – about 37 percent of the planet’s population – use the FB services of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or Messenger (Facebook 2019, 1). Such staggering numbers are but one marker of the explosive growth of SNSs over their nearly two decades of existence. As Shannon Vallor notes, our use of these sites is “reshaping how human beings initiate and/or maintain virtually every type of ethically significant social bond or role,” beginning with friendship but extending through “parent-to-child, co-worker-to-co-worker, employer-to-employee, teacher-to-student, neighbor-to-neighbor, seller-to-buyer, and doctor-to-patient” relationships – and this is simply “a partial list” (2016a, 1)

On the one hand, the boons of connecting with one another through such sites are undeniable. Especially in highly mobile societies such as the United States, SNSs allow friends and family who have moved apart to remain in touch in emotionally invaluable ways. Multiple organizations – from student groups to religious organizations – have exploited the affordances of SNSs to bring together likeminded members and attract potential new ones (e.g., Lomborg and Ess 2012). Indeed, despite the recent scandals and concerns surrounding Facebook, having a Facebook page for one’s business, political party, the local neighborhood improvement group, major (and minor) civil projects, etc., remains essential for communicating within such groups and publicizing to larger communities. Academics are likewise expected to polish their “social media presence” – e.g., a profile on LinkedIn, Academia, and/or Research Gate. These services are certainly useful for making new connections and perhaps gaining the attention of “head-hunters” tasked with recruiting people to specific positions. They are also becoming increasingly essential venues for exchanging both pre-publication and post-publication journal articles and book chapters – and thereby gaining still greater attention for one’s own work. “To be is to be seen” – on social media.

Nonetheless, younger people in particular have been abandoning Facebook for several years – first of all, because their parents and

other relatives have also joined. But other SNSs, such as Snapchat and Instagram, have flourished as communication channels that are more temporary and more easily secluded from their parents’ and other adult eyes. In this post-digital era, more and more people work to reduce their online engagements and time spent before screens (Syvertsen and Enli 2019). Nevertheless, it remains essential, especially for young people, to remain connected to their peers via SNSs (e.g., Lüders 2011).

At the same time, both individual and group privacies can be at risk in such sites. As well, SNSs raise the larger problem of self- commodification. That is, such sites give us relatively narrow categories for self-presentation, beginning with a binary choice regarding gender. More generally, the strong tendency is to give users categories having to do with our preferences as consumers (“music, movies, fandom”; Livingstone 2011a, 354). And this is just the beginning of commodification: especially in an era of Big Data and what Jodi Dean (2009) calls “communicative capitalism,” the data collected about us – from browsing history to entertainment choices to credit card use – are the primary commodities exchanged between such sites and advertisers who seek to micro-target us as consumers. Using increasingly sophisticated “persuasive technologies,” SNSs’ (and other) design aims to maximize our time and “click-throughs” – for the sake of more data, advertising, and revenue. Finally, as we saw in the classic example of Amanda Todd (chapter 1), there are ongoing cases in which “friendship” online can be used as a vehicle for cyberbullying of various forms – including forms severe enough to lead to suicide.

INITIAL REFLECTION/DISCUSSION/WRITING QUESTIONS

1. Develop a utilitarian cost–benefit analysis of your own use of SNSs, whether Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter … and/or more professionally oriented sites such as LinkedIn, Academia, ResearchGate … and/or more locally/regionally/nationally/internationally oriented sites such as ...

To do so:

(A) Develop an informal “media log” in which you document your own

uses of SNSs over some period of days – e.g., a week or a month. Try to be as careful and precise as possible in your documentation. In addition to noting, say, “I checked my SNS profile 20 times today,” list carefully just what you did as you did so – e.g., looked at a friend’s profile page, commented on a photograph or other comment, checked out a “person of interest” in your class, etc. The idea is to provide as rich and fine-grained a picture of your media use as possible with a view toward responding to the second part of this exercise – namely: as you do so, what are, for you, some of the most important benefits of your using the site(s)?

(Yes, you can automate this process with the increasing offering of tools – often provided by the companies themselves, such as Apple’s “Screen Time” – ostensibly designed to help us keep track of and reduce our screen time, etc. Using such tools may be helpful checks on your manual logging – but the manual log will force you to be more conscious about the details in ways that should prove helpful to this exercise.)

(B) Have you (and/or your cohorts, friends, and/or family) ever had any negative experience(s) in using SNSs? If so, describe these with some care, being sure to explain why these experiences were negative. That is, did they result in hurt feelings, feelings of betrayal, lack of privacy, loss of trust, loss of “face” among your friends and family, serious sorts of financial cost or fraud ... ? (You may also want to consider some of the effects discussed below regarding “death online.”)

(C) Either individually and/or in a group, line up your positive experiences (and their approximate “utils”1) in one column, vis-à-vis negative experiences (and their approximate utils) in an adjacent column. You can then develop a continuum of possible ethical responses to the benefits and risks – for example, ranging from a complete abstinence from SNSs (because the risks of possible harms are too high) to a moderate use of SNSs (as guided by careful consideration of how to avoid known risks) to a complete embrace of SNSs (on the view that the possibilities of serious harm are very low and are outweighed by a clear set of benefits).

In light of your experiences, your columns of risks and benefits, and the continuum of possible responses you develop, which response(s) to SNSs and their possible uses would your utilitarian calculus recommend?

As always, the chief question for our purposes is, why? That is, whatever your response to this question, what reasons, arguments, grounds, feelings, intuitions, sensibilities, etc., support and provide justification for your position?

2. Deontologists would approach SNSs from the perspective of basic rights – beginning with rights to privacy, but also rights, for example, to the intellectual property (IP – as distinct from IP [Internet Protocol] addresses) uploaded and created on a profile (e.g., a photograph).

Review the Terms of Service (ToS) and privacy policies of the SNS you use primarily. This will take a while: not only are they characteristically very long – in many cases, they are intentionally written to be difficult to read and understand, in order to encourage our “clicking through” the consent box. What rights do these documents indicate are in fact protected – and/or what rights seem to be only moderately protected, if at all?

In light of this review – and referring to the continuum of possible responses or uses of SNSs you developed above (1.C) – how would a strict deontologist – that is, one insisting upon basic rights to privacy and (perhaps) IP – respond to the SNS’s ToS and privacy policies? That is, if the primary issue is to preserve these rights at all costs, where would a strict deontologist likely stand on the continuum of responses you have developed?

3. We have begun to see that a number of researchers and ethicists have long raised further questions about how SNSs involve self- commodification – turning aspects of our identity and selfhood into commodities or saleable products in a marketplace. On a first level, the focus is on how such sites require us to present ourselves in terms of our consumer tastes, such as music preferences, etc. (Livingstone 2011a). On a second level, the data we provide – both in setting up a profile and then the additional data generated by our further use of an

SNS – constitute the economic bread and butter of the sites’ owners: this information, when aggregated with that of many, many others, is sold to various corporations and businesses who seek to advertise their goods and services more effectively. On both levels, the design of the SNS foregrounds those aspects of our selfhood and identity that: (a) can be appropriately captured in the categories of consumer preferences; and thereby (b) prove highly valuable for marketing and advertising purposes.

Up to a point (as may be apparent in your initial utilitarian analyses), such self-commodification may be perfectly useful and benign. But deontologists would further raise the question: is there a point in these processes when our focus on self-commodification risks having us lose sight of our primary ethical identity as moral autonomies – i.e., as freedoms- and rights-holders who must not be reduced to commodities simply for sale in a marketplace?

Again, in light of this ethical focus – where would a strict deontologist likely stand on the continuum of possible responses you developed (1.C)?

4. Shannon Vallor notes in her article on “Social Networking and Ethics” (https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/ethics- social-networking) that the ethical implications of SNSs are not “strictly interpersonal”: in addition, our engagement with SNSs implicates us in a “complex web of interactions between social networking service users and their online and offline communities, social network developers, corporations, governments and other institutions” (2016a: 1).

In slightly different terms, this means that our engagement with SNSs inextricably ties us (including our ethical agency and moral choices) in with an extensive “web of relationships” that extends across the whole range of actors and agents (including artificial agents) knotted together by these networks. This would further seem to mean that our ethical choices and responsibilities are thereby “distributed” or likewise shared across such networks. In fact, philosophers such as Luciano Floridi (2006) and Judith Simon (2015) argue that we must consider carefully the implications of such distributed and shared

responsibility – i.e., beyond more traditional emphases on our individual responsibility – as an inevitable dimension of our lives as enmeshed within such networks.

If you did not already take into account the distributed nature of our ethical responsibilities in your first responses to the above questions, take some time to reflect on that now. In particular:

Does the distributed nature of ethical responsibility change any of your utilitarian calculations and/or decisions/judgments regarding what utilitarians would ethically recommend in terms of the continuum of possible engagements with SNSs (including no use at all)?

Does the distributed nature of ethical responsibility change any of your deontological analyses and/or decisions/judgments regarding what deontologists would ethically recommend in terms of the continuum of possible engagements with SNSs (including no use at all)?

(We will explore these questions in more concrete detail by way of the Fairphone case-study below.)

Finally:

(A) Are there significant differences between the utilitarian and deontological responses or judgments regarding possible uses of SNSs (including no use at all)?

For example, you may find that deontologists, as concerned with privacy and IP rights, as well as insisting that human freedom must not be eliminated through commodification processes, would weigh in more on the side of moderate to no use of SNSs. Utilitarians, by contrast, might well argue more in favor of moderate use to a full embrace of SNSs.

(B) If there are differences, which responses come closer to your own current use and ethical sensibilities? That is, do you find your uses and ethical judgments agreeing more with the utilitarians or more with the deontologists?

(C) Either way, can you provide arguments, evidence, and/or some

other form of warrant that would argue in favor of your taking up either the utilitarian or the deontological approach here?

(D) Keep in mind that these preferences tend to be strongly shaped by our national and cultural backgrounds – for instance, with utilitarianism tending to be stronger in English-speaking countries, while deontologies, for example, tend to be stronger in especially Northern European countries. In this light, do your preferences for either utilitarianism or deontology “line up” with your national/cultural background?2

If so, do you have additional arguments, evidence, and/or some other form of warrant that would suggest that your preferences are not simply the result of your background and enculturation? If not, can you point to specific experiences, arguments, etc., that have encouraged you to take up an ethical framework perhaps somewhat at odds with those prevailing in your country/culture of origin?

Friendship online: Additional considerations As discussed more fully in chapter 6 (pp. 260–6), virtue ethics provides a third framework for analyzing and resolving ethical issues. For many reasons, virtue ethics has become increasingly significant in the digital age. To begin with, as the above exercise may suggest, neither utilitarianism nor deontology alone may always “work” to help us resolve some of the ethical issues occasioned by digital technologies and networked communications. For example, both utilitarianism and deontology tend to emphasize the ethical responsibilities of human beings understood as primarily individual moral agents. But, as we have seen (esp. chapter 2, pp. 60–8), our sense of selfhood in “Western” societies appears to be shifting from more individual emphases toward more relational emphases – and thereby toward more relational forms of shared or group privacy, as well as the distributed responsibility explored above. In both its ancient and contemporary forms, virtue ethics begins precisely with the view that human beings are also such relational or social beings, not solely individual ones. Hence, virtue ethics is especially well suited to serve as an ethical framework in the (post-)digital age, insofar as digital

media and networked communications incline us in more sociable or relational directions. So we will see in chapter 5, for example, that virtue ethics approaches become increasingly useful in our efforts to respond to some of the ethical challenges clustering about sexually explicit materials (SEMs) online and violence in games, as well as robots and sexbots. And in chapter 6, we will further see how virtue ethics has become central to both European and international efforts to define an “ethically aligned design” for Artificial and Intelligent Systems – that is, by the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), the largest professional and standards-setting organization in the world (https://ethicsinaction.ieee.org).

In fact, virtue ethics emerged early on as a primary approach to the ethics of friendship online. This is perhaps not surprising: recall the guiding questions of virtue ethics – namely, what capacities or habits must I acquire, practice, and develop with excellence in order to enjoy a life of contentment (or happiness – eudaimonia)? Again, for both ancient and contemporary virtue ethicists, such a life is always a relational or social one: hence, our sense of contentment or well-being (eudaimonia) is inevitably interdependent upon our relationships with others. Friendship is among the most important of such relationships: it is difficult to imagine a good life of flourishing and contentment without it, and so friendship is a primary focus of virtue ethics.

In these directions, Vallor (2009, 2011, 2016a, 2016b) has carefully examined how far SNSs may foster and/or hinder the capacities and habits (virtues) required for developing and sustaining deep friendships. The question then becomes: how far do our engagements with SNSs incline us to acquire and foster the virtues required for friendship – and how far might the very designs of SNSs instead discourage our acquiring and fostering these virtues?

Vallor focuses on the virtues of patience, perseverance, and empathy as requirements for deep, long-term friendships – as well as long-term intimate relationships, and, indeed, communication itself. We once learned these virtues in non-digital settings – say, a visit to an elderly relative when we were young. With no possibility of escape, we gradually learned how to engage with such Others, beginning with simple conversation. Such engagements require, and thus cultivate,

precisely the virtues of patience and perseverance. These capacities are essential to sustaining most human projects, including those of close relationships:

In communication, perseverance manifests the willingness to push through conflict or misunderstanding to reconnect with one’s partner on the other side of the breach. But to be effective in maintaining the intimacy of the communication, such perseverance must be coupled with patience, the habit of “riding out” moments of irritation, boredom, or incomprehension rather than tuning out or abruptly changing the subject in an attempt to force the conversation into a more satisfactory state. Indeed, the richest joys of communication often come from being patient enough to actually grasp what is being said, to finally get the joke, or to hear a challenging truth.

(Vallor 2009, 165)

To be sure, acquiring such capacities and habits is not easy,

especially in the beginning when our existing motivations and dispositions often pull us in the opposite direction. One therefore requires, in addition to our existing motives, situational opportunities that exert some pressure upon us to move in the virtuous direction, and the social strains and burdens of face-to-face conversation have historically, and across cultures, often been rich sources of such pressure.

(Ibid.)

Whatever their many benefits and advantages may be (especially from a utilitarian perspective), the general question is then: how far do our engagements with one another online foster and/or hinder the development of such core virtues as patience and perseverance? Overall, Vallor’s first response is not heartening:

For today’s technologies provide us with an ever-widening horizon of escape routes from any interaction that has lost its momentary appeal, and are widely celebrated by users precisely for their capacity to liberate us from the uncomfortable strains and burdens of conventional communication. I can ... click away from a friend’s blog, without the price that must be paid for physically turning away from a

face-to-face conversation. (Ibid., 166)

This is to say: as SNSs are built around online engagements that are quick, short, convenient, and ephemeral (as Snapchat and Instagram are specifically designed to be), they thereby train communicative habits that do not immediately seem to require the sorts of perseverance and patience characteristic of at least some of our offline encounters, especially our most significant ones. In particular, online communicative environments always offer the possibility of an immediate escape, as mood, desire, and/ or necessity may dictate. This is not necessarily problematic ethically. The ethical concern, rather, is with how far I am likely also to stick with the offline engagements that require virtues such as patience and perseverance – and thereby acquire and learn how to foster those virtues.

To get at this a last way, Vallor emphasizes that in offline venues:

The gaze of the morally significant other, which holds me respectfully in place and solicits my ongoing patience, is a critical element in my moral development; though I might for all that ignore it, it creates an important situational gradient in the virtuous direction.

(Ibid.)

In online contexts, however, it is easy to escape such a gaze. Such escape is not always a bad thing: sometimes it might well be beneficent and fully justified, as when we focus on our mobile devices while commuting, etc. Rather, Vallor is raising the larger question: what sorts of habits and excellences are we likely to acquire as such online environments become our predominant venues for communication with one another?

Again, acquiring such virtues is difficult at the beginning – especially, it would seem, for a young person both as a beginner in these virtues and as someone whose communicative engagements increasingly take place in online rather than offline environments. That is: if we are at the beginning stages of learning to acquire such virtues – precisely because it is challenging and difficult to do so – it is especially tempting to quit as soon as possible. (By analogy: think about how

young people fight against the sorts of practice required to become competent musicians or athletes, much less excellent ones, for example.) If the vast majority of our communicative engagements with one another take place primarily in online contexts, are we likely to acquire and foster the virtues of perseverance and patience? And/or is it more likely that, when we are forced in offline contexts to take up the difficult practices of patience and perseverance, we will rather seek to return as quickly as possible to the relative familiarity of the comparatively less demanding online environments?

ADDITIONAL REFLECTION/DISCUSSION/WRITING QUESTIONS

1. Take the opening question of virtue ethics seriously: what habits or capacities (as abilities that must be first learned and then practiced – as a musician must practice her scales, as an athlete must practice the moves of the game, etc.) seem necessary to you and your cohorts for a life of contentment and well-being – both for yourself and for the communities in which you are inevitably interwoven? (Keep in mind here that such contentment is not solely a matter of “subjective” satisfaction, but further includes a more “objective” sense of having the skills – as acquired and practiced virtues – that allow us to act well and flourish in our larger communities and environments.)

2. In particular, how far do you dis/agree with Vallor’s first claim that the virtues of patience and perseverance are required for developing deep and long-term friendships? If you agree, why? If not, why not?

3. Return to your media log developed for question 1.A in the opening set of reflection questions. Choose the online venues or environments that your log indicates you use most often.

(A) Carefully reflect upon and consider your usages of these environments from a virtue ethics perspective: what habits or capabilities do these environments incline us to practice most often?

(B) Given your responses to 3.A, how far do the habits or capabilities most practiced in the online environments you use the most overlap with and/or differ from:

(i) your own list of virtues; and

(ii) the virtues identified as central by Vallor, namely perseverance, patience, and empathy?

(C) Recall the continuum of possible responses to SNSs developed above, ranging from no use to enthusiastic embrace. Given your responses to 3.B, as a virtue ethicist, where on this continuum would you argue you should stand? That is, which point on the continuum seems most likely to help you acquire and foster the virtues you have identified as necessary for a life of contentment or well-being (eudaimonia)? (Again, keep in mind here that such flourishing is dependent on virtues as skills and abilities needed for acting well in community with others and our larger environments.)

As always, what counts here are your arguments and evidence.

4. Now that you’ve developed a virtue ethics response to SNSs and their possible uses, how do your judgments and conclusions compare with those developed above using utilitarian and deontological frameworks?

5. Especially if virtue ethics lands you in a different place on your continuum than either utilitarianism and/or deontology:

(A) Which of these positions – utilitarianism, deontology, and/ or virtue ethics – lands you most closely to the point on the continuum that most closely coheres with your current actual practices and usages?

(B) Given your response to 5.A – i.e., are your current practices and usages best recommended from a utilitarian, deontological, and/or virtue ethics standpoint – is the resulting ethical standpoint consistent with the framework(s) you have found yourself most closely allied with above and/or in other exercises in this book?

(C) Especially if you find yourself moving between ethical frameworks, rest assured, first of all, that this is perfectly normal. It may well be that each framework “works” better than another in the face of a particular ethical context or challenge: indeed, part of learning about ethics is just the (hard) work of learning how to judge which framework(s) are best used when and where.

That said, does it appear that there might be some basic inconsistencies or incoherencies in how you approach these ethical issues? For example, is your choice of one framework in one context warranted or justified in a way you can articulate and defend – or is it possibly more the result of, say, your national/cultural background or other factors you’ve previously not considered?

In all events – do you start to see ways of developing a more coherent use of these frameworks and approaches? And, if so: would doing so result in any changes in your actual practices and usages of SNSs?

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES: EVIDENCE, DESIGNER REGRETS, AND MOVES

TOWARD THE POST-DIGITAL

In the earlier years of social media, debates about their ethical dimensions and concerns took place in the absence of reasonably reliable empirical evidence regarding their actual impacts and consequences. While such research will remain limited and qualified in complex ways, nonetheless, more reasonably solid findings have begun to emerge in the last few years. One of these –

Hunt Allcott, Luca Braghieri, Sarah Eichmeyer, and Matthew Gentzkow (2019) The Welfare Effects of Social Media, web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/facebook.pdf

describes the costs and benefits for US-based Facebook users who withdrew from FB for a period of four weeks in the fall of 2018. Some of the important highlights are summarized and discussed in:

Benedict Carey (2019) This Is Your Brain Off Facebook, New York Times, January 30, www.nytimes.com/2019/01/30/health/facebook- psychology-health.html.

This evidence is consonant with a larger wave of growing criticism of these technologies and the companies behind them – specifically by (former) employees and designers who have come forth with dramatic accounts of their regrets for having been involved in their design and related processes. So Justin Rosenstein, the coder who developed the “like” button in the first place, has emerged as a prominent critic of “social media and other addictive technologies” (Lewis 2017).

Rosenstein is by no means alone:

Paul Lewis (2017) “Our Minds Can Be Hijacked”: The Tech Insiders Who Fear a Smartphone Dystopia, The Guardian (October 6), www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone- addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia.

On the other side, burgeoning research on “digital detox” – increasing efforts to reduce and/or disconnect from our screens – documents numerous strategies and approaches toward better balancing our online and offline lives, e.g.:

Trine Syvertsen and Gunn Enli (2019) Digital Detox: Media Resistance and the Promise of Authenticity, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies: 1–15. DOI: 10.1177/135485651984732

Review these studies and articles, and then return to your responses to the questions raised above. Do these resources offer evidence and/or other considerations that help refine your responses?

Friendship – and death – online For most of us, at least (i.e., with the exception of some strands of transhumanism), the rise of digital technologies and media did not somehow eradicate our mortality. But the development of these technologies was (is?) long accompanied by a thematic interest in “digital immortality.” It turns out that there are deep historical backgrounds to this interest: these are in fact distinctively Western as they rest on specific (Western) Christian theological assumptions of a sharp dualism between an immortal soul and mortal body. This dualism was secularized (as a disembodied reason vs. an irrational body) and then “baked into” the underlying assumptions and aims of modern technologies – including our foundational imaginings and discourse surrounding a “bodiless cyberspace” (as in William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer, 1984). Throughout the 1990s, especially US- based discourse and usages of a primarily US-based internet reflected these dualisms and affiliated dreams of “digital immortality” (Ess 2011). Especially transhumanism exemplifies the ongoing influence of

these ancient assumptions and hopes.

This background is useful, first, as it highlights the historical and thereby cultural origins of these views: this should make it easier for students, instructors, and readers from “other” cultural backgrounds to recognize and reflect upon likely differences as well as commonalities with your own assumptions and views. Second, it helps explain the relatively late emergence of “Death Online Research” (DOR). Beginning approximately in 2012 or so, DOR explores emerging practices of “digitally mediated grieving and memorialising,” digital “afterlife,” and so on (DORS4, 2018). Very simply, just as more or less every other aspect of our lives is now inextricably interwoven with our digital media practices, including our uses of social media, so death in all its dimensions and impacts is increasingly expressed through and in these technologies.

As usual, much of this is beneficent in multiple ways. SNSs and digital communication channels such as Messenger, WhatsApp, etc., allow often far-flung family members and friends to learn about the death of a close friend or relative, share their remembrances and grief, establish online memorials, etc. In particular, Ylva Hård af Segerstad and Dick Kasperowski (2015) have documented the experiences of bereaved parents in a closed Facebook group in Sweden. In highly secular–rational Scandinavia, death is largely a taboo topic – the death of one’s child all the more so. At the same time, there is likely nothing so devastating to a parent as the loss of one’s child – and so the need to somehow connect up with others who can understand and be supportive is all the more imperative. No one understands better than other bereaved parents, and so the possibility of making connections with this cohort can be life-saving. Consider this SMS from a bereaved mother:

I’m in a fitting room writing to you. Feel I have to in order not to break down. It is sooo difficult! Why do we have to go through this. Miss my child so I don’t think I’ll be able to make it. Tomorrow is two long months since I hugged my beloved X and I can never again do that. How is it possible? How can a beloved person who was with me every day and who was so warm and wonderful be gone? I think I’m going crazy.

(Hård af Segerstad and Kasperowski 2015, 25f.)

As Hård af Segerstad and Kasperowski further document, this bereaved mother is now able to take up contact with parents like her – parents who know first-hand the thousand despairs and inconsolable grief of losing one’s own child. Here she finds understanding, acceptance, consolation, and massive help toward eventual recovery of her ability to reengage with her life and world.

But, as with any novel technology and application, bringing death, grief, memorialization, and so on into the online world can also be profoundly problematic. An increasingly common problem is learning of the death of a close friend or relative not from a parent or relative, not from a professional counsellor or authority trained in how to break such devastating news – but from an otherwise well-meaning posting on the now deceased person’s Facebook page. That is, someone else – often quite removed from the primary circle of family and friends – learns of Person X’s death and goes straight to his or her profile to post a note of sympathy and condolence. This starts a cycle of others adding their own notes – sometimes well before those within the close circle of friends and family are informed through more regular and comforting channels. Moreover, for those closest to the deceased, these perhaps well-intentioned condolences and expressions of support can begin to ring hollow. In particular, “vicarious grief” (Hovde 2016, 101) or “grief hypejacking” (Abidin 2018, 169f.) is now a well-documented phenomenon in which the poster is more interested in calling attention to himself or herself among the crowd of mourners.

Interestingly – and another index of our moving into a post-digital era – in some cases, these online experiences can lead to a rejection of social media altogether. In her study on “Grief 2.0,” Astrid Linnea Hovde documents how two of her young informants (“Sophie” and “Elisabeth”3) found that working through their grief required the real- world presence of close friends and family. “Sophie,” who lost her sister, commented:

It is so different to talk to them, cry in front of them and just lay there with my head on their lap, than to look at her memorial page to see if someone has written anything there that day.

(Hovde 2016, 54f.)

The contrast between this embodied co-presence and the online world led “Sophie” to conclude:

I was hiding on Facebook before, when I posted things there, I didn’t have to talk about how I was doing. It was comfortable being on Facebook, I didn’t have to face people’s reaction when I talked about [my sister’s death], that was really hard for me to face. On Facebook you don’t see the people you’re talking to, so it gets less scary.

(Ibid.)

But, despite the comparative ease of online communication vs. real- world, embodied communication, the latter was so necessary to her grieving that “Sophie” made a rather remarkable decision:

But I worked really hard to quit relying on Facebook, and to start living in the real world again.

(Ibid., 55; cf. Hovde 2016, 51–9)

The growing interest in “digital detox” (Syvertsen and Enli 2019) and related forms of increasing skepticism toward our online engagements suggest that “Sophie” and “Elisabeth” are not alone in their responses. At the same time, however, we have yet to establish a clear “netiquette” for online mourning – one that would help avoid such disastrous gaffes as posting a condolence note on a friend’s profile before close friends and family are informed of their death, first of all (cf. Sabra 2017).

REFLECTION/DISCUSSION/WRITING EXERCISE: A NETIQUETTE FOR ONLINE

MOURNING?

Given a first exposure to these phenomena and experiences: what kind of “netiquette” or guidelines for ethically appropriate behavior regarding death online can you develop?

Minimally, such a netiquette would suggest:

when to post what information about a death?

It would further be sensitive to:

the kind of death involved – e.g., accident, suicide, victim of terror, disease … – as these different circumstances entail different possibilities of response from appropriate family members and authorities, diverse sensitivities (e.g., we may regard a suicide as a far more private and personal form of death than to be a victim of an accident or terror?) and so on.

Our ethical and social responses will also vary depending on what venue(s) our online postings and communication take place in, beginning with:

more open (e.g., a relatively open SNS profile) ← → more closed (e.g., a specific closed group)

A netiquette would further provide us guidelines as to what kinds of responses are most appropriate and when, e.g.:

Heartfelt expressions of solidarity from close friends and family vis-à- vis more polite expressions of condolences by more distant friends, etc.

Such a netiquette would seem to need to differentiate

with whom do I communicate/share when s/he has experienced the loss I have experienced – e.g., the bereaved mother in our example above?

Last, but certainly not least: all of this is, of course, highly culturally variable, as our beliefs, attitudes, practices, etc., concerning death vary widely from culture to culture. A complete netiquette would not only provide guidelines to the above sort of factors within a given culture: more ambitiously, it would also offer guidance for what is appropriate across the diverse cultures interwoven on any given SNS profile and communication medium.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES: AN ETHICS FOR DEATH IN DIGITAL MEDIA?

These thorny questions regarding our sensitive use of SNSs vis-à-vis death are just the beginning of our ethical challenges. Both online and offline, the deceased leave behind an extensive digital record – their emails, text messages, SNS profiles, postings, photographs, etc. Do we

delete or somehow preserve their SNS profile? What are we to do with a loved one’s tablet and/or phone and/or computer and all of its records – some of which, almost certainly, she or he would not want us or anyone else to have access to?

The following are useful resources for beginning to reflect on these additional ethical issues:

Kathleen M. Cumiskey and Larissa Hjorth (2017) Haunting Hands: Mobile Media Practices and Loss. Oxford University Press.

Reviews the multiple dimensions of culturally specific notions of grief; the distinctive features of mobile media that disrupt our earlier notions of “public” and “private,” as distinctive sites and venues for grief; and then provides a series of in-depth explorations of “culturally specific, affect-laden rituals in and around mobile media practices,” followed by “the ways in which the mobile device can become haunted” (2017, 5, 19).

Zizi Papacharissi (ed.) (2018) A Networked Self and Birth, Life, Death London: Routledge. Several of the chapters collected here directly address the diverse intersections between death and digital media:

Amanda Lagerkvist, The Ethos of Quantification in Bereavement Online (11–34);

Tama Leaver, Co-Creating Birth and Death on Social Media (35–49);

Catherine Steele and Jessica Lu, Defying Death: Black Joy as Resistance Online (143–59);

Crystal Abidin, Young People and Digital Grief Etiquette (160–74).

The latter two are especially useful as they extend the scope of research across racial and cultural boundaries (Abidin’s material is drawn from Singapore).

Slow technology and the Fairphone Another indicator that we may be in a post-digital era is the increasing interest in “slow technology” and “slow design” approaches (Weiser

and Brown 1996). Lars Hallnäs and Johan Redström define slow technology as “a design agenda for technology aimed at reflection and moments of mental rest rather than efficiency in performance” (2001, 201). These approaches have gradually gained ground in recent years: Norberto Patrignani and Diane Whitehouse (2018) present slow tech as an approach that

offers people more time for reflection and for the processes needed to design and use ICT that takes into account human well-being (good ICT), the whole life cycle of the materials, energy, and products used to create, manufacture, power, and dispose of ICT (clean ICT), and the working conditions of workers throughout the entire ICT supply chain (fair ICT).

(2018, 1)

Their focus on “human well-being” points precisely toward virtue ethics’ defining aims of flourishing and good lives – precisely the key commitments of virtuous design (Spiekermann 2016). Patrignani and Whitehouse further argue for affiliated ethical commitments to design that takes on board the imperatives of environmental sustainability and matters of fairness and justice. Nor can these be dismissed as somehow utopian or merely theoretical. Rather, Patrignani and Whitehouse foreground real-world design projects – including by the Italian companies Olivetti and Loccioni, as well as the Dutch-based Fairphone – that exemplify slow-tech design approaches. As well, Patrignani and Whitehouse argue that the requirements for “responsible research and innovation” now built into the European Commission’s major funding project, its Horizon 2020 program, likewise require researchers and their collaborators to take on board some of the ethical commitments involved here (so also: Stahl, Timmermans, and Mittelstadt 2016).

Case-study: Are you ethically obliged to purchase a Fairphone? The Fairphone is advertised as follows: “We’ve created the world’s first ethical, modular smartphone. You shouldn’t have to choose between a

great phone and a fair supply chain” (www.fairphone.com/en). “Fair” here is understood as “fair trade”: the phone began in the (more deontological) Netherlands as part of a campaign highlighting the role of “conflict minerals” (including tin, tantalum, and gold). These minerals are essential to the production of smartphones (as well as virtually all other electronics, including our computers, tablets, digital cameras, etc.). Western supply chains have sourced these minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo – and so they are bloodstained by that country’s civil war. The campaign’s originators, Peter van der Mark and Bas van Abel, led a company that produced Fairphone 1 in 2013, and Fairphone 2 in 2015 (Akemu, Whiteman, and Kennedy, 2016, 1). Maja van der Velden characterizes “fair” here as including “a people-first approach, fair and conflict-free resources, the use of recycled materials, e-waste solutions across the supply chain, fair technical and design specifications, and transparent pricing” (2014, 6). This includes specific attention to “Good Working Conditions,” with a view toward improving “worker satisfaction and representation,” and helping to move “the electronics industry towards zero exposure of workers to toxic chemicals in the manufacturing process” (www.fairphone.com/en/our-goals/social-work-values). In these directions, the Fairphone was the first to incorporate Fairtrade gold in its supply chain. And Fairphone has received Greenpeace’s highest grade for green electronics (www.greenpeace.org/usa/reports/greener-electronics-2017). In these ways, the Fairphone is a primary example of slow technology design (Patrignani and Whitehouse 2018, 125f.).

Fairphones 2 and 3 are built out of modules. Should a particular component break, such as the screen or microphone – replacement modules can be ordered and installed quite easily. Ditto for modules that might be improved in subsequent development, such as the camera. This modular design thus extends the life of the phone by encouraging “the reuse and repair of our phones, researching electronics recycling options and reducing electronic waste worldwide” (www.fairphone.com/en/our-goals/recycling).

The Fairphone 3 is a medium-level smartphone, priced at €450. A comparable phone from a larger manufacturer costs less: as with other

Fairtrade products, the higher price reflects the company’s efforts to provide better working conditions and wages for those who assemble the device, and, specifically, to avoid conflict minerals, as well as resources mined by child slaves.

1. After reviewing these and other aspects of the phone’s design and Fairtrade aims, consider the question: are you ethically obliged to buy such a phone instead of a phone from one of the larger, more well- known brands?

You can begin to think about this in the ethical frameworks we have explored most fully – utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics. Develop your initial reflections on the question, using each of these frameworks as a starting point.

2. Before drawing any further conclusions, you can add the following points to your ethical frameworks.

(A) We have seen that the emergence of more relational selves in Western countries is affiliated with emerging notions of “distributed morality” (Floridi 2013) and “distributed responsibility” (Simon 2015). That is – in contrast with more individualistic emphases in deontology and utilitarianism – given that we are inextricably interwoven with our larger communities, and precisely by ways of the digital technologies that infuse and define our lives, so it seems that our ethical choices and responsibilities are “stretched out” and over these networks. (The same holds true for notions of relational autonomy.)Floridi’s examples of distributed responsibility include “the Shopping Samaritan,” that is, consumers who chose “Red” products from major brands which in turn donate to a fund dedicated to treating and eradicating AIDS/HIV. At the time of this writing, Red has raised over US$600 million, thus helping “more than 140 million people with prevention, treatment, counselling, HIV testing and care services” (www.red.org/how-red-works).

Both Red products and the Fairphone, along with Fairtrade products more generally, thus foreground how our purchasing choices have consequences for others across the globe – and offer ways to help improve the lives of others.

Question: in your initial responses to question 1, above – what assumptions did you make about the scope or reach of your ethical responsibilities? That is, did you presume a more individual and restricted sense of responsibility – and/or a more relational and distributed sense of responsibility?

(B) Floridi’s “shopping Samaritan” points to a central distinction in ethics – namely, between primary but minimal levels of obligations and duties vis-à-vis what philosophers like to call “supererogatory” obligations (Heyd 2016). Judith Jarvis Thomson (1971) specifically discussed a “Good Samaritan Ethics” to mark out those ethical choices that go above and beyond our usual expectations and requirements – as exemplified in the story of the Good Samaritan in the Christian Scriptures (Luke 10:30–7). But while such choices may be exemplary, even heroic, we recognize at the same time that they are admirable precisely because they go beyond our everyday expectations and norms.

In light of this distinction, we can thus revise question 1: are you morally obliged to buy a Fairphone – and/or is buying a Fairphone instead a morally exemplary act, one that we can endorse for those who can afford it, but one that we cannot argue is ethically obligatory for all of us, e.g., students and others on limited budgets?

Again, your responses here may vary somewhat, depending on the initial ethical frameworks you take up.

(For a more comprehensive ethical analysis of the Fairphone, see Ess in press.)

Digital media and democratization: First considerations In the early 1990s, the emerging internet and then the World Wide Web were frequently accompanied by fervent hopes and claims that these technologies would – perhaps inevitably – lead to greater democracy around the globe. Throughout the early 2000s, there were heartening examples supporting this optimism (e.g., Wheeler 2006). The most dramatic examples were the Arab Springs of 2011 – the pro-

democracy movements begun in Tunisia and then spreading to Algeria, Morocco, Yemen, Bahrain, Egypt, and Syria. These movements were initially heralded as “Facebook revolutions” or “Twitter revolutions” precisely because of their central reliance on social media (Howard et al. 2011, 3). But, as with the failed 2009 protests against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (protests dramatically fueled by a video clip showing the young philosophy student Neda Agha Soltan being shot by government security forces, a clip that went viral on YouTube and Twitter with the hashtag #neda), the Arab Springs soon collapsed into the Arab Winters. That is, apart from the exception of Tunisia, the authoritarian regimes in these countries remained intact – if not all the more repressive and in control of their populations, thanks especially to the “total surveillance” made possible by these same social media and related technologies. More broadly, the 2018 report of “freedom on the net” starkly concludes that:

Disinformation and propaganda disseminated online have poisoned the public sphere. The unbridled collection of personal data has broken down traditional notions of privacy. And a cohort of countries is moving toward digital authoritarianism by embracing the Chinese model of extensive censorship and automated surveillance systems. As a result of these trends, global internet freedom declined for the eighth consecutive year in 2018.

(Shahbaz 2018, 1)

This is not to say that all hope for these technologies as technologies of democratization and liberation is lost: on the contrary, we will see that there remain bright spots and developments that at least partially counter these darker pictures. But, among all the questions and issues they evoke, central for us, of course, are their ethical dimensions. Broadly we may (must) ask: What are the ethical values, frameworks, duties, and/or virtues of those of us who wish to become/remain citizens in a (post-)digital democracy?

To get to these questions, we first need to ask: What do we mean by “democracy?” We will explore these matters, especially, as diverse conceptions of “democracy” have interacted with the rise of

communication technologies – defined here as beginning with orality (as in Marshall McLuhan and Medium Theory), then electric media (specifically, television), and then digital media per se.

Democracy, technology, cultures Not surprisingly – i.e., given their origins and primary spheres of development – the internet and internet-facilitated communication are deeply rooted in the cultural backgrounds and assumptions of the United States. And, contra the assumptions of “technological instrumentalism” – roughly, the idea that technologies are “just tools,” somehow value-free or neutral – what has become very clear over the past 20 years or so is rather that our technologies embed and reinforce our fundamental cultural values and norms, whether we recognize these or not. The same holds specifically for this early optimism – if not utopianism. As James Carey (1989) has noted, the Federalist Papers (1787, 1788), in debating the proper role of the hoped-for United States federal government, argue that one of the responsibilities of such a government is to subsidize canals and roads – precisely for the sake of democratic polity. This is because a core process of democracy is dialogue and debate among citizens. But, beginning with Plato, there have been arguments that democracy would thus be “naturally” limited. Very simply, in preliterate days – when orality was our primary communication technology – such debate and dialogue would require face-to-face presence. Such presence in turn is limited by available transportation, either on foot or by animal. To make democratic dialogue and debate possible within a new nation spanning the original 13 colonies would thus require more advanced transportation technologies – precisely the roads and canals under discussion – in order to overcome the otherwise quite modest “natural” limits of democracy. Carey argues that this understanding of communication technologies as undergirding democratic values and aspirations became a definitive strand of US culture. Hence, it was not surprising to see the rationales for globally expanding the internet – as almost exclusively “born and raised” in the USA – to include at the forefront this centuries-old US optimism that communication technologies more or less inevitably improve the processes of democracy.

A first problem with these early claims, however, is: What do we mean by “democracy?” For many early proponents of electronic or online democracy, the presumption was that the internet would facilitate some form of direct or plebiscitary democracy – for example, through instantaneous polling or votes. Such plebiscite arrangements, however, have long been criticized for their capacity quickly to turn anti-democratic as they are prey to the problem of “the tyranny of the majority.” In contemporary terms, the wisdom of the crowd can quickly turn into the madness of the mob. Moreover, as Jean Beth Elshtain warned vis-à-vis television voting experiments in the 1980s, such voting lets us confuse “simply performing as the responding ‘end’ of a prefabricated system of external stimuli” with democratic participation (1982, 108, in Rheingold 1993, 287). Especially as new media and digital media are increasingly driven by the frameworks and assumptions of consumption and entertainment, political theorists Marcel Henaff and Tracy Strong presciently observed early on that “the main public space of our time is that of consumption; hence the political is subjected to its logic and has come to be assessed by the criterion of the image” (2001, 26). But consumer “choice” is relentlessly assaulted by ubiquitous advertising appealing to our individual tastes, desires for convenience, and so forth – all the more so as the massive amounts of data collected about our browsing, choices on streaming services, social media use, credit card use, et cetera ad nauseam, allow advertisers to “micro-target” their ads to each of us individually. However pleasurable and rewarding our lives as consumers may be, such choices are starkly different from those assumed and required by democratic processes and governance: minimally, such citizen choices are to be shaped by reasoned debate and with at least some view toward the larger good, not simply one’s own.

In such consumer-oriented models of decision-making, then:

Democracy thus loses its rationality. Images displace arguments. Debates are turned into games. The show never stops. All games become interchangeable; the political stage tends to be no more than one among others.

(Henaff and Strong 2001, 26f.)

In the worst case, as Elshtain warns, “plebiscitism is compatible with authoritarian politics carried out under the guise of, or with the connivance of, majority views. That opinion can be registered by easily manipulated, ritualistic plebiscites, so there is no need for debate on substantive questions” (Elshtain 1982, 108, in Rheingold 1993, 287).

These warnings now seem strikingly prescient, especially as exemplified by the US presidential debates leading up to the election of Donald Trump – a reality TV star who is clearly adept at manipulating media attention to his advantage – in 2016. By the same token, the risks to democratic debate and deliberation posed by such electronic plebiscitism are further manifest in various forms of fake news “going viral” (perhaps with intentional manipulation) and thereby gaining the appearance of truth or popular consensus.

Responding to these early critiques, scholars and theorists interested in the democratization potentials of computer-mediated communication frequently turned to the theories of Jürgen Habermas. Habermas’s account of democratic forms of debate and dialogue focus on an “ideal speech situation” that would ensure equal voice to all participants in the decision-making that directly affected them. While highly contested, some version of Habermasian deliberative democracy has remained an important theoretical alternative to more plebiscite notions of democracy. In particular, Habermas’s early emphasis on exclusively rational (if not simply masculine) forms of debate was effectively criticized and amplified by a number of feminists. So Seyla Benhabib (1986) and Iris Marion Young (2000), for example, affirm from feminist perspectives and experience the core intuition that democracy involves free and equal debate that should shape the decisions that affect us. But they go on to argue that such equality requires precisely the inclusion of the voices that an excessively rational (if not bluntly masculine) model of debate has historically excluded, namely the voices of women and children. Part of Habermas’s response to early critiques along these lines was to emphasize solidarity and (empathic4) perspective-taking as necessary conditions for (ideal) democratic discourse – the practice of attempting empathically to understand and take on board not only the (largely) rational arguments but also (sometimes more affective or

emotional) experiences of those with whom we engage in dialogue. Such (empathic) perspective-taking then serves as a bridge leading to more forthrightly feminist insistence that our notions of democratic debate must conjoin (often more affective) narrative with (often more rational) argument. Finally, as with earlier, more plebiscite visions, proponents of these more Habermasian and feminist understandings of participatory dialogue likewise hope that these ideals of egalitarian dialogue and debate can be more fully realized by exploiting the multiple forms of communication and interactivity made possible through networked digital media. In particular, May Thorseth (2006, 2011) helpfully documents how these more inclusive understandings of what is required for fair and equal dialogue are taken up in contemporary notions of deliberative democracy and a number of important efforts to realize such ideal speech situations and deliberative process in online environments.

We will see in chapter 6 that especially these revised forms of Habermasian conceptions remain distinctively influential in northern Europe and Scandinavia, as part of a larger preference here for more deontological ethics. Again, culture makes a difference – in terms both of ethics and of our conceptions of technologically mediated democracy. At the other end of the spectrum, for example, many of the values and ideological commitments surrounding both computing technologies and then the internet were shaped (again) by a distinctive US vision of “techno-liberation.” To be sure, the notion that modern technologies are key to various forms of liberation and democracy is rooted in the European Enlightenment – both broadly in its embrace of a Cartesian vision of science and technology helping to free us from labor (if not death) and, more specifically, in what Mark Coeckelbergh calls the “material romanticism” of Marx and Engels in The German Ideology (1846): these authors observe that “slavery cannot be abolished without the steam-engine” ([1846] 1976, 38, in Coeckelbergh 2017, 37). These notions unfolded in the US communitarian counterculture of the 1960s, but, as Lincoln Dahlberg observes, “techno-liberation” understandings of such computer- mediated liberation became increasingly individualized – emphasizing first of all “virtual communities, places where individual minds met, free (supposedly) from many of the physical, normative, and legal

constraints of offline embodied life” (2017, 2; emphasis added). Dahlberg argues that the presumption of disembodied minds, thereby physically isolated from one another, thus leads to “individualism and a more individualist conceptualization of freedom” (ibid.). US history and romantic recreations of the American West specifically play in here: “Computer networking was referred to in ‘pioneering’ and ‘homesteading’ metaphors, invoking the adventurous exploration and settlement of a newly found, untamed, and thus unregulated space by free and self-regulating individuals (see, e.g., Rheingold, 1993)” (Dahlberg 2017, 2).

From here, “cyberspace” becomes increasingly conceived of as the space and engine of a “cyberlibertarianism” that emphasizes individual freedom from the larger community. The strong resistance against governmental regulation, taxation, and so forth that characterizes the US-based tech giants is not simply an artifact of business interests in minimizing costs and maximizing returns to shareholders: it is more centrally a culturally rooted ideology that continues to pervade Silicon Valley in its many manifestations.

Whatever one’s own views of this may be, beyond noting the culturally specific roots of these beliefs and assumptions, the larger point here is that such versions of cyber-libertarianism are also strongly consonant with plebiscite democracy – that is, the emphasis on individual responses without further ado. Recall here as well Elshtain’s early warning that “plebiscitism is compatible with authoritarian politics carried out under the guise of, or with the connivance of, majority views. That opinion can be registered by easily manipulated, ritualistic plebiscites, so there is no need for debate on substantive questions” (1982, 108, in Rheingold 1993, 287). To state this more harshly: US cyber-libertarianism, as encoded in both the technologies and the corporations that produce and package them, is thus deeply resonant with the emergence of “fake news” and other forms of voter manipulation in Brexit and the US presidential campaign enabled by these technologies and their producers. Not to mention with the rise of “digital authoritarianism.”

These concerns are further amplified through a second line of critiques of early “techno-utopianism,” as it is also sometimes called. To begin

with, our contemporary concerns with “filter bubbles” (Pariser 2011) – the prevailing design of SNSs and other sources to feed us news and information that we already agree with, so that we will continue to stay online and thereby increase advertising revenues – were articulated early on by Cass Sunstein in 2001. Sunstein identified these capacities and effects as the problem of “The Daily Me.” The internet and the Web allow me to filter and choose only those contents I prefer to consume: more predominantly in recent years, the Big Data profiles constantly compiled on my browsing and other online behaviors in turn drive the algorithms and AI systems that increasingly determine what appears on my screens. Directly contrary to the ideals of democratic dialogue that force us to confront differing views with our best evidence and argument – and at the risk that we may sometimes be proven wrong – we are far more comfortable with retreating into these cozy nests with those who agree with us and whose views we already endorse. The result is both fragmentation (a retreat from dialogue) and polarization (the end of dialogue) (Sunstein 2001, 65).

By 2011, it was already clear that “the powers that be” – both well- entrenched political parties and their (oftentimes wealthy) supporters – are quick to learn how to use new media in ways that reinforce their own place and power, contra democratizing efforts that might challenge these (Howard et al. 2011; Stromer-Galley and Wichowski 2011; cf. Ess 1996: 198–212). In these lights, the Cambridge Analytica scandals are but the most recent and egregious examples of the willingness of political parties – even in otherwise historically democratic societies such as the US – to exploit these affordances of internet-facilitated communication for the sake of sustaining and expanding their own power, whatever the costs to democratic norms and processes. Can “digital authoritarianism” be far behind?

Habermasian and feminist ideals of rational and empathic debate amongst equals who regard one another with respect have been further challenged by still other current developments. Jodi Dean (2009), for example, has argued that democracy via media technologies is undermined not only by filter bubbles; in addition, what she calls “communicative capitalism” depends on monetizing our online engagements in other ways as well – perhaps most centrally, by

various forms of commodification and self-commodification. Whether “friendship” online or, more obviously, efforts to acquire wealth and fame by presenting ourselves online in ways that we hope will attract “likes,” followers, and thereby more revenue (e.g., contemporary “YouTube stars” and “influencers”), our communicative spaces thereby largely reinforce our extant convictions and beliefs (cf. Papacharissi 2010; Lindgren 2017).

As a second example: Dal Yong Jin has analyzed what he calls “platform imperialism” (2015, 4). Jin observes how a platform such as Google enables – and constrains – all of our communication, from SNSs, search engines, to smartphone use, etc. Not surprisingly, Google is joined by Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft as the four major transnational corporations (TNCs) that design, implement, and control our platforms. As with the music industries’ efforts to combat illegal copying (see chapter 3, p. 99), the US supports the dominance of these corporations and platforms through its regimes and enforcement of copyright law (Jin 2015, 100–20). Contra hopes for a democratizing internet, Jin argues that “Instead of developing a public sphere, these platforms are enhancing the corporate sphere” (ibid., 185). Worse still, contra promises of greater democracy, equality, etc., the primary effects of platform imperialism will be to “intensify the asymmetrical power relationships between countries possessing platforms and countries using platforms invented in the U.S.” (ibid.; cf. Zuboff 2019).

These developments give us good reason, then, to worry about the future of democratic norms, rights, and processes. Indeed, these are under direct attack on two fronts – one, as noted above, as more and more countries follow the lead of China and its emerging SCS to use the vast surveillance powers of internet-facilitated communications to monitor and control citizens’ behavior. Two, it is by no means clear how far “platform imperialism” (Jin 2015) or “surveillance capitalism” (Zuboff 2019) will be restrained by US laws and regulations – most especially as these corporations and platforms operate beyond the borders of the US. Against these dark backgrounds, there are some bright spots, however. To begin with, as we saw in chapter 2, the European Union continues to increase its data privacy protections,

precisely as privacy is recognized as one right among many that are foundational to human dignity, autonomy, and thereby democracy. Indeed, these value commitments are central to emerging development of Artificial and Independent Systems – both within the EU and, more broadly, in the IEEE development of “ethically aligned design” (IEEE 2019). It may also be that the anti-democratic threats of “fake news” are receding (Guess, Nyhan, and Reifler 2018).

Moreover, Merlyna Lim (2018) has recently published the results of a longitudinal study of activist movements since 2010 in Tunisia, Egypt, Malaysia, and Hong Kong. Contra the bias of especially Western news sources in highlighting the importance of social media in these movements, Lim shows that successful protests – ones that further lead to enduring political and social change – depend not solely on social media: in addition, “the human body” is “the most essential and central instrument” in what she characterizes as “Hybrid human– communication–information networks that include social media” (2018, 129). In other words, in a post-digital era, we recognize that democracy will not flow automatically from social media and its affiliated infrastructures. On the contrary, as the report on “digital authoritarianism” makes clear, these technologies can be used with equal force to censor, suppress, and control subject populations. If democracy and its attendant norms and values are to be established and preserved, embodied resistance and activism are also required. (Similar lessons are learned from the #sayhername movement against racist violence directed at women of color: Schwartz 2019.)

INITIAL REFLECTION/DISCUSSION/WRITING QUESTIONS: DEMOCRACY AND

DEMOCRATIZING ETHICS IN A DIGITAL AGE?

1. WHAT DO WE MEAN BY “DEMOCRACY?”

We have seen that there are at least two distinctive conceptions of “democracy,” beginning with a strongly influential libertarian view that emphasizes plebiscite forms of democracy, vis-à-vis feminist and Habermasian accounts that emphasize, rather, the importance of dialogue and debate shaped by rational argument, diverse narratives, and ethical commitments to equality, freedom, solidarity, and perspective-taking. (Depending on how far you and your class care to

go in these directions, you can also explore a third alternative – communitarian democracy – which stresses service to the common or public good: see Abramson et al. 1988, 22–5 for an early account.)

Given these two poles as a starting point:

(A) Articulate as best you can what you see as the best and most desirable form(s) of democratic polity and processes – especially as these might be facilitated by digital media and networked communication.

(B) Identify where your notion of democracy lies on a continuum between the two poles of more libertarian or more feminist/Habermasian forms of democracy.

(C) Can you offer arguments, evidence, and/or other forms of warrant that would support and justify your choices? These can come in at least two forms: arguments, etc., for your own choices, and/or arguments, etc., criticizing the alternative(s).

2. THE ETHICAL REQUIREMENTS OF DEMOCRACY?

In an early effort to apply Habermasian and feminist thought to the topic of online democracy, I concluded by observing that the discourse ethic requires the ability to engage in critical discourse and the moral commitment to practicing the ability to take others’ perspectives and thus seek solidarity with others in a plurality of democratic discourse communities (Ess 1996, 220).

In the ethical frameworks we have examined here, we can rephrase this to include two ethical components:

a deontological insistence on respecting the arguments and experiences of Others as equals in a shared discourse community; and

a virtue ethics argument that the correlative perspective-taking required for a free and equal dialogue and debate is an ability that must be practiced – i.e., such perspective-taking stands as a habit of excellence or virtue that requires practice if it is to be acquired and exercised well. By the same token, the Habermasian requirement for empathic solidarity likewise invokes the primary

virtue of empathy – again, a capacity or ability that must be acquired and practiced.

Given your definitions and affiliated requirements for “democracy” as you have outlined above, how far are either of these ethical dimensions necessary for fostering democracy – whether online or offline – as you understand it?

Notes 1 A positive “util” is a proposed unit of pleasure; a negative “util”

would quantify a dissatisfaction, pain, etc. The util was proposed as a unit of measurement by nineteenth-century economists inspired by utilitarianism and specifically Jeremy Bentham’s “hedonic calculus” as a first effort to maximize pleasure and minimize pain in straightforwardly quantitative ways. The term is commonly used to illustrate utilitarian approaches and economic notions of utility (e.g., Baumol and Blinder 2011, 85). And if you have difficulty assigning “utils” (either positive or negatively), this is because, despite best efforts otherwise, no one has succeeded in defining such a measurement in any consistent way – first of all, because our experiences of pleasure and pain vary widely (ibid.). This difficulty in fact highlights a serious limitation of utilitarianism: see the discussion of this problem in chapter 6, pp. 221–2.

2 I use “national/cultural” to mean “national and/or cultural” – that is, making clear that “culture” is not always synonymous with a given nation-state. For example, many nation-states encompass multiple cultures as defined by distinctive languages and dialects: these in turn are often distributed across national boundaries, for example, as French is shared among the francophone countries (themselves widely diverse in terms of other cultural elements).

3 These are pseudonyms used to protect the confidentiality of Hovde’s informants.

4 Keep in mind that empathy is a virtue – i.e., a capacity or ability that requires active cultivation and practice. In this way,

Habermasian conceptions, while rooted in deontological ethics, also shade into virtue ethics.

CHAPTER FIVE Still More Ethical Issues: Digital Sex, Sexbots, and Games The plethora of available online pornographies guarantees that virtually any stance on porn can be backed up with multiple examples supporting one’s argument.

(Paasonen 2011, 432)

People will want better robot sex, and even better robot sex, and better still robot sex. … what are perceived to be natural levels of human sexual desire [will] … conform to what is newly available – great sex on tap for everyone, 24/7.

(Levy 2007, 310)

I’m not saying video games make you a killer. But if you’re a psychopath, video games help you get in the mood to do the killing.

Pat Brown (CNN 2012)

Chapter overview We begin with the ethics of pornography*1 – depending first of all on how we may define it: not surprisingly, definitions are dramatically culturally variable. As with violence in games, a central question is how far production and consumption of these materials impacts our real-world attitudes and behaviors. We examine basic philosophical and religious frameworks that shape contemporary reflections on sexuality and identity and then explore central ethical issues here in terms of utilitarianism, deontology, feminist ethics / ethics of care, and virtue ethics. (If you have not already reviewed these frameworks for ethical decision-making in chapter 6, you should do so before moving into this chapter.). Increasingly sophisticated “sexbots” offer new – and literally more embodied – variations on the ethical dimensions in play here. We then turn to the central questions of how far computer-based gaming experiences of violence and rape may affect offline behaviors and attitudes – again using utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics as frameworks for analysis.

Introduction: Is pornography* an ethical problem – and, if so, what kind(s)? To state the obvious: the internet and digital media more broadly are awash with pornography* of every imaginable stripe and genre. The increasing diffusion of internet-connected digital media means that more or less anyone who cares to do so can easily consume, produce, and distribute sexually explicit materials” (SEMs), to use the ethically more neutral term. At the same time, the complex interplays between digital media and the larger spheres of our lives mean that pornography*, however we may define it, is thoroughly infused throughout contemporary societies. These complex interplays have been further amplified by Web-based technologies and communication venues – most commonly, social networking sites (SNSs), micro-blogs (e.g., Facebook status updates and Twitter), and “produsage” sites such as YouTube, and, increasingly, the Dark Web

(Gehl 2016). All of this is further coupled with ever more predominant internet access via mobile devices: anyone with a smartphone can easily record still images and videos and then upload them for all of the internet world – currently nearly two-thirds of the planet’s population – to see.

These facilities and capacities thereby both continue and dramatically expand earlier forms of amateur pornography, for example, while simultaneously enabling new forms of SEMs such as Netporn, which blurs the “boundaries of porn producers and consumers,” and thereby entails nothing less “than a redefinition of pornography as a cultural object in terms of esthetics, politics, media economy, technology and desire” (Paasonen 2010, 1298). Such redefinition, in particular, occurs within the subgenre of alt porn, defined in part by “its exhibition of non-standard subcultural styles, community features and interaction possibilities” (ibid., 1299).

By the same token, increasing access to the internet by way of mobile devices – i.e., devices that can (and usually do) accompany us more or less everywhere – dramatically complexifies the contexts for the consumption and production of SEMs. For example, one of the premier scholars and authorities in these domains, Feona Attwood (2018) shows in fine detail how the complex interactions between sexuality, gender, sexual identity(ies) and representation vis-à-vis our rapidly changing and diffusing technologies over the past 20 years or so have first of all led to a concomitant diffusion of all things sexual – including ever more diverse forms and expressions thereof – into ever more public spheres. Against the background of this expanding spectra of sexual identities, practices, gender, and so on, as interwoven with media, our focus here on pornography* represents but one thread among many in these domains. At the same time, as Attwood’s book indexes, serious study of pornography* has come out of the academic closet in recent years. For example, the journal Porn Studies has been in publication since 2014.

These recent developments – that is, expanding forms and expressions of sexuality as entangled with ever more communication venues that are ever more interwoven throughout our lives, coupled with a dramatically growing body of research literature – profoundly

complicates our approach to pornography and SEMs. First of all, the increasing diffusion and presence of “sex media” throughout our lifeworlds2 have thereby made the difficulties of defining what counts as pornography* – i.e., sexually explicit material that is potentially questionable for at least some audiences and age groups – that much more complex. Just having to do with (relatively) explicit representations of sex and sexuality is hardly enough to count, at least in many of the increasingly secularized societies of the West. Second, researching pornography* likewise becomes that much more sophisticated and detailed. To begin with, both utilitarian and deontological approaches arguing for restrictions against pornography* very frequently depend on the claim that such materials entail significant harms (and thus negative utils), such as greater sexual aggression toward children, girls, and/or women. As also holds for efforts to restrict violence in games, such claims of effects, however, are intrinsically difficult to establish empirically: beyond the standard problem that correlation between porn or game consumption and higher rates of (sexual) aggression, for example, does not prove causation – empirical researchers are faced with ever- changing environments that are increasingly infused with sexual representations of many sorts: being able to isolate porn consumption as a single variable leading to increased aggression becomes increasingly difficult indeed (Nash et al. 2015).

Third, this mediatization of sex and sexuality thereby intersects with the larger patterns of mediatization – meaning the various ways in which we use digital (and analogue) media to represent ourselves and our lives, both to ourselves and to others: again, as digital media continue to diffuse into every corner and wrinkle of our lives, so more and more of our lives are experienced through and with these media. The pocketfilm Porte de Choisy, for example, which otherwise violates earlier notions of bedroom and bathroom privacies, can be understood as simply an extension of our increasing ability to record and present ourselves via digital technologies (Verrier 2007). Re-presenting ourselves through the resulting artifacts – whether in the form of a text-based blog, an online photo album, a home-made video – is a way of communicating with one another in enhanced ways, ways that are more enjoyable because they are quick, convenient, engage more of

our communicative senses (sound and vision, not simply reading), and are globally accessible. Relatedly, various forms of “sexting” – sending sexually suggestive or simply explicit images (e.g., “dickpics”) – are becoming more widespread. And this is not only among young people, whose exploitation of SNSs such as Snapchat and Instagram in these directions may be of considerable concern and/or the occasion of another “moral panic” (cf. chapter 1, pp. 9–10). In addition, the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon), was recently caught up in a power struggle with a US media conglomerate over the latter’s publication of Bezo’s intimate texts and pictures. In Bezos vs. American Media, business and media empires – and perhaps nothing less foundational than freedom of expression – may be at stake.

Further, as Anna Reading (and others) argue, as we are the ones who take charge of and direct these media productions, we thereby (re)gain agency and control over our media self-representations (2009). Such mediatized self-revelation may then be experienced as a form of empowerment and liberation in an age of surveillance. The same may be true, at least in part, regarding sexuality and gender: an especially strong argument in favor of online SEMs and their amateur production is precisely that these allow persons to explore otherwise marginalized sexualities (including GLBTq, i.e. gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and/or queer) and sexual preferences (e.g., bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, sadism, and/or masochism – S&M for short [Thorn and Dibbell 2012]) – and thereby to determine for themselves their own sexual identities and preferences. Pornography* may thus serve nothing less than the (high) modern values of emancipation, autonomy, agency, and equality (cf. Bromseth and Sundén 2011). To be sure, this line of argument directly contradicts ethical objections to pornography* and SEMs as objectifying women and children (and, in some instances, men): encouraging us to see women, children, and/or men as “just meat,” such objectification obscures, if it does not eliminate, their agency and autonomy (Adams 1996). And without agency and autonomy, there is no person “there” to be emancipated or regarded as an equal.

Finally, cross-cultural perspectives make all of this that much more difficult. Not surprisingly, judgments and attitudes regarding bodies

and sexuality vary dramatically from culture to culture. For example, at least early in this century, material that merely implies sex, such as beauty pageants, counted as pornography* in India, for example (Ghosh 2006); in Indonesia, the term is bound up with laws regulating women’s clothing and demeanor, including public displays of affection (Lim 2006, both cited in Paasonen et al. 2007, 16). By contrast, in 1969, Denmark was the first Western nation to legalize pornography* (Time 1969) – and not accidentally. In Denmark, and Scandinavia more broadly, bodies and sexuality – including the sexuality of children and adolescents – are widely regarded as simply positive aspects of human nature and experience. Especially in Denmark, there is less concern with pornography* as a possible problem, especially for young people (Haddon and Stald 2009). Historically, in European countries more generally, children were more concerned with the problem of cyberbullying than with unwanted exposure to SEMs (Livingstone et al. 2011: 25). While the most recent EU KidsOnline survey data have yet to be completely analyzed and published, one of the striking findings in Norway is that, while sexting behaviors have gone up (e.g., among 15- to 17-year-olds, who report the highest levels of these behaviors, 49% of boys, 36% of girls) – along with exposure to pro-ana, self-harm, suicide sites, etc. – accessing pornography sites as such has somewhat declined: from 46% of children between 9 and 17 years old in 2010 to 40% in 2018 (Staksrud and Ólafsson 2019).3

In these contexts, what counts as pornography*? For example, a Jeff Koons painting of himself and his wife, former porn-star Cicciolina, is delicately titled Ice – Jeff on Top Pulling Out; as it portrays genitalia, the image would certainly be unpublishable in US newspapers. But it appeared without further ado in the perfectly serious Danish newspaper Politiken as part of an article covering an exhibition on eros at the Aarhus Art Museum (Hornung 2010). Moreover, in what some have called a post-feminist era (i.e., one in which gender equality has – allegedly – largely been achieved and hence the feminist work toward such equality is no longer necessary), prominent phenomena, such as the “#freethenipple” campaign, exploit tactics such as public exposure of women’s breasts as a form of protest against “the sexualization of the breast”: this is part of larger work against patriarchy, defined as “the source that takes away women’s power to

choose, devalues them and their ability to be themselves and to enjoy their bodies” (Rúdólfsdóttir and Jóhannsdóttir 2018, 134, 142). In some instances, women protesters will perfectly replicate the tropes of pornography* (e.g., appearing to perform oral sex on dildos, as members of the FEMEN movement did in protest at a G7 meeting) – precisely in the name of women’s choice and emancipation. You will find it difficult, however, to come up with stories, much less images, of these women in newspapers of record (e.g., the Guardian, the New York Times, and so on), but neither would we expect them to publish the Jeff Koons painting.4

A particular difficulty here is that, as compared with Europe – and especially Scandinavia – attitudes and judgments regarding bodies, sexuality, and thus pornography* in the United States are considerably more restrictive. This is primarily thanks to historical and contemporary religious attitudes and commitments. In 2015, c. 70 percent of US citizens described themselves as Christian (Pew Research Center 2015). Roman Catholics and Evangelical Christians constitute the largest groups of these (c. 45 percent) – traditions that, as shaped by Augustine and his doctrine of Original Sin, identify women and sexuality as primary ethical problems (to put it politely).5 These folk are free to believe as they choose. But the difficulty for “the rest of us” is that, as with other things internet and digital, much of the discussion regarding pornography and digital media largely arose in and was dominated by both popular and scholarly voices based in the United States (Paasonen 2011, 427). Moreover, all of the major platforms and communication venues through which our digital lives – and thereby SEMs – flow are owned and operated by the US-based corporations Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft. These corporations have been slow (to put it politely) to recognize that their US-based conceptions of sexuality and what counts as pornography* are not universal. The result is “corporate censorship” of materials that are widely agreed upon not to count as “pornography” – exemplified in Facebook’s censuring the iconic picture of “the napalm girl,” 9-year- old Kim Phúc, running naked in terror and pain from the napalm bombing of her Vietnamese village (Levin, Wong and Harding 2016). Questions of pornography* are thus deeply entangled not only with

matters of culture, but also with the ethical and political matters of freedom of expression as further complicated by national and international matters of corporate power, politics, and dominance – what Dal Yong Jin has aptly called “platform imperialism” (2015).

This is not to say that a US-based scholar or corporate view is automatically suspect: it is to say that such views – as with views from any other cultural domain – tend strongly to be shaped by a specific set of cultural backgrounds. The first point is to be aware of these backgrounds – and how they vary from European through Scandinavian to Asian, African, indigenous, and other traditions – in order to avoid inadvertent dominance of one view and, simultaneously, to raise our awareness of the role of our own cultural backgrounds in shaping our own judgments and attitudes.

INITIAL REFLECTION/DISCUSSION/WRITING QUESTIONS: GENDER, SEXUALITY, CULTURE, AND PORNOGRAPHY*

1. In light of these initial comments and first ethical arguments:

(A) How would you characterize the prevailing attitudes and judgments, both positive and/or negative, regarding bodies, women, and sexuality in the country/culture you count most as your own?

(B) Insofar as your own judgments and attitudes regarding bodies and sexuality may be different from the prevailing ones around you, can you characterize these (at least for yourself, if not for your sister- and fellow-students and/or instructors just now)?

(C) How would you define pornography*? Be careful here: given the considerable diversity of SEMs “out there” (both online and offline), you will want to start building a continuum of materials that would either count or not count, in your view, as pornography – and then what is for you ethically objectionable pornography.

For example, child pornography is all but universally condemned and criminalized. But what about SEMs involving violence, such as rape or torture – at the extreme, “snuff films” that depict the death of the (usually female) object of sexual violence and torture? At the other end of the continuum – what might be sexually explicit material that, in your view, counts more as erotic art, not pornography? Finally: where

on the continuum is a line crossed into pornography – and then ethically objectionable pornography?

(D) Given your definition of “pornography,” what are your personal responses to it – including any ethical ones?

(E) Equally importantly: can you identify how far your own responses to pornography are (in)consistent with the prevailing judgments and attitudes regarding bodies and sexuality you describe above?

2. Given your responses to pornography (1.D, above), what arguments, evidence, experiences, and/or other grounds can you offer to support those responses? For example, you may want to argue that exposure to pornography may be harmful for children and adolescents, as it might foster both less than respectful attitudes toward young girls and women, and understandings of sexuality that emphasize power and exploitation rather than respect, equality, and mutual intimacy.

These sorts of arguments are common consequentialist or utilitarian arguments and are frequently invoked in debates surrounding pornography and its regulation. But you may well have other arguments, etc., to offer.

3. Review the first two arguments sketched out above regarding pornography and SEMs as:

(A) ethically objectionable because these materials objectify persons as “just meat” and thereby deny them agency, autonomy, and equality, vis-à-vis

(B) ethically defensible because these materials may contribute to the (high) modern values of emancipation, autonomy, agency, and equality, especially for those persons whose sexual identities and preferences do not align with the preferences and identities dominant in their culture.

Which of these two arguments do you find more persuasive – and why?

4. Both of the arguments in (3) above are exemplars of deontological arguments. That is, as Kant argued, human beings are primarily autonomous, and thereby capable of rational self-rule. This means

that, far from being seen and treated as “just meat,” free human beings must be allowed to determine their own ends or goals, rather than serve as the means (“just meat”) to ends and goals imposed by others. On this line of reasoning, free human beings thus have (near) absolute rights, beginning with the right to respect from others and the right to be treated as equals.

The debate here, then, is whether or not – and, if so, how and in what ways – SEMs serve to enhance or degrade this core human autonomy. In this light, one’s judgments and attitudes toward bodies and sexuality become especially critical to the debate. A Scandinavian feminist, for example, as someone who is inclined to regard sexuality as normal and natural, may be more open to the view that SEMs can work to enhance human autonomy. A conservative US Christian, by contrast, may be persuaded that bodies and sexuality are implicated in Original Sin and are thereby to be enshrouded in privacy, if not shame, and so she or he is far more likely to view SEMs as only reinforcing such already strongly negative views toward women and sexuality. From this perspective, it is hard to see how they could thus work for equality and the emancipation of women.

In this light:

(A) given that you endorse a deontological emphasis on human beings as primarily free agents who must be respected and not treated as “just meat,” how far do you find SEMs to be more likely to work:

(i) against emancipation and equality, and/or

(ii) for emancipation and equality?

(B) especially if you find yourself coming down strongly on the side of either A(i) or A(ii), can you tell whether your response is consistent with your personal and/or cultural judgments and attitudes toward bodies, women, and sexuality?

Pornography*: More ethical debates and analyses These three major difficulties of pornography* and ethics underline

Susanna Paasonen’s warning at the opening of this chapter: “The plethora of available online pornographies guarantees that virtually any stance on porn can be backed up with multiple examples supporting one’s argument” (2011, 432). To say this somewhat differently, the still more recent dramatic explosion of diverse forms and genres of SEMs online (and offline: Attwood 2018) thus makes it difficult to move forward with any sort of ethical analysis and arguments without first defining a focus: that is, which (relatively) specific form(s) of pornography* do we have in mind?

One extensive UK survey showed that the largest number of both women and men primarily visit so-called tube sites – i.e., the porn equivalents of YouTube such as porntube. com. More recently, one of these sites, Pornhub, provided a wealth of statistics on its visitors. Considering the source, the significance and quality of these numbers are to be taken with many grains of salt. Still, these statistics reinforce Attwood’s account of growing diversities in sexuality and media. At the same time, there is no shortage of variations of SEMs designed primarily to arouse heterosexual males through a focus on women as both the targets and active agents of male sexual pleasure. With this last genre of pornography* as a starting point, we’ll now turn to three different analyses and arguments that should be useful in their own right and as providing examples and models for approaching other mediated SEMs – and in the following sections on robots and games.

Pornography* online: A utilitarian analysis At least in the English-speaking world, approaches to pornography* online often follow utilitarian lines of argument. Classical liberals, beginning with John Stuart Mill, defend freedom of speech and object to censorship on straightforwardly utilitarian grounds. First, freedom of speech is argued to lead to such positive consequences as individual happiness and a flourishing society. By contrast, censorship is rejected because of its many negative consequences, including inadvertent suppression of what may be grains of truth in an otherwise suspect claim or view (Warburton 2009, 22–31). (As Warburton points out, Mill’s arguments are directed to freedom of expression and freedom of speech. For pornography* to be defended on these grounds, it must

first be shown to count as speech or expression. For arguments pro and con, see ibid., 60–4.) We can add to these considerations common neoliberal objections to proposed internet regulation as being too costly – as imposing unneeded costs and inconveniences on governments, the corporations responsible for maintaining the internet infrastructure, and users/consumers. On the other hand, critics of pornography* argue that the production and consumption of such materials are harmful to women – as well as children, especially as trade in child pornography has apparently increased thanks to rising access to the Dark Web. Indeed, for all of the debate regarding the difficulty of demonstrating causality between consumption, on the one hand, and attitudes and actions, on the other, a recent meta-study of some 135 (English-language) studies flatly concludes:

Both laboratory exposure and regular, everyday exposure to this [sexualized media] content are directly associated with a range of consequences, including higher levels of body dissatisfaction, greater self-objectification, greater support of sexist beliefs and of adversarial sexual beliefs, and greater tolerance of sexual violence toward women. Moreover, experimental exposure to this content leads both women and men to have a diminished view of women’s competence, morality, and humanity.

(Ward 2016, 560)

Again, while claims of causal connections must be viewed cautiously, the upshot is a simple utilitarian calculus: do the possible costs and other negative consequences of some sorts of restrictions on consuming pornography* outweigh the possible benefits of such restrictions – namely, reducing avoidable harms to women?

Part of our response here depends first of all on determining just what the possible costs would be – in utilitarian terms, how many negative utils would be generated by efforts at censorship or regulation? This would depend in turn, of course, on just what sorts of efforts we have in mind. For example, the UK has implemented an approach to filtering SEMs called “active choice-plus.” Under this system, customers signing up for internet access are confronted by their Internet Service Providers (ISPs) with the choice to “opt-in” to various

levels of access to porn and other potentially harmful materials. That is, the default setting is to exclude these materials, thereby requiring those who want access to them to indicate as much. As might be imagined, the ISPs involved complained of the expense of installing and maintaining such filters, along with affiliated costs of developing services for allowing customers to opt in to such sites. At least some number of customers will also find the proposed necessity of taking time and action to opt in to cost at least a few negative utils – multiplied in turn by however many such customers there may be who would want to opt in.

On the other hand: how many positive utils might be gained by a potentially significant reduction in harms against women? For example, among other impulses toward the development of active choice-plus were the claims of MP Ann Coffey – namely, that there has been a “surge” of sexual groping and manhandling of young girls in the UK: around one-third of sixth-form girls have been targets. Coffey, moreover, squarely blamed this rise of sexual aggression against young girls on internet pornography* fostering “distorted” sexual attitudes among teenage boys (Martin 2012). So: how many positive utils can we assign – presumably a very large number – to the young girls who would no longer be victimized in this way should stronger blocks be placed on access to internet pornography*?

As discussed in chapter 6 (pp. 221–5), this example brings forward three of the critical reasons why applying a utilitarian cost–benefit analysis in practice is so difficult. The first question is: how far can we be confident of our predictions of the outcomes of our possible choices? That is, can we be confident of the predictions on either side – whether of high negative and/or of high positive consequences of imposing new controls on access to online SEMs?

Second: even if we could predict these outcomes with some degree of certainty – how do we quantify costs and benefits beyond the monetary costs involved? For example, how many negative utils should we assign to a customer being required to take the time and trouble to opt in to access currently available by default? How many positive utils can we assign to a predicted reduction in sexual aggression against young women? While the utilitarian approach

forces us to weigh the negatives and positives against one another, it seems clear that at least some aspects of human experience, including a sense of security against unwanted and unjustified aggression, defy straightforward quantification. Hence, weighing pros and cons becomes very uncertain indeed.

Third: recall the debates regarding causal linkages claimed to exist between consumption of online SEMs and aggressive attitudes toward women. While the evidence for these linkages may be better established in more recent research, it’s always possible that new experimental approaches may be devised in 5 or 10 (or 50) years down the road that would provide us with more reliable evidence one way or another. It is also perfectly possible that little to no further progress along these lines will be made. In short: the future, and with it our future knowledge, are, by definition, uncertain.

In the meantime, however, we have to make our judgments and decisions nonetheless. The best we can do (so far) is to judge and decide based on the best evidence we have (so far), but this still leaves us facing the first two problems attending any utilitarian approach – namely, uncertainty about predicting outcomes, and the very great difficulty of quantifying outcomes in order to balance them against one another in a cost–benefit analysis.

As we see in chapter 6, these sorts of limitations mean that utilitarianism doesn’t always bring us very far in our efforts to grapple with complex moral issues. And, precisely because of these sorts of limitations, many ethicists argue we must expand our ethical decision- making frameworks to include deontology and, often, virtue ethics. This turn is exemplified in the next analysis.

“Complete sex” – a feminist/phenomenological perspective In her article “Better Sex” (1975), Sara Ruddick develops a fine- grained phenomenological account of sexual experiences. (Phenomenological analyses use carefully disciplined attention to human experience as primarily embodied beings.) Her account offers a much richer description of human sexual experiences than those that

focus on sex and sexuality as something involving only bodies.

These latter accounts derive from at least two sources. The first is a kind of dualism – whether religious or philosophical – that makes a strong separation between the person as a soul or mental agent, on the one hand, and their body, including their sexuality, on the other. These dualisms have predominated in Western traditions since at least the time of Augustine, and are carried through into modern philosophical thought in the profoundly influential work of René Descartes ([1637] 1972). Beginning with William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer, which invented the term “cyberspace” and defined it as opposed to the world of “meat,” these dualisms predominated in 1980s and 1990s understandings of “cyberspace” and virtual worlds as radically different from our more ordinary, offline worlds (1984, 6; chapter 4, p. 146). The second source is simple materialism – the view that holds that human beings are fully reducible to the workings of their solely material bodies, as described by and predictable through the various natural laws of biochemistry, neurology, simple physics, and so forth. On this view, there is no free human agent – only the illusion of freedom. We really are “just meat” – no different in any significant way from, say, dolphins, other hominids, or cows. For many in the contemporary world, especially those raised in highly secular societies in Northern and Eastern Europe, and some parts of Asia, this view may seem common sense and unproblematic. Be aware, however, that this view is rejected by most contemporary philosophers, who opt instead for a position called “compatibilism.” This view holds that “free will is compatible with [material] determinism” (McKenna and Coates 2018). The trick here is to be a compatibilist without being a dualist; it is not necessarily easy, but it can be done.

Ruddick criticizes these dualistic understandings for two reasons. First, they result in an account of sexuality that radically separates a given individual’s sense of unique identity and distinctive selfhood from “sex” as something that takes place solely between (more or less interchangeable) bodies. Second, in doing so, such understandings seem inevitably to lead to an ethically problematic account of sexuality – namely, one in which individuals can use one another’s bodies only

as the means to satisfy their own desires. Ruddick does not think that such understandings of sexuality are necessarily mistaken. But she first argues that, from a phenomenological perspective, they are incomplete. As we know from some of our most intense experiences – such as playing sports – we do not feel or experience some sort of mind–body dualism: rather, we enjoy these experiences so profoundly and completely in part just because they involve an immediate sense of unity between our selves (as unique and distinctive selves or agents) and our bodies. (The German phenomenologist Barbara Becker [2001] later coined the term “body-subject” [LeibSubjekt] to denote this experience of being in the world as an individual in both mind and body.) Ruddick does not argue that all our sexual experiences must involve such direct unity or embodiment. Rather, she maintains that those that do are morally preferable, first of all because our own personhood and autonomy cannot be separated from our bodies in such experiences. Specifically, to approach sexuality as embodied beings – as individuals and moral agents who are our bodies, especially as they are diffused with sexual desire – issues in what Ruddick calls “complete sex,” a sexual engagement infused with mutuality and reciprocal care and concern for each other. Such “complete sex,” as inextricably interwoven and suffused with the distinctive identities of the persons involved, thereby literally embodies the felt uniqueness of the relationship with each other, along with other feelings such as pride and gratitude – all of which reinforce the status of the Other as an equal person, not a thing.

In contrast to more casual approaches to sex that treat any given body as more or less interchangeable with any other, complete sex thereby fosters the Kantian duty of respect for the Other as a person – that is, precisely as an autonomous and unique person deserving fundamental respect. In Kantian language, this means a person we must always treat as an end in itself, never as a means only – i.e., as “just meat.” Indeed, Ruddick’s analysis helpfully points toward what many of us find most important in such experiences – namely, the sense of being loved fully and completely, precisely as the unique body-subject that we experience ourselves to be much of the time. On this basis, finally, Ruddick argues further that complete sex fosters two additional values – namely, the deontological norm of equality and the virtue of loving

(Ruddick 1975, 98ff.).

Many of my students, especially those who are more secular, find Ruddick’s account valuable: it helps them make sense of one of their primary moral intuitions about their sexuality and intimate relationships. That is, these students (among others) are “serial monogamists.” Contra an earlier sexual ethic that would limit sex to a single partner over a lifetime, serial monogamists are happy to have sexuality as part of some sort of close, intimate, and exclusive relationship that will endure for some length of time, whether a few weeks, months, or years. Once a given relationship is over, the serial monogamist is perfectly free to take up a sexual relationship with another person or persons over time. But generally, within a given relationship, the intuition is that for one’s partner to “have sex” with someone else amounts to some form of “cheating” or infidelity.

A consistent dualist, however, strongly separates body and sexuality from personal identity – and thus from the ethical commitments and norms associated with respect for persons as unique individuals. Such dualism has difficulty justifying serial monogamy. A dualist must regard sexual activity as simply one more activity of bodies as radically distinct from their “owners” as individuals. So how can sexuality have any connection with, for example, personal commitment to a romantic relationship with another as somehow unique, distinctive, and thus excluding sex with other bodies? Why should “sex,” if it’s simply a matter of actions between two more or less interchangeable bodies, be any more personal or exclusive than, say, shaking hands?

By contrast, many of my students find in Ruddick’s analysis a way of accurately describing, first of all, their own experiences of being a “body-subject” in at least their better experiences of sexuality in a (serially) monogamous relationship. This experientially oriented, phenomenological account further helps them make ethical sense of their moral intuitions that, as serial monogamists, there’s something ethically problematic about sex with someone else besides their current partner – but without having to appeal to religious frameworks they reject.

In short, Ruddick’s account brings forward:

(1) a deontological emphasis on treating one another as free and unique persons, where the recognition of such autonomy requires fundamental respect for one another as equals, and

(2) a virtue ethics emphasis on loving – that is, as the practice of learning to treat one another as individuals worthwhile in themselves.

Both of these directly challenge experiences of sex and sexuality that instead present a person as just body, as “just meat” – that is, as an object that (not who) exists solely as a means to our own ends and desires.

Ruddick does not directly mention pornography, but she does comment that “Obscenity, or repeated public exposure to sexual acts, might impair our capacity for pleasure or for response to desire” (1975, 102). This at least raises the question as to whether our enjoyment of the sorts of pornographic materials described above – i.e., ones that consistently depict women and children (and sometimes men) as exclusively the targets and agents of fulfilling male pleasure and desire – reinforces, and/or inclines us toward, adopting a dualistic attitude toward body and sexuality that sees the sexual other as “just meat.”

Insofar as our answer to this question is “yes,” then we would have reason to be cautious – perhaps very cautious – regarding consumption of pornography of these sorts.

SECOND REFLECTION/DISCUSSION/WRITING QUESTIONS: ACCESS TO

PORNOGRAPHY* ONLINE

1. We’ve now seen three approaches to some of the ethical issues evoked by easy access to online pornography*. Using the concrete proposal discussed above – of implementing an “active choice-plus” policy that would block access to online pornography* (as well as sites promoting violence) by default, such that customers desiring access to such materials would have to opt in for such access:

(A) What is your recommendation? That is, do you oppose or support the implementation of such a proposal?

(B) Whatever your recommendation, what arguments, evidence, and so forth, can you offer in support of your view?

(C) Given the arguments and evidence you offer, how far do these follow primarily utilitarian, deontological, and/or virtue ethics lines of argument?

(D) Perspective-taking: take up one of the ethical decision-making frameworks you did not use. For example, if you found yourself arguing primarily along utilitarian lines, shift your perspective to that of a deontologist and/or virtue ethicist.

As Ruddick’s analysis exemplifies, just because you take up different ethical frameworks does not mean that you will land with different ethical conclusions. Rather, she shows how both deontological ethics and virtue ethics raise important questions about how far consumption of pornography* is an ethical good. In any case, by taking up an alternative ethical framework and applying it to the proposed “active choice-plus” policy, do you find yourself landing with a conclusion that is the same as or different from your own conclusions?

(E) Especially if you should find that the alternative framework leads you to a different conclusion, you can now confront a still more difficult meta-ethical question: what arguments, evidence, and/or other kinds of warrant (including, for example, strongly positive and/or strongly negative experiences and emotions) can you offer in support of the ethical framework you prefer?

2. As we saw in the shift from the utilitarian approach to deontology and virtue ethics, a key factor in such shifts is that a given ethical framework or analysis simply doesn’t help us actually form reliable judgments and/or choose in the face of a difficult decision.

Especially if you are not satisfied with any of the approaches and outcomes that we have seen thus far – that is, they fail to capture your own ethical intuitions and approaches in one or more ways – can you articulate just what is missing and/or what is lacking here?

Sex with robots, anyone? Similar ethical questions and considerations are brought home in literally embodied ways by the emergence of sexbots. To be sure, the

(male) dream of “the perfect woman” as one’s own creation is as old as Pygmalion, the ancient Greek sculptor who fell in love with a statue of his own making. Aphrodite kindly made the statue come alive, presumably making Pygmalion a very happy man (Ess 2017a, 98). These dreams take on new life in early modernity, beginning with the E. T. A. Hoffmann Gothic romance Der Sandmann (The Sand Man: [1816] 1967; cf. Coeckelbergh 2017, 42f.). Perhaps influenced by Mary Shelley’s slightly later Romantic novel – Frankenstein: or, the new Prometheus ([1818] 1933) – robots entered the Western imagination as often female, and then as almost always seductive and dangerous. From “Maria” in Fritz Lang’s iconic Metropolis (1927) through Ava (a conflation of Adam and Eve) in Ex Machina (2015), the image of what Mia Consalvo has deftly called “the techno-femme fatale” (2004) is rooted in especially Western Christian teachings – namely, the same Augustinian dualisms, and thereby contempt for women, body, and sexuality (not to mention, nature), that we saw grounding early conceptions of “cyberspace” as a pure space of minds vs. “meatspace,” etc. (Ess 2017a, 95–104; cf. Ess 1995).

Importantly, the Japanese reception of robots in general is comparatively untinged by such dark concerns. This may reflect a very different Japanese tradition of animism. As readers familiar with animé and related Japanese traditions will recognize, contra a Western dualism that believes living minds (and souls) are radically separate from matter as “dead stuff,” animistic traditions assert that all “things” about us are alive in some way. And so the dualistic gap between life and matter (and potential dangers such a gap may pose) is replaced by a continuum between more material robots and more fully animate human beings. In both Japan and Western countries and cultures, nonetheless, sexbots are clearly designed and marketed to be perfectly compliant to their owner’s wishes. A primary ethical issue emerges here – not only in their consumption and uses, but in their very design: insofar as sexbots are overwhelmingly female, they thereby inscribe and reinforce traditional attitudes of male dominance and female subordination. It hardly needs saying that such attitudes remain in full, often brutal, force in countries and cultures throughout the world – including the Scandinavian countries, however much they otherwise stand out as the most gender-equal societies in the

industrialized world (Holst 2017, 12–40).

When sexbots were still the stuff of science fiction, UK computer scientist David Levy inaugurated contemporary ethical debates on sex and robots with his Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human–Robot Relationships (2007). We will see that Levy’s arguments are very largely utilitarian. Some of the strongest counterarguments to Levy’s great enthusiasm for sexbots have been forcefully developed by Kathleen Richardson (2015): Richardson argues much more from deontological and virtue ethics perspectives, in hopes of stopping the production of sexbots altogether. Between these two poles are middle grounds that we will then explore.

Utilitarian approaches. Levy (2007) forwards an extensive range of primarily utilitarian considerations for what he sees as the sexbots of a not-too-distant future: such increasingly human-like robots will ostensibly entail economic benefits (from a growing industry) as well as “the likely reduction in teenage pregnancy, abortions, sexually transmitted diseases, and pedophilia” (ibid., 300). And, of course, there’s simple physical pleasure, the core value for especially Benthamite utilitarians. A little more carefully: Levy highlights sex as desirable for the sake of pleasure, releasing tension and stress, the pursuit of novelty, and escaping boredom (ibid., 187). At the climax (pun intended) of the book, Levy enthuses over a great pleasure circle: as new machine developments evoke new human desires, these will stoke still further innovation, resulting in “great sex on tap for everyone, 24/7” (ibid., 310).

Deontological and virtue ethics considerations. Levy does take up one deontological consideration – namely, recognizing the rights of robots as they become more independent (ibid., 98, 305, 309; cf. Nørskov 2016). Kathleen Richardson (2015) is one of Levy’s primary critics and founder of the “Campaign Against Sex Robots” (https://campaignagainstsexrobots.org/about). Broadly, Richardson questions whether or not the utilitarian benefits Levy proposes will actually come about. In addition, though she does not use the term, one of Richardson’s central critiques fits within virtue ethics: she emphasizes the importance of empathy, which she defines as “an ability to recognise, take into account and respond to another person’s

genuine thoughts and feelings” (2015, 291). Part of her objection is that, by refocusing our desires and sexuality onto sexbots as compliant objects – i.e., devices that we purchase, turn on and off, sell off or dispose of – we no longer are required to conjoin love and sex with empathy. As we have seen (chapter 4: pp. 139–40), Shannon Vallor is even more explicit about the central importance of empathy as a virtue, as one of the most basic virtues (along with perseverance and patience) for human communication, friendship, and intimate relationships; these in turn seem to be prerequisites for good lives of flourishing (Vallor 2009, 165f.). Specifically, then, to redirect our sexuality – and, for Levy, love – to sexbots is thereby the loss of the opportunity to practice empathy: this sort of “ethical deskilling” thereby threatens to undermine the basic conditions for human communication and flourishing (Vallor 2015). While Levy’s expanding pleasure circle of “great sex on tap for everyone, 24/7” (2007, 310) may be irresistible to pleasure-centered utilitarians, for virtue ethicists, it risks becoming a literally vicious circle, i.e., one of increasing “vice” or anti-virtue: in losing empathy, we only make ourselves more like the machines we “have sex with.” (For more extensive discussion of relevant issues and arguments, see Ess 2018b.)

REFLECTION/DISCUSSION/WRITING QUESTIONS

1. Again, one of the difficulties facing utilitarian emphases on consequences – positive or negative – is just whether or not predicted consequences, especially further in the future, can be counted on to come about as promised. In particular, by 2018, “no empirical evidence” had been found to support any of the positive benefits Levy promised in 2007 (Davis 2018). Specifically, “rather than protecting sex workers, the dolls might fuel exploitation of humans” (ibid.) – that is, supporting one of Richardson’s key objections to Levy’s arguments and sexbots more generally.

Review Levy’s list – and see if you can think of any additional positive benefits of sexbots that he might have missed? And then, referring either to Davis (2018) and/or the academic study she discusses (Cox- George and Bewley 2018), add the more negative consequences that might also well accrue. (As a fun wrinkle: how about the possibility of your sexbot being hacked – and used to kill you? See Cuthbertson

2018.)

Using your best utilitarian calculus skills – what is the result? That is: sexbots – yes, no, and/or maybe?

Discuss your analysis – including what you think are the one or two most likely positive and negative benefits.

And: in your calculus, how did you determine how many positive utils and negative utils to assign to the diverse possible consequences?

2. Virtue ethics approaches: loving your sexbot – while s/he is faking it?

A. Levy has acknowledged that sexbots may well not have genuine emotions and desires – but that this doesn’t matter: “if a robot behaves as though it has feelings, can we reasonably argue that it does not?” (2007, 11). Well, yes: in fact, the challenges of creating any sort of real emotion or desire in an AI or robot are so complex that robot and AI designers have long focused instead on “artificial emotions” – namely, crafting the capacities of such devices to read our own emotions and then fake an “emotional” response in turn.

John Sullins (2012) has argued that such devices, however satisfying they might be on an emotional and physical level, are fundamentally objectionable on a deontological level: to intentionally deceive humans in these ways is to violate the respect for human beings owed to us as autonomous and equal Others (ibid., 408).

On the other hand, it seems very likely that all long-term intimate relationships involve at least occasional “faking it” – that is, pretending to respond to the amorous desire of one’s lover with approximately equal desire. These sexual equivalents of “little white lies” may likewise be necessary components of human sociality – that is, well-intentioned deceptions that may help our relationships work more smoothly, or even flourish more fully in the long run (cf. Myska 2008).

But this raises the question of analogical argument. As you reflect on the above:

(i) is the analogy between “little white lies” and unwanted sex (at the

extreme, marital rape) a good one? Why, and/or why not?

(ii) what about the analogy between a loving partner occasionally seeking to please his or her lover by “faking it” – and a sexbot intrinsically incapable of experiencing or expressing genuine emotion and desire, and which (who?) thereby is constantly faking it?

Given your analysis of these arguments and analogies – do you agree more with Levy that artificial emotion is enough, and/or with Sullins that artificial emotion is an unacceptable deception?

B. Sara Ruddick’s distinctions between complete sex vis-à-vis good sex are also helpful. A sexbot might well be capable of offering us good sex – a pleasurable experience that might well have additional therapeutic benefits (though this is empirically contested). On the other hand, recall that complete sex requires a mutuality of (real) desire between two autonomous beings: and that this mutuality is conjoined with deontological norms of equality and respect. On this account, loving, as entailing mutual desire, equality, and respect, is thereby a virtue, i.e., a capability that requires practice over time.

(i) Given these conditions, would complete sex with a robot – as lacking genuine consciousness, desire, and emotion – be possible?

(ii) Presuming your response is “no,” what does this mean for the larger debates surrounding sexbots – for example:

as being intrinsically deceptive and thereby disrespectful of human autonomy (Sullins);

as being capable of “good sex” – but not complete sex as Ruddick accounts for it;

and thereby threatening an “ethical deskilling” – not only of empathy, as Richardson argues, but of loving itself, both of which would seem to be foundational to friendship, long-term intimate relationships, parenting, and other relationships central to good lives of flourishing?

4. Meta-ethical issues

These debates turn largely on utilitarian arguments in favor of sexbots vis-à-vis deontological and virtue ethics arguments against them, at

least in limited degree (good sex but not complete sex), if not absolutely (Richardson’s campaign to stop sexbots entirely).

How far, then, is this actually a debate? That is, from a meta-ethical perspective, the primary opponents – Levy and Richardson – are, in effect, playing by different ethical rules. In a certain way, this means that they are talking past one another. To use an analogy, it’s as if one is arguing from the rules of rugby, while the other is arguing from the rules of American baseball.

What to do about this meta-ethical problem? Minimally, it requires us – you – to determine which of these ethical frameworks is more compelling and foundational.

Some initial questions may help here:

Where do those previous responses lead you with regard to these debates?

Are you still comfortable with your previous choices?

And/or: do your previous preferences – whether for utilitarianism, deontology, and/or virtue ethics – lead to positions and conclusions here that you do not find yourself in agreement with?

In the latter case, what do you do with the apparent inconsistencies at these meta-ethical levels?

(Hint: you may have to change your mind …)

Now: What about games? As with the development and diffusion of all sorts of pornographies via digital media, so computer-based games have likewise dramatically evolved and developed over the past three decades. The range of games is staggering: while popular press reports (still) tend to focus – because of their intense violence – on so-called first-person shooter (FPS) games and massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) such as Dota2, a descendant of the classic World of Warcraft – the world of computer-based games runs the gamut from dance and exercise games to serious or educational games designed to

achieve specific learning outcomes. The diffusion of games, as with the diffusion of pornography*, has of course followed the diffusion of mobile devices. The number of games available just for mobile phones is sufficiently extensive and constantly changing as to constantly require new guides – for example, to the top ten this week. … Along the way, games and, again – in parallel with the pattern for pornography* – game studies have grown from a relatively small field in the early 2000s to an increasingly prominent and distributed interdisciplinary set of academic fields, replete with dedicated institutes, research centers, and a growing number of relevant journals (Aarseth 2015). The world of professional gaming has likewise developed remarkably over the past two decades, now encompassing multiple leagues, professional teams with respectable salaries (as well as health benefits and retirement plans) – so much so that “competitive gaming is starting to look a lot like professional sports” (Webster 2018). All this attests to the increasing cultural roles and importance of digital games. (At the same time, it can be noted – another marker of a post-digital era – that good old fashioned board games have also been making a rather remarkable come-back: for example, in 2016, sales in the US grew by 28 percent (Birkner 2017).)

This importance, perhaps, should not surprise us: game scholars and researchers often hark back to the work of Johan Huizinga, who famously named us Homo ludens – “[hu]man the player” ([1938] 1955). But, along the way, there have been casualties – or so, at least, critics claim. For example, the Columbine (Colorado) killings in 1999 were linked with the killers’ affection for violent video games. A long list of subsequent school shootings, both in the US and in Europe were likewise linked to heavy use of violent games. Similarly, in the event many Norwegians refer to simply as “22 July,” Anders Behring Breivik killed 74 people and wounded 242 others, including 69 young people simply shot down on the island of Utøya. Breivik acknowledged playing games such as Modern Warfare 2 and World of Warcraft, in part as “training” (e.g., Daily Mail Reporter 2012). By the same token, James Holmes, dressed as the Joker, killed 12 people and injured over 60 others during the premiere of a new Batman movie in Colorado: media reports were quick to allege the role of video games – even if in a somewhat qualified fashion, as the quotation from Pat Brown at the

beginning of the chapter exemplifies (CNN 2012). Not surprisingly, these claimed linkages are hotly contested – and not without reason – by those who want to defend such games against media tendencies to scapegoat both games and gamers. The issues we’ve examined above – specifically, how to determine causal linkages between consumption and use of such materials, and just what harms and/or liberations they may foster (if any) – thus emerge here as well. Nonetheless, more recent studies, including two “meta-studies” – studies that analyze a collection of specific studies – seem to more solidly demonstrate at least some causal effect – if relatively small (Moyer 2018; cf. Gentile et al. 2014). Utilitarians in particular will need to pay close attention to these studies – and the size and degree of effects – for their calculus.

At the same time, just as with the transformations of pornography*, the range of ethical issues affiliated with computer-based games and the sophistication with which those issues are taken up have likewise developed in remarkable ways. A foundational contribution here is the work of Miguel Sicart, whose 2009 volume The Ethics of Computer Games develops an extensive and careful analysis of the game-player as an ethical subject. Sicart draws on phenomenology (including the work of Barbara Becker and her notion of the body-subject [LeibSubjekt], discussed above, p. 187) and virtue ethics to argue that game-playing requires game-players to “reflect critically on what we do in a game world during a game experience, and it is this capacity that can turn the ethical concerns traditionally raised by computer games into interesting, meaningful tools for creative expression, a new means for cultural richness” (2009, 63). Contrary, then, to the common critiques of violent video games, Sicart sees in them critical sites for the development of ethical judgment – Aristotle’s primary virtue of phronēsis – since “players present moral reasoning, a capacity for applying ethical thinking to their actions within a game, not only to take the most appropriate action within the game in order to preserve the game experience, but also to reflect on what kind of actions and choices she is presented with, and how her player-subject relates to them” (ibid., 101).

To be sure, there are multiple national and international efforts to control and regulate games – somehow. The Entertainment Software

Rating Board (ESRB) in the US, for example, “assigns the age and content ratings for video games and mobile apps, enforces advertising and marketing guidelines for the video game industry, and helps companies implement responsible online privacy practices” (www.esrb.org/index-js.jsp). As with pornography*, video games are vociferously defended on US First Amendment grounds – that is, as invoking rights to free speech (e.g., Liptak 2011). The US hence emphasizes such “self-regulating” approaches. The European counterpart, PEGI (Pan European Game Information), has developed an age-based rating system that is further refined by specific “content descriptors”: violence, bad language, fear, gambling, sex, drugs, discrimination – and, most recently “in-game purchases,” that is, a warning that a game includes the possibility of spending money within it (https://pegi.info/news/new-in-game-purchases-descriptor). Such “self-regulation” or “co-regulation” approaches thereby minimize governmental oversight in the (neoliberal) name of maximizing consumer choice and industry engagement (Livingstone 2011b: 511ff.).

Other countries and cultures take a stricter approach. For example, South Korea recognizes “game addiction” as a psychological problem, unlike the American Psychological Association, for example (Hsu, Ming-Hui, and Muh-Cherng 2009). Germany also takes game addiction seriously: one prominent psychology professor notes that the country has the strictest games regulation in the world as part of its approach to “youth media protection” (Jugendmedienschutz) (Lukesch 2012). Japan, as a last example, is both famous for the diverse aesthetics brought to game design and (in)famous for games such as RapeLay that focus on sexual violence against women.

Violence, however, seems difficult to avoid. Indeed, it is arguably baked into not only a wide assortment of games – but within the surrounding industries, cultures, and technologies as well. In 2012, for example, Mia Consalvo called out what she identified as the “toxic gamer culture” – a hostility toward women gamers both offline (at conferences) and online, including harassment (and worse). All of this exploded into more public consciousness with the “#Gamergate” controversies of 2014, characterized as “a campaign of systematic harassment of female and minority game developers, journalists, and

critics and their allies” (Massanari 2017, 330; see Dewey 2014). Massanari’s analysis is especially interesting, as it draws on a long- term ethnographic study of how various aspects of Reddit.com’s design and structure reflect, reinforce, and help amplify “anti-feminist and misogynistic activism” (2017, 329).

These broader considerations are analogous to the larger backgrounds and relationships we explored with regard to the Fairphone. A key ethical question here is whether we take a more individualistic and/or more relational approach to our ethical lives? As with the Fairphone, a more individualistic approach might well reduce the relevance and weight of these more global contexts: a more relational approach will at least raise questions regarding our consumption of what, some will otherwise argue, is “just a game.”

As with pornography*, out of all of this complexity we will take up only a small set of the central issues – specifically those that parallel the debates we have explored surrounding pornography* and sexbots.

INITIAL REFLECTION/DISCUSSION/WRITING QUESTIONS: DON’T GET

VIOLENT?

1. If you are a game-player, describe the game(s) you are familiar with and play most frequently. If you are not a gamer, describe one or more games you’ve watched others play regularly. Either way, what sorts of habits or excellences are required in order to play these games successfully? That is, what sorts of skills and abilities do they require and foster?

2. Given the habits, skills, etc., that you identify above, can you use one or more of the ethical frameworks we have explored to develop arguments for the playing of such games? For example, you might argue from a utilitarian framework that playing the game leads to a clear set of benefits (e.g., relaxation, harmless pleasure, improvement of certain skills, etc.) at a modest-to-negligible cost (e.g., the cost of the game and required equipment, one’s time, etc.). Similarly, can you use one or more of the ethical frameworks we have explored to develop arguments against the playing of such games?

3. Once you’ve established – individually and/or as a group or class –

a set of arguments pro and con, how do you respond to the debate here? That is, can you develop additional arguments, evidence, reasons, etc., that would incline the debate toward one side or another?

4. In the face of these diverse responses and perspectives on the ethical dimensions of computer games, how do you respond?

In particular, do you respond to these contrasting claims and perspectives as:

an ethical relativist

an ethical absolutist

and/or an ethical pluralist?

Explain and, more importantly, justify your response. That is, what additional reasons, evidence, grounds, etc., can you give in support of your meta-theoretical response to the first-level debates regarding computer games?

Sex and violence in games As in the discussions concerning pornography*, there is ongoing debate as to whether or not what one does in a game – e.g., including violent and/or ethically questionable sexual acts – has any effect on one’s real-world attitudes and actions. For every new study that claims to show some sort of causal linkage between game-play and players’ real-world acts and attitudes, there are vociferous attacks by defenders of games and gaming – justified at least in part, as we saw in the case of pornography*, because of the extensive difficulties of demonstrating such causal linkages (Nash et al. 2015).

These and related defenses of what otherwise seem to be excessive violence and violent sex in games can be captured in the phrase “it’s only a game.” Such defenses argue, that is, that there are clear and more or less impermeable boundaries between what happens in an online and/or virtual game environment and what gamers do in the rest of their largely quite ordinary lives.

Moreover, the debates we explored above regarding how far some forms of pornography* may serve emancipatory and/or patriarchal ends get replayed in the game context as well. In particular, as suggested by the example of the Japanese game RapeLay, rape in computer-based games is apparently as old as the games themselves, beginning with the venerable Dungeons and Dragons role-playing games first instantiated on computers in the 1970s and especially popular in the MUDs and MOOs of the 1980s and 1990s. Julian Dibbell’s famous “A Rape in Cyberspace” (1993) documented such sexual violence – and further made clear that the presumed boundary between the real and the virtual was not as solid or impermeable as some wanted to think. Rather, while the sexual assaults targeted against two of the avatars in LambdaMOO played out as bare textual descriptions unfolding across the screens of the avatars’ real-world owners (along with those of other members of the community looking on), the sense of violation experienced by the real persons behind the assaulted avatars was strong enough to evoke real tears. This, as Dibbell points out, is the flip side of more consensual forms of virtual sex: contrary to initial intuitions, he explains, virtual sex, despite its restrictions to 900 lines of text, can be as intense as any real-world encounters – perhaps even more so, “given the combined power of anonymity and textual suggestiveness to unshackle deep-seated fantasies” (Dibbell [1993] 2012, 30).

Imagine how much more powerful such experiences might be in more contemporary sound and audio-enriched virtual worlds. For Clarisse Thorn, in fact, one of the great advantages of contemporary games is precisely that they can allow women – including feminists such as herself – to explore their fantasies and alternative tastes. Specifically, Thorn points to some evidence that around one-third of women report rape fantasies, and so she argues that games and virtual worlds are valuable places for feminists interested in BDSM (Bondage-Discipline- Sadism-Masochism) (Thorn and Dibbell 2012).

On the other hand, Maria Bäcke’s interviews with “submissives” – women who role-play as slaves to men as masters in the Second Life community of Gor – suggest that such explorations may affect the women in undesired ways back in the real world (Bäcke 2011). Lastly,

in her review of the game RapeLay, Leigh Alexander states simply: “RapeLay relies on the horrendous, wildly sexist fantasy that rape victims enjoy being attacked” (2009).

SECOND REFLECTION/DISCUSSION/WRITING QUESTIONS: IT’S ONLY A GAME?

Let’s begin by presuming that there is a clear line (at least for most players) between our gaming experiences and our ordinary, day-to-day lives.

1. Are there any ethical considerations that you can offer in either support or critique of the experiences of violence and (violent) sex in games such as Grand Theft Auto V, or its contemporary counterparts as these may be familiar to you? Try to be clear here how far your considerations draw consequentialist-utilitarian, deontological, and/or virtue ethics perspectives.

2. Given some of the differences we’ve seen in cultural and national backgrounds as affecting prevailing attitudes toward sexuality and, now, the possible dangers as well as benefits of computer-based games, are any of your responses above in keeping and/or in tension with your own national/cultural background?

Especially if your responses are different from what we might expect or anticipate for someone with your specific national/cultural background, can you offer any reflection, set of experiences, etc., that seem to you to have played an important role in shaping your views as different from those surrounding you?

3. We’ve now seen – in the domain of both pornography* and computer-based games – a central debate (primarily) within feminist circles regarding whether exploration of diverse sexualities and sexual tastes and preferences (including BDSM) serve

to help emancipate especially women from gender roles and prescribed notions of sexuality that subordinate them to the power and preferences of men – for example, as such materials and experiences help women explore and determine for themselves their sexual identities and preferences;

and/or

simply to reinforce their subordination and inequality – for example, by endorsing claims that women enjoy rape as sexist fantasies that portray them as not simply “just meat,” but as enjoying such a status.

Again, both arguments agree on a central ethical norm – the especially deontological emphasis on (near-)absolute respect for the autonomy of persons. The debate is, in part at least, how far the sorts of narratives found in alt porn or games such as RapeLay serve the autonomy, especially, of women.

(A) Do you have (a) strong thought(s)/feeling(s)/intuition(s) regarding this debate – that is, if forced to choose, about which side you might take? If so, can you offer specific reasons, evidence (including your own experiences, both positive and negative, if you’re comfortable doing so), and/or other warrants that might support your views on this debate?

(B) Given your views, do they support some sorts of restrictions on such materials – for example, filtering software intended to prevent children from accessing alt porn (and pornography* sites more generally), national legislation and enforcement systems that would rate games as appropriate to specific age groups – or no restrictions whatsoever on such materials? Explain and justify your response as best you can.

(C) Is there consensus or considerable diversity of opinion and viewpoint on these matters in your class? Especially if there is considerable diversity, can you and your class, perhaps with help from your instructor(s), see any way(s) of moving forward toward resolving these differences?

Recall that we’ve seen three sorts of meta-ethical responses to profound ethical differences: ethical relativism, ethical monism/dogmatism, and ethical pluralism. Are any of the differences articulated in this exercise resolvable via some version of ethical pluralism – if so, what would it look like? If not, then are you comfortable with the remaining choices:

either a relativism, which would likely threaten the basic

deontological claim that human autonomy requires (near-)absolute respect as a primary ethical value – i.e., one that is (more or less) universal, not relative to a given culture or time;

or a monism/dogmatism, which would insist that only one view can be correct, and any diverging views must be wrong?

4. What if it turns out that the presumed boundaries between virtual game worlds and our everyday lives are not clear and solid? What happens if – as especially virtue ethics approaches argue – what we do in such game worlds does interact with our everyday lives, insofar as we learn and practice in those worlds (as Sicart emphasizes, for example) specific habits and, perhaps, attitudes?

Presume now – if only from a virtue ethics perspective – that there are indeed crossovers between our online and/or computer-based gaming experiences and our offline lives, practices, habits, and attitudes. Given this presumption:

(A) Does it change any of your responses to the questions raised above in 1–3? If so, which ones – and how?

(B) In particular, especially given this presumption, where do you “draw the line” regarding which materials (whether specific forms of pornographies* and/or specific sorts of games) are generally ethically commendable (or at least ethically neutral) and which are potentially harmful, to their consumers and players and/or to those around them?

For example, Sicart points out that:

For Aristotle, ethics and virtue are not something we have, but rather a practice – one in which we can improve. Our goal as beings trying to flourish as moral beings is to first cultivate the virtues and then develop the practical wisdom that will allow us to make virtuous choices in different situations. Similarly, playing games is a matter of maturing our capacities to create the player-subject and its moral reasoning.

(2009, 103)

From this perspective, a game such as Custer’s Revenge – which, if the player succeeds in meeting its challenges, allows him to rape a tied-up

Native American woman – is to be ethically rejected. We learn nothing in playing the game, that is, that helps us flourish as moral beings – specifically, by way of cultivating specific habits and virtues, including the better practice of phronēsis or practical wisdom. Similar arguments would seem to hold for games such as RapeLay.

Recall that this does not mean for Sicart that all games involving violence, including rape, are necessarily beyond the pale: rather, we have seen him defend violent games such as Grand Theft Auto and Super Columbine Massacre RPG!, as such games can foster the practice of phronēsis or practical wisdom.

Using these examples as a starting point:

(i) Develop with your cohorts a continuum of games familiar to you. (At the time of writing in the English-speaking world, a list of popular games includes: Dota2, League of Legends, Fortnite, Player Unknown Battlegrounds (PUBG), Red Dead Redemption 2, God of War, Overwatch, Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Fallout, Assassin’s Creed, Apex Legends, and Heartstone.)6 At the same time, consider games such as RapeLay and Custer’s Revenge and/or their more recent counterparts.

(ii) Using Sicart’s approach, can you identify which games indeed seem to foster the development of important habits and virtues, including the primary virtue of practical wisdom or phronēsis, and which don’t? Insofar as you can do so, you would then have a way of “drawing the line” between games that could be defended on ethical grounds – even if they include striking levels of violence and violent sex – and those that are on the other side of the line.

(iii) Given the line(s) that you and your cohorts draw, are you comfortable and persuaded that this/these would be useful as (a) way(s) of offering ethically informed advice to friends and family, including younger folk, as to what games would be worth their while – and which might not? Especially if you think additional considerations need to come into play in offering such advice, articulate these as best you can.

(iv) Insofar as you have managed to develop what appears to be an

ethically defensible set of lines regarding commendable and non- commendable games, are you comfortable and persuaded that these would further be useful as ways of developing legal guidelines for, say, age-appropriate ratings of games and/or other forms of legislation and regulation (including voluntary codes) on a national level (meaning, first of all, your country and culture of origin) and/or at an international level?

5. Where do we draw the line … as ethical consumers?

As we saw in the example of the Fairphone (chapter 4, pp. 153–6), a further set of ethical considerations is posed by the larger relations within which the production, distribution, and disposal of such products take place. The Fairphone, and Fairtrade products more generally, respond to increasing consumer awareness of these larger infrastructures and a growing sense of responsibility for pushing them in more fair and just directions through one’s purchases. We have also explored Luciano Floridi’s account of distributed responsibility as an ethical reality in a world in which we are all inextricably interwoven – including with the workers (perhaps child slaves) and literally bloody contexts which source critical components of our beloved devices. As the earlier exercise suggested, part of our response here turns on our conceptions of who we are as human beings – broadly, as more individual, more relational, and/or somewhere in between as relational autonomies.

And this last, of course, turns in part on the cultural contexts of our origins and experiences.

To explore these dimensions of consuming and enjoying games containing graphic sex and violence (often conjoined), consider the following:

A. Reviewing the phenomena of #Gamergate, especially as elaborated in further sources – is there a good analogy between, say, an electronics industry that relies in some measure on conflict minerals, child slavery, etc., and a game industry that seems marked, in some quarters at least, by a “toxic masculinity” that occasionally leaks out into real-world threats and harm against targeted women gamers, designers, and journalists?

B. Presuming there is – to some degree – a good analogy here, then what does that imply for your ethical choices regarding the consumption and enjoyment of games?

Perhaps nothing … perhaps a lot … Either way, carefully explain your thoughts and responses here.

C. At least part of your response will turn on your holding more individualistic vis-à-vis more relational senses of selfhood (and/or the middle ground of relational autonomy) – and thereby more individual senses vis-à-vis more distributed senses of ethical responsibility.

Where do you seem to be on this scale – and does it indeed make a difference in your choices here?

D. As we saw in the example of the Fairphone and the “Red” products in Floridi’s examples, even if one holds to a more relational sense of self and thereby a more distributed sense of responsibility, purchasing a Fairphone or other Fairtrade product may not be fully mandatory, but “supererogatory,” or a “Good Samaritan” choice. Presuming there are games that, analogous to the Fairphone, are at least less ethically questionable in terms of both content and the larger production and consumption relationships that make them available to you, would you want to argue that it would be ethically commendable, but not necessarily always obligatory, to purchase and play these?

SUGGESTED RESOURCES FOR FURTHER RESEARCH/REFLECTION/WRITING

The Games Research Network listserv (https://listserv.uta.fi) is a primary resource in the community of researchers for posting new publications, conferences, etc. This will serve at least as a starting point for research projects.

Christopher A. Paul (2018) The Toxic Meritocracy of Video Games: Why Gaming Culture Is the Worst. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Paul argues that much of what is ethically (and socially) objectionable about gaming culture can be overcome by following the examples of more established professional sports.

Mikkola, Mari (ed.) (2017) Beyond Speech: Pornography and

Analytic Feminist Philosophy. Oxford University Press.

Chapters will take you further into the finer details of, and contemporary views on, feminist approaches to pornography – if from within the somewhat circumscribed domains of analytic philosophy.

Paul G. Nixon and Isabel K. Düsterhöft (eds.) (2017) Sex in the Digital Age (London: Routledge).

This takes up a wide array of topics, several of which intersect with the considerations in this chapter regarding pornography and sexuality, violence, and robots (as an extension of the long tradition of sex toys).

John Danaher and Neil McArthur (eds.) (2017) Robot Sex: Social and Ethical Implications (London: MIT Press). An excellent collection of contributions that offer more fine-grained analyses of diverse dimensions of robot sex.

John Sullins (2017) Robots, Sex, and Love, pp. 217–43 in Anthony Beavers (ed.), Philosophy, Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks. Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference.

Sullins, a long-time explorer of these domains, provides a highly accessible overview of both contemporary sexbot technologies and companies, and an extensive exploration of the many philosophical perspectives and arguments. The chapter is especially valuable for its use of the Platonic understanding of eros – a far richer, but also far more demanding, conception than “just sex” – as a way of analyzing the physical and ethical benefits and limits of robot sex.

Notes 1 Borrowing from Grodzinsky et al. (2008), and keeping in mind

Susanna Paasonen’s admonition (2011) above, I use “pornography*” – i.e., with an appended asterisk – to signal that this term is intrinsically ambiguous and open to a wide range of interpretations. The intention is thereby to remind us that we always need to specify more precisely what we mean when speaking of pornography*, rather than uncritically assuming that the term is obvious and unambiguous.

2 Again: the whole complex of our lives as meaning-making and relational beings, thoroughly informed by our co-evolving technologies (Verbeek 2017; cf. Coeckelbergh 2017).

3 I am grateful to Elisabeth Staksrud for making this data from the EU Kids Online 2018 survey available in preliminary form.

4 See the further discussion of contemporary feminism in chapter 6, p. 257, note 4.

5 The doctrine of Original Sin is historically associated with patriarchal control of women: as the doctrine lays the responsibility for the introduction of sin and death into the world upon Eve, it thereby works to demonize women, the body, and sexuality. This interpretation of the second Genesis creation story (Genesis 2.4– 3.2), while orthodox in Western Roman Catholicism and subsequently among some Protestant reformers, is directly contrary to earlier Christian and Jewish readings of the text, which emphasize instead the positive nature of Eve’s choice: acquiring “the knowledge of good and evil” is specifically understood as the attainment of the distinctively human capacities of moral understanding and free choice – capacities that, in turn, early Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke see as foundational to arguments for democratic polity – i.e., the political arrangements of human beings capable of rational self-rule (Ess 1995).

6 My very great thanks to Mia Consalvo, Rikke Toft Nørgård, and Joshua Ess for these suggestions.

CHAPTER SIX Digital Media Ethics: Overview, Frameworks, Resources Morally as well as physically, there is only one world, and we all have to live in it.

(Midgley [1981] 1996, 119)

Chapter overview This chapter provides especially those new to ethics with an overview of the most commonly used theoretical frameworks for ethical analysis and decision-making. We begin with (1) utilitarianism and (2) deontology. We then explore (3) important meta-theoretical frameworks of ethical relativism, ethical absolutism (monism), and ethical pluralism: these frameworks shape three critically different ways of interpreting what ethical differences may mean – beginning with cross-cultural differences in ethical norms and practices – and thereby how we can respond to these differences. We then turn to (4) feminist ethics and ethics of care, (5) virtue ethics, (6) Confucian ethics, and (7) African perspectives.

These theoretical and meta-theoretical frameworks constitute our “ethical toolkit” – a collection of important but diverse ways of analyzing and attempting to resolve ethical problems. Part of our work as ethicists is learning how to apply a given theoretical framework to a specific issue; and given the diversity of possible theoretical frameworks, we must also determine which frameworks are best suited for confronting and resolving specific ethical issues. The meta- theoretical frameworks of relativism, absolutism, and pluralism help clarify and guide these determinations.

A synopsis of digital media ethics Much of the ethical reflection on digital media – most especially, on the ethical dimensions of information and communication technologies (ICTs) – arose alongside the technologies themselves. But this means that, until the last two decades or so, most of the discussion and reflection on digital media ethics took place primarily within Western countries, utilizing primarily Western ethical traditions and ways of thinking. To begin with, there is widespread agreement (Bynum 2000; Stahl, Timmermans, and Mittelstadt 2016, 3) that Norbert Wiener’s The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society (1950) stands as the first book in computer ethics. For over

two decades, “computer ethics” was the concern of a very small group of professionals – principally computer scientists and a few philosophers. “Computer ethics” as its own term emerged only in the 1970s, mainly through the work of Walter Maner, but also manifest, for example, in the first professional code of computer ethics of the Association for Computing Machinery in 1973 (and subsequently revised – most recently in ACM [2018]). The introduction of the personal computer (PC) in 1982, however, began a dramatic expansion of the role of computers and computer networks into the lives of “the rest of us” – i.e., those of us who are not computer scientists or other sorts of information professionals, such as librarians (see Buchanan and Henderson 2008). Following the emergence of the internet and World Wide Web in the lives and awareness of most people in the developed world in the early 1990s, a number of savvy observers began to predict (rightly) that by the beginning of the twenty-first century, information and computing ethics (ICE) would become a global ethics – i.e., a domain of ethical issues, debate, and possible resolution, of concern to more and more people representing an increasingly global diversity of cultural norms and ethical and religious traditions (see Paterson 2007, 153). In fact, what is called “intercultural computing ethics” has been underway in ICE since the 1990s (Capurro 2005, 2008; Ess 2005; see Bielby 2015 for an overview).

Along the way, an important meta-ethical debate has emerged – and frequently arises again among those new to these now long histories. Briefly, will ICE, especially as it becomes globalized, require: (a) largely a continuation of traditional ethics, but now applied to new problems; or (b) a radical transformation of ethical thinking, as constantly evolving ICTs introduce us in turn to radically new ethical difficulties (see Bynum 2000; Tavani 2013, 9–12)? As is often the case, the eventual responses to such either/or possibilities rather constitute a “both/and”: that is, both (a) and (b) are correct. On the one hand, there may well be specific instances that point toward the need for distinctively new approaches (Braidotti 2006). On the other hand, there are very many examples of how “everything old is new again” (Ess and Hård af Segerstad 2019). That is, despite often dramatic technological transformations, coupled with our ever-evolving and sometimes striking new practices, the familiar ethical frameworks and

approaches continue to work quite well in many instances. For example, deontology and virtue ethics are central ethical pillars in European Union philosophy and policy developing around the emergence of AI and the Internet of Things (Burgess et al. 2018; Floridi et al. 2018). Virtue ethics and deontology, along with utilitarianism, are likewise core frameworks in the development of “ethically aligned design” by the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), the largest professional and standards-setting organization in the world (https://ethicsinaction.ieee.org).

For us, the point is to be aware of this larger meta-ethical question and debate as we go along. Our reflections and responses to this question will affect (and be affected by) our ethical reflections regarding other digital media – including our basic conceptions of selfhood, as ranging from more individual through relational autonomies to largely relational, as these in turn interact with our background cultures.

Basic ethical frameworks As we have seen in the opening chapter, “doing ethics” involves much more than a kind of “rule-book” approach – i.e., picking a set of principles, values, etc., and applying these in a largely deductive, algorithmic manner to a problem at hand. Rather, our central ethical difficulties are difficult largely because they require us first to determine which principles, values, frameworks, etc., best apply to a given problem – a determination that Aristotle attributed to phronēsis or reflective judgment. Developing such judgment requires our ongoing effort to analyze and reflect on both familiar and new experiences and problems. The good news is that our ethical judgments – at least, if we consciously seek to develop them in these ways – generally do get better over time. The daunting news is that developing such judgment is a lifetime’s work, one that is never complete or final.

In point of fact, as an acculturated member of a culture and society, you already have a reasonably well-developed body of experience and practice with ethical analysis and judgments. The following will simply enhance the ethical toolkit you already have developed, by articulating

some of the most central frameworks for ethical reflection, both Western and then non-Western ones.

REFLECTION/DISCUSSION/WRITING EXERCISE: A STUDENT DILEMMA

It’s Wednesday evening, and you’re packing up some books and notes to take over to a friend’s apartment. You have different majors, but you are both in the same section of a required course – and tomorrow is one of two exams given during the semester; your grade on the exam will count towards 40 percent of your final grade in the course.

For you, the course is not so hard, but your friend is really struggling. You’ve promised to help her study this evening; you both need to get a good grade on the exam and in the course to keep your grade point average at the level required for your scholarships.

Just as you’re walking out the door to go to your friend’s apartment, a good friend calls you up and says that he and some of your buddies are at the local pizza place, having dinner and some beers. They’d really like you to come on over, in part because you owe them a round or two of drinks from the last time you got together. What do you do?

1. Utilitarianism Most students in my experience approach this sort of problem in a consequentialist – perhaps even a utilitarian – way. That is, they will begin to figure out the costs and benefits of (1) turning down their buddies for pizza and beer, vs. the costs and benefits of (2) fulfilling the promise to help a friend study. One of the chief advantages of this approach is that we can set up a handy table to help us keep track of the positives and negatives. An initial analysis of our choices might look like the table on p. 220.

But, of course, there are additional positive and negative consequences of our choices that may seem relevant to our decision: e.g., if I help my friend, she will do better on her exam (and, most likely, so will I); if I go to have pizza and beer, I will certainly have a good time this evening but probably not do so well tomorrow in the exam. If we think further down the road, it may be that doing well in this exam will turn out to be a “make-or-break” event with regard to our success in the course:

that is, should we both do well, we might subsequently end up with a better grade in the course; but, if we don’t, then we might end up with less of a grade than we need in order to maintain our grade point averages for our scholarships, etc. The possible consequences even further down the road might be enormous – ranging from doing well in school more generally, moving on to a good job, etc., to (worst-case scenario) losing needed scholarships, thereby being unable to complete school, thereby failing to be able to find a good and satisfying job, etc.

You get the point. For the consequentialist, the game of ethics is about trying to think through possible good and bad consequences of possible acts, and then weighing them against one another to determine which act will generate the more positive outcome(s).

Consequentialist analysis

Possible actions Fulfill promise – study with friend

Break promise – enjoy pizza and beer

Costs (negatives)

Will miss a nice evening with friends … …

Will disappoint a friend who’s counting on your help … …

Benefits (positives)

Will be able to help a friend in an important way … …

Will enjoy a nice evening with friends … …

Strengths and limits Consequentialism is certainly a tried-and-true approach to ethics: it’s at least as old as Crito’s efforts in the dialogue named after him to persuade Socrates to break out of jail and thereby avoid execution by the Athenians. And especially in its utilitarian form – i.e., as developed in the modern era by Jeremy Bentham and further elaborated by John Stuart Mill, both of whom argued that we must pursue those acts that bring about the greatest positive consequences (pleasure) for the

greatest number – the consequentialist approach has come to dominate ethical decision-making and is especially characteristic of especially in the United States and the United Kingdom (e.g., Stahl 2004). Certainly, there are many cases in which consequentialism will do what we want an ethical theory to do – i.e., to help us determine which is the better choice of two (or more) possible actions.

But, as this example also suggests, consequentialist approaches face serious limitations. (We will also see this to be true of every other theory we examine: after we have reviewed all the theories under discussion here, one of our questions will be to see whether we can discern which theory – or, perhaps, which combination of theories – seems more sound, useful, justifiable, etc., than its competitors.) In my view, there are three important such limitations.

(a)How do we numerically evaluate the possible consequences of our acts? In simple cases, this is not a problem. Either I go to get a new bus pass or I face walking to school on a cold winter day. Either I pay my phone bill or I find myself out of touch with friends and family, along with the loss of internet access more generally.

But the hard cases are hard in part as it’s not always clear how we are to weigh the possible outcomes of one act against another.

Bentham famously thought that all possible consequences, as some form of pleasure or pain, could be evaluated in terms of their intensity and duration – for example, as part of a “hedonic calculus” (Sinnott- Armstrong 2015). Several nineteenth-century economists attempted to develop this calculus into a strictly quantitative one by introducing the notion of a “util” as a unit for measuring pleasure or pain (e.g., Sigot 2002). Ethical decision-making would then be a strictly arithmetic matter of adding up positive and negative utils.

But what if not everything can be measured solely in terms of pleasure or pain? What number of utils do we assign to an evening with friends, enhanced by the pleasures of food and drink? What number of utils do we assign to breaking a promise to a friend, coupled with the knowledge that our breaking that promise may lead to further,

perhaps very serious, consequences (= negative utils) for our friend?

Despite centuries of effort, however, it is very challenging indeed to establish in practice a relatively standard or quasi-objective scale of pleasure and pain – physical and/or psychological – that we can thus neatly quantify in terms of utils for such a hedonic calculus. But everything in consequentialism turns on assigning relative weights to given consequences: without some sort of agreed-upon scale or table of utils to draw on, consequentialism is paralyzed at the outset.

Moreover, as we will see shortly, deontologists argue that some aspects of human existence cannot be assigned quantitative values: some things, some of us believe, are beyond measure. And, for such elements, both consequentialist approaches in general and utilitarianism in particular (again) have no ethical legs to stand on: without a universal and consistent schema of positive and negative utils with which to make our calculations, the arithmetic at the heart of consequentialism cannot proceed. Moreover, in this case, for the deontologist, a promise is a promise; it thereby entails a (near- )absolute obligation. Breaking a promise, however much pleasure the promise-breaker might get as a result of doing so (starting with opening the door to pizza and beer), is still wrong.

(b)How far into the future must we consider? Ethicists distinguish between short-term and long-term consequentialists. In this example, a (really) short-term consequentialist would consider only the consequences of his or her acts over the next few hours. For most of us – at least, if we’re not allergic to gluten and if our religion or physiology does not forbid alcohol – pizza and beer with friends would generate more positive utils than studying for an exam (presuming, that is, that you really do not like the subject, etc.). By contrast, extending our timeframe by 24 hours might radically change our decision: whatever the positive utils of pizza and beer, they might well not outweigh the negative utils of letting down a friend and then watching as both of us do poorly in an important exam.

And so on. It’s not inconceivable that, in 20 or 30 years, you and your

friend might look back on this exam as a key moment in your lives – one that led (in the best of circumstances) to further academic and thereby vocational success, or (perish the thought) to academic failure and a lifetime of mediocre and unsatisfying jobs. The difficulty is: consequentialists and utilitarians do not appear to have a satisfying justification for telling us where in time to draw the line – the point after which we no longer need worry about the outcomes of our choices. But depending on where we draw this line can make all the difference in our calculations.

As this last point suggests, there’s a second difficulty wrapped into the problem of how far into the future we must attempt to consider: the further into the future we seek to predict, the less reliable our predictions can be. And yet, some of those future consequences may be some of the most important for us in our lives. Worst case: the chances of realizing what may potentially be the most decisive consequences of our acts become increasingly (perhaps vanishingly) small the further into the future we seek to predict those consequences. (In my experience, much of the anguish we face in ethical decisions turns on our effort to approach them in a consequentialist fashion – only to realize that we cannot be very certain at all about some of the most important possible outcomes of our actions.)

(c)For whom are the consequences that we must consider? The pizza and beer example takes into account only a small number of people. Bentham and Mill, by contrast, argued that consequentialism would work for whole societies. Up to a point, at least, this is plausible. In wartime, for example, generals and political leaders think in clearly consequentialist terms. Choosing to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for instance, were relatively easy decisions for the Allied commanders. Dropping these bombs immediately cost something like 200,000 Japanese deaths – but, as hoped, it put an end to the war. A conventional land invasion was estimated to result in around 500,000 Allied soldiers’ deaths (and at least as many Japanese soldiers). At a simple assignment of one positive util per life:

to use atomic weapons: 500,000 + / 200,000 – = 300,000 + utils

not to use atomic weapons: 200,000 + / 500,000 – = 300,000 – utils

But what about the impact of using these weapons on those who continued to live (and die) in areas contaminated by radioactive fallout? What about the impact of using these weapons on the larger ecosystem? On future generations?1

Attempting to take these possible consequences into account clearly makes the calculation much, much more complicated. Again, part of the problem is attempting to determine how far into the future we must predict relevant consequences. But the further problem is: where do I draw the line with regard to consequences affecting what group of persons / living beings / non-animate entities? As I hope is clear, where I draw that line can make an enormous difference in the possible consequences of an act – and, thereby, how I decide which of two (or more) competing choices I should pursue.

In particular, as digital media radically extend the range of the possible consequences of our actions (as dramatically illustrated in the example of the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad; Debatin 2007), the question of “consequences for whom” becomes central. Unlike commanders in war, we cannot simply assume that the consequences of our actions are limited to the citizens of a given nation-state.

In the face of these sorts of difficulties and limitations, many people find that they cannot rely on consequentialism alone. They may want to retain consequentialist approaches for certain sorts of decisions – for example, when it is possible to make reasonably reliable predictions about the possible outcomes of our choices or when it is reasonably clear who will be affected, and within a specified timeframe. But, especially when this sort of insight and information are not available, they may turn to one or more of the following ethical frameworks.

2. Deontology For deontologists, what stands out in our opening example is that you have made a promise. And promises – along with, say, notions of basic rights and duties – have a (near-)absolute quality to them: they cannot

be overridden by considerations as to how much pleasure (or pain) might be gained (or avoided) by violating them.

Religiously grounded forms of deontology are perhaps most immediately familiar to contemporary Westerners. For example, if I am a Jew, Christian, or Muslim, I believe that God has given us specific commandments and laws which define right and wrong for me – no matter what the consequences. So, negatively, I am commanded not to murder, not to lie, not to covet my neighbor’s property, not to commit adultery, etc. Positively, I am commanded to love God and my neighbor – the Golden Rule that appears to be a universal, in fact. Hence, a religiously grounded deontologist would believe that it is wrong to lie – even if, by lying, he or she might be able to gain significant material reward.

As a still stronger example: religious pacifists – whether rooted in Judaism, Christianity, or some forms of Buddhism – take the sacredness of life (all life for the Buddhist, not just human life) as an absolute. Hence, for pacifists, killing other human beings (and, for many Buddhists, any living thing) is always wrong – no matter what the consequences. Such pacifists would not only reject the consequentialist thinking, for example, behind the decision to use atomic weapons in World War II; they would further reject the use of violence against others even in self-defense. For the religious pacifist, killing another is always wrong, no matter what the consequences – including the possible consequence of losing one’s own life.

Non-religious consequentialist considerations can also support pacifism and/or conscientious objection more broadly. Socrates, for example, argues in Plato’s Republic and Crito that doing violence or harm to another leads to an unacceptable form of literal self- destruction. Harming others is argued to work contrary to the central ability of reason to discern the good, and the ability (virtue) of judgment (phronēsis) to determine how to enact the good appropriate to specific contexts and circumstances. To work contrary to these functions of reason and judgment in turn runs the risk of degrading – perhaps ultimately paralyzing or destroying – these central abilities. And, if we degrade or destroy our ability to discern the good and judge what it means, we will thereby lose our ability to make the judgments

needed to pursue a genuinely good life of contentment (eudaimonia) and harmony. Failure to achieve these, finally, makes our lives no longer worth living. Hence, the just or good person will never harm another, no matter what sorts of other gains such harm might bring, because to do so risks making life no longer worth living (e.g., Republic 335b–335e).2 However we understand the pacifism of Jesus and the early Christian communities, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., built on these Socratic and Christian roots (and, for Gandhi, the Buddhist virtue of ahimsa – nonviolence) to argue and practice nonviolent protest against unjust laws. Such nonviolence was intended not only to prevent harm to the selves or souls of its practitioners (one consequence) but also to awaken the conscience of the larger community (a second consequence), in hopes that the larger community would come to see the injustice of its behaviors, laws, etc. (consequence 3) and then replace these with more just ones (consequence 4).

But there are also rationalist deontologies – articulated most importantly in the modern era by Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). Kant is famous for the Categorical Imperative (CI). In contrast with a rule- book ethics, the CI marks out a procedural way of determining what actions are right. The first formulation of the Categorical Imperative states: “So act that the maxim of your will could always hold at the same time as a principle establishing universal law” (Kant [1788] 1956, 31). One of Kant’s own examples from the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals ([1785] 1959) helpfully illustrates what this means. Consider the possibility of needing to borrow money – knowing full well, however, that you will not be able to repay the loan. You also know that, in order to get the loan, you have to promise to repay it (duh). Question: can you make what you know to be a false promise in order to secure the loan? For Kant, the maxim of this action would be: “When I believe myself to be in need of money, I will borrow money and promise to repay it, although I know I shall never do so.” But the Categorical Imperative requires that we ask: “How would it be if my maxim became a universal law?” (ibid., 40).

This might well remind you of your parents asking you in high school: what if everyone did that? But, for Kant, what is at stake in this

question is whether or not the larger social order that would result from everyone following the maxim of “make a false promise when it is convenient to do so” would be coherent – or logically contradictory. On Kant’s analysis, attempting to universalize this maxim would become self-contradictory:

For the universality of a law which says that anyone who believes himself to be in need could promise what he pleased with the intention of not fulfilling it would make the promise itself and the end to be accomplished by it impossible; no one would believe what was promised to him but would only laugh at any such assertion as vain pretense.

(Ibid., 40)

Simply: if we knew that everyone would lie when convenient (the result of universalizing the maxim of our action), then we would never know when someone was telling us the truth. But a world in which we, by default, cannot trust one another to make promises in good faith – that is, to tell the truth when we promise one another, for example, to repay a loan – would be a world in which promises thus lose their meaning. Specifically, in this case, attempting to lie in order to acquire a loan I have no intention of repaying becomes self-contradictory: if everyone does it – that is, allows himself or herself to perform the same act (the result of universalizing the maxim at work here), then no one would accept my promise at the outset. But if I cannot universalize lying in this way – that is, make it a universal law acceptable for everyone – then for Kant it is wrong, even when it seems convenient or important. Again, it is always wrong, no matter what the consequences.

In our case, a Kantian analysis would ask the question: what sort of social/moral order would result if everyone were to break a promise whenever doing so would result in at least more immediate, short- term pleasure? Again, the result would be that we would never be able to trust anyone’s promise – which would make promise-making self- contradictory and meaningless. Hence, breaking a promise is always wrong – no matter what the consequences.

Finally, Kantian deontology undergirds the widely shared belief that

there are ethical absolutes such as human rights. The discussion and literature on rights is largely modern: so Thomas Jefferson, inspired by John Locke, insisted in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and unalienable Rights; that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” ([1776] 1984, 19). The belief in human rights inspired the American and French revolutions – and, subsequently, many of the political transformations that define modern Western states. Most basically, if human beings are free (in Kant’s language, autonomies), we must be recognized as equal and deserving of respect – that is, not slaves, not “just meat.” Early Western and then more global struggles for establishing and expanding emancipation and equality, including nineteenth-century abolitionist and women’s suffrage movements, turned centrally on these conceptions and arguments.

Indeed, the belief that rights are absolutes that must be recognized and protected is not simply a Western phenomenon. In 1948, the United Nations issued its Universal Declaration of Human Rights – a document that goes well beyond what some scholars call the first- generation or primarily negative set of rights articulated by Locke and Jefferson, to include second-generation or positive rights – for example, the rights to education and health care. These rights have been realized, for example, as duties of the state in Western Europe and Scandinavia, while the right to health care remains hotly disputed in the United States. In any event, a deontological notion of basic human rights has driven much of the political activism and transformation in modernity, both within and beyond the boundaries of “the West,” as Gandhi in India, and multiple other liberation movements, globally exemplify.

To be sure, these claims to univeralism have been critically challenged by feminists, and postmodernist and post-colonialist scholars (among others). These critiques must be acknowledged and evaluated: but, as with contemporary feminisms,3 the complexities are beyond the bounds of this general introduction. At the same time, some of these critiques have become more subdued in light of subsequent developments. For example, we’ve seen contemporary feminists seek

to preserve Kantian notions of autonomy and thereby rights – however importantly these are modified, for example in terms of relational autonomies – precisely for the sake of sustaining a central ground of argument for women’s equality, respect, and emancipation. At the same time, recent work in cross-cultural psychology offers extensive empirical evidence for shared values and norms across cultures, thereby arguing again in the direction of some form of universalism (e.g., Schwartz 2015).

All of this will lead to central questions regarding how culture shapes our ethics – questions that are ever more pressing as digital media make cross-cultural communication increasingly commonplace.

Difficulties ... To begin with, we may agree that consequentialism becomes suspect when it leads us to violate what we may take to be (near-)absolute human rights. That is, the utilitarian mantra of “the greatest good for the greatest number” argues that the sacrifice of the few for the good of the many is justifiable. We certainly make this argument in wartime, when soldiers, by definition, are those whose lives are potential sacrifices for the good of the many. But these days, we may be less sympathetic to similar arguments that could be made, for example, regarding enslavement. That is, a utilitarian can argue that, just as it would be ethically justified to sacrifice a comparatively small portion of the population (soldiers) for the sake of the greater good, so we can justify the loss of certain freedoms and rights of a few (slaves) if we can show that these costs are overridden by the greater benefits such slaves would provide for the larger society. If we wish to argue against the utilitarian at this point, we may do so by reaching for some notion of (near-)absolute human rights – e.g., rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of property. If, as modern deontologists would argue, these rights exist and are (near-)absolute, then they may never be violated – for example, by turning some portion of the population into slaves – even if to do so might lead to greater pleasure and enjoyment on the part of everyone else.

Likewise, we might admire the courage of protesters – for example, during the civil rights movement of the 1960s or in more recent

political protest movements around the world – who practice the nonviolent pacifism of a Gandhi or a King, sometimes with remarkable success. If we are deontologists, we would say that they are doing the right thing – even if it costs them great personal pain, and even if they are not always successful in gaining their intended political outcomes.

But many people are not always willing to accept a Kant-like absolute not to lie, for example. Sometimes, it seems quite clear that lying would be justified, for example if it were to save a life – and many lives, even more so.

In fact, Kant developed a more nuanced position in his later works, so as to make greater ethical room for deception: while we might deceive others for less than ideal reasons, as deception allows us to hide our more negative characteristics while nonetheless developing a more virtuous character, it can help us become better persons (Myskja 2008). As Kant’s own transformation suggests, whether or not deontological approaches can consistently make room for what appear to be justified and important “exceptions to the rule” is a central question for defenders of this approach.

DISCUSSION/REFLECTION/WRITING QUESTIONS: A FIRST GO AT ETHICAL

THEORY

Given this initial overview of consequentialist vs. deontological approaches, review the initial example of promise-keeping vs. enjoying pizza and beer with friends. In particular:

(A) How did you initially analyze the dilemma – i.e., more as a consequentialist and/or more as a deontologist? (As the use of the “and/or” suggests, while there are sharp differences between the two positions, it is possible for us to use both in some combination or another.)

(B) Now that you’ve had a chance to review and explore these two frameworks, try applying them to another ethical dilemma – ideally, one affiliated with the use of digital media. In doing so:

(i) Describe the dilemma as fully and accurately as you can.

(ii) Explain what your own initial response to this dilemma might be.

That is, what would you decide to do, and how would you decide what to do?

(iii) Then apply each of these frameworks to the dilemma as best you can – perhaps with the help of cohorts and/or your instructor. Make clear how each framework leads to a given outcome or decision regarding possible acts or choices.

(C) Given the dilemma you choose to analyze, does the consequentialist approach lead to the same ethical conclusion as a deontological approach or to a different one? Especially if the outcomes are different, which outcome more closely fits with your own initial response to this dilemma (i.e., your response in B.ii)?

(D) Especially if your initial response/s mesh/es well with either a consequentialist and/or a deontological response, do you see any additional reasons, insights, arguments, analytical approaches, etc., offered by consequentialism and/or deontology beyond those that you initially used in approaching this problem?

What are these, and do you think that they may prove useful in approaching other ethical dilemmas as well? (In Kantian terms: can you universalize these – or are they just useful in this particular case?)

(E) Especially if the outcomes of these two different approaches are different, what does this difference mean? That is, are we forced, for example, to choose between one or the other approach, such that one is always right and the other always wrong?

If you say “yes,” can you justify (provide good reasons, argument, evidence for) your response?

If you say “no,” again, can you justify (provide good reasons, argument, evidence for) your response?

3. Meta-ethical frameworks: Relativism, absolutism (monism), pluralism

Ethical relativism These contrasts between utilitarian and deontological ethics suggest,

on first glance, a meta-ethical view called ethical relativism. That is, in the face of (often radically) different ethical frameworks and claims, it is tempting to believe that these differences must mean that there are no universally valid ethical norms, values, approaches, etc. Rather, all such norms, values, and approaches are valid only relative to (i.e., within the domain of) a given culture or group of people. Such ethical relativism is even more tempting as we gain more knowledge and experience of how people live, think, and feel in cultures different from our own – a knowledge increasingly commonplace in a world ever more interconnected by digital media.

Ethical relativism offers two chief advantages. First, it fosters tolerance of the views and practices of Others (those who are different from ourselves). Such toleration is itself an important ethical value; generally, it seems, the world could do with much more tolerance of important ethical (and cultural) difference. Second, ethical relativism offers a certain kind of relief: if values and practices are always and only legitimate in relation to a specific culture, then we need look no further for values, practices, frameworks, etc., that might claim genuinely universal validity. This latter task is indeed hard (but, we will see, not impossible) work. Ethical relativism gives us the excuse and rationale we need to dismiss this task.

In my view, ethical relativism enjoys a third advantage: in some important instances, it appears to be true. For example, in Switzerland and Germany, guests are expected to show respect at a party by shaking hands with not only the hosts, but also all the guests, before leaving. In the US, there is no such compunction. For their part, people in the US often hug one another when greeting or departing – including university colleagues. Doing so in a Germanic culture, by contrast, is almost never appropriate. At first glance, then, there appears to be no absolute right or wrong regarding such greeting/parting rituals. Rather, what is right in Germanic cultures often seems bizarre in the US, and what is right in the US can border on the offensive in Germanic cultures. (That said, we will see in the discussion of ethical pluralism that these differences in greeting/parting rituals may not be quite so absolutely relative as they first appear.)

But ethical relativism also faces two especially important difficulties. First, it is logically incoherent – and this in two ways. To begin with, the ethical relativist faces a simple, but fundamental, contradiction: on the one hand, she or he wants to argue that there are no universally valid values, norms, practices, etc.; on the other hand, she or he concludes that we must thereby be tolerant of ethical norms and practices different from our own. (Just to be clear: we can get to this tolerance in other ways, as we will see below in the section on ethical pluralism.) But tolerance thereby appears to emerge as itself a universally valid ethical norm or value – i.e., one that the ethical relativist argues we all should agree upon and follow.

Hence, the position of ethical relativism seems caught in a fundamental contradiction: if all ethical values, norms, and practices are indeed valid or legitimate only in relation to a given culture or time, then it would seem that tolerance must likewise count as only a relative value. And so, if there are those who are rigidly intolerant on some point – for example, the white racist’s intolerance for people of color – it is not at all clear how the ethical relativist can coherently insist that such a person, as a product of a given culture and time, should rather have exercised tolerance.

The second logical problem for the ethical relativist is somewhat more complex. The primary argument for ethical relativism can be put as follows:

(Premise 1): If there are no universally valid values, practices, beliefs, etc., then we would expect to find diverse ethical values, practices, beliefs, etc., in diverse cultures and times.

(Premise 2): We do find diverse ethical values, practices, beliefs, etc., in diverse cultures and times.

(Conclusion): Therefore, there are no universally valid values, practices, beliefs, etc.

In logical terms, this argument commits the basic fallacy of affirming the consequent.

To see that this argument is a fallacy, consider another argument that uses the same form as this one:

(Premise 1): If you like strawberry-flavored gum, then we can expect to find a red-colored packet of gum in your pocket.

(Premise 2): We do find a red-colored packet of gum in your pocket.

(Conclusion): Therefore, you must like strawberry-flavored gum.

While this seems sensible enough, it takes only a little reflection to see that both the first and second premises could be true, but the conclusion is not necessarily true: perhaps you’ve switched to cinnamon-flavored gum today, which also comes in a red-colored packet?

Both arguments commit the same fallacy – meaning, the conclusion does not necessarily follow. Back to the first argument: it is possible for us to find diverse values, beliefs, practices, etc., in diverse cultures for other reasons besides the one offered in the first premise (i.e., that there are no universally valid values, beliefs, practices, etc.). As we will explore more fully below, the meta-ethical position of ethical pluralism argues precisely that these diverse values, beliefs, practices, etc., are the result of diverse interpretations/applications/understandings of shared ethical norms.

The debate between ethical relativists and ethical pluralists is ongoing – one we will reflect upon further in subsequent reflection, discussion, and writing questions. But, at this juncture, the crucial point is: if there are plausible alternative reasons for our observing diverse practices, beliefs, norms, etc., other than just the one claimed by the ethical relativist (i.e., there are no universally valid norms in the first place), then the argument for relativism is simply not valid.

The second set of objections against ethical relativism center on the arguments that seek to show that ethical relativism can actually work against the sort of tolerance and mutual understanding that it seems to endorse and that makes it so attractive. Again, this involves two elements. First, ethical relativism forbids any sort of ethical judgment about “the Other” – the person whose values, beliefs, practices, etc., are different from our own – because, it is argued, they are the product of a different culture, time, etc. But this means, for example, that those

raised in the United States and the United Kingdom can neither praise the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winners, Denis Mukwege (Democratic Republic of Congo) and Nadia Murad (Iraq), as moral heroes (for their work to end sexual violence as a weapon of conflict and war), nor condemn the Holocaust as a moral monstrosity. Ethical relativism thus paralyzes moral judgment. Such a paralysis requires us to accept genocide in Rwanda, rape-rooms and rape as terror in war, the use of babies and children as carriers of explosives in suicide bombings – or systematic oppression of women within one’s own country as part of the “culture” of a given religious group.

Moreover, Mary Midgley ([1981] 1996) has argued that ethical relativism further leads to what she calls moral isolationism. This view presumes that there is an absolute boundary between specific cultures. This boundary not only prevents us from making ethical judgments about the values, beliefs, practices, etc., of “the Other,” but thereby suggests that the members of one culture can never learn or gain anything of value (ethical or otherwise) from the members of another culture. But the history of how diverse cultures have emerged over time – that is, precisely through processes of intermixing and hybridization with others – shows this to be false:

If there were really an isolating barrier, of course, our own culture could never have been formed. It is no sealed box, but a fertile jungle of different influences – Greek, Jewish, Roman, Norse, Celtic and so forth, into which further influences are still pouring – American, Indian, Japanese, Jamaican, you name it. The moral isolationist’s picture of separate, unmixable cultures is quite unreal. ... Except for the very smallest and most remote, all cultures are formed out of many streams. All have the problem of digesting and assimilating things which, at the start, they do not understand. All have the choice of learning something from this challenge, or, alternatively, of refusing to learn, and fighting it mindlessly instead.

(Ibid., 119)

Especially as digital media dramatically accelerate these processes of encountering other cultures, we can indeed see rapid cultural change in our own day, described in part in terms of cultural hybridization

and the development of “third cultures.” Digital media thereby confront us with a seemingly overwhelming range of cultural diversity – thus dramatically heightening the temptation toward ethical relativism. At the same time, however, a world increasingly interwoven precisely by digital media and computer networks only amplifies the force of Midgley’s insistence – “Morally as well as physically, there is only one world, and we all have to live in it” ([1981] 1996, 119). Insofar as ethical relativism leads to moral isolationism and a perhaps fatal paralysis of moral judgment, these logical outcomes fly in the face of what we actually do in the contemporary world: we evaluate and make judgments about those elements of cultural practices, beliefs, norms, etc., different from our own that we will accept or reject.

Ethical absolutism (monism) Opposite to ethical relativism is a position often called ethical absolutism or ethical monism. Briefly, this view insists on the following:

There are universally valid norms, beliefs, practices, etc. – that is, such norms, beliefs, practices, etc., define what is right and good for all people at all times and in all places.

What is often tacit or unstated for the ethical absolutist is the additional claim:

I/we know what those norms, beliefs, practices, etc., are – completely, clearly, unequivocally.

This may seem like an odd claim to spell out, but, as we will see, this is an especially crucial element of the ethical absolutist’s position. Finally, the ethical absolutist will thereby have to argue:

Those norms, beliefs, practices, etc., that are different from the ones we know to be universally valid must therefore be wrong (evil, invalid, etc.).

In this way, the ethical absolutist is in the position both to applaud those beliefs and behaviors that agree with his or her own view of what is universally valid, and to condemn those beliefs and behaviors that differ from his or her own.

Given this meta-ethical framework, the ethical absolutist enjoys at least one advantage over the ethical relativist: the ethical absolutist can coherently and forthrightly applaud or condemn the values, beliefs, practices, etc., of others – for example, she or he could applaud a Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad, and condemn the Holocaust. At the same time, however, this leads, obviously, to the intolerance of diversity that the ethical relativist finds so distasteful and destructive (and rightly, at least up to a point).

The contrasts between the ethical relativist and the ethical absolutist usually work around first-order ethical norms, values, practices, etc. – for example, abortion and euthanasia, war and peace, sexual identity/identities and relationships, freedom of expression, our treatment of animals and the environment at large, the role of the law vs. individual conscience, etc. For example, one could take an absolutist position either for or against abortion. An ethical absolutist might hold that all life is sacred – and that the baby/fetus in the mother’s womb is a sacred life that must be protected at all costs, including, unfortunately, the cost of the life of the mother in certain circumstances. And, hence, abortion is never justified, even to save the life of the mother. Another ethical absolutist might agree that all life is sacred – including that of the mother; and so, if, say, a monstrously deformed baby/ fetus thereby directly threatens the life of the mother, it is morally permissible – indeed, morally required – to remove and destroy the baby/fetus for the sake of saving the mother’s life. While the two absolutists will thus profoundly disagree with each other, an ethical relativist will say, in effect, to each his or her own; neither position is ultimately “right,” but we should learn to tolerate important ethical differences such as these and go on.

Suffice it to say that the ethical relativist’s response here will satisfy neither of our ethical absolutists. But the primary point here is to move to the second-order or meta-ethical level of discussion – i.e., to apply these meta-ethical positions to the ethical frameworks of utilitarianism and deontology. Hence, we can ask: how would these two positions have us respond to the differences between utilitarian and deontological approaches?

Roughly, it would appear that the ethical absolutist would require us to accept one of these approaches – and thereby reject the other. The ethical relativist, by contrast, would likely say: it doesn’t matter – neither view can claim universal validity. Indeed, it’s a waste of time to wrestle with this question, since there is no ultimate right or wrong in any event – it’s all a matter of culture, individual preference, etc.

REFLECTION/DISCUSSION/WRITING QUESTIONS: RELATIVISM AND

ABSOLUTISM

1. Given the accounts of ethical relativism and ethical absolutism, which of these positions better describes your own with regard to the following (first-order) ethical claims and issues?

(A) The destruction of human life – and most especially innocent human life – is always wrong; hence, abortion is never justified.

(B) Our right to determine what happens to our own bodies is the most fundamental of human rights. Hence, a woman has an absolute right to determine what happens to her body – and this includes the right to abortion, especially if her own life is imperiled by a pregnancy.

(C) Killing is always wrong – even in self-defense.

(D) Killing is sometimes justified – beginning with self-defense.

(E) You should always keep a promise.

(F) Sex before marriage is morally acceptable.

(G) (Suggest additional “hot-button” moral issues for discussion and reflection.)

2. In response to these – and/or other – issues, it is probable that you will find that you are an ethical relativist with regard to some and an ethical absolutist with regard to others. Insofar as this is the case, can you begin to sort out and articulate what arguments, evidence, and/or other sorts of reasons you might have for supporting your position (i.e., as either an absolutist or a relativist) vis-à-vis a given issue?

Beyond relativism and absolutism: Ethical pluralism I hope it is beginning to be clear that, whatever the strengths and

advantages of both ethical absolutism and ethical relativism, neither position is fully satisfactory. To begin with, if the previous reflection, discussion, and writing exercise has been successful, you will have discovered that – like most people in my experience – there are ethical issues about which you may be profoundly absolutist and others that seem to be best left to a sort of relativist tolerance.

But this is not especially coherent: ethical absolutism and ethical relativism make mutually exclusive claims – there are / are not universally valid norms, values, practices, etc. How can we coherently hold both of these claims together?

As you’ve likely guessed, there is a third position – ethical pluralism – that seeks to resolve some of the problems faced by relativism and absolutism.

Ethical pluralism basically argues that the ethical absolutist may be right – with regard to his or her opening premise: there are values, norms, practices, etc., that are valid for all human beings at all times and in all places. Unlike the absolutist, however – who insists that these values, norms, practices, etc., apply in exactly the same way at all times and in all places – the pluralist argues that it is possible (indeed, inevitable and desirable) to interpret/understand/apply these norms in diverse ways in diverse contexts. In this way, the ethical pluralist is able to agree at least partially with the empirical observation highlighted by the ethical relativist. Obviously, there are different practices in diverse times and cultures. But, rather than claiming (as the relativist’s argument does – invalidly, we have seen) that these different practices demonstrate the absence of universally valid norms and values, the ethical pluralist argues that these diverse practices are the result of how different contexts will require us to interpret and apply the same norm in sometimes strikingly different ways.

For example, it is easy to observe that people with kidney disease are treated differently in different cultures and places. In the United States – at least for those who can afford good health insurance – kidney dialysis, despite its enormous expense, is available more or less without regard for the patient’s age. By contrast, in the 1990s, policies

aimed at limiting costs on the part of the UK National Health Service (NHS) resulted in no one over the age of 75 receiving kidney dialysis, despite their diagnosed need (Musgrave 2006, 9). (Happily, these policies have changed considerably – but let’s ignore that for the moment, for the sake of the example.) Lastly, at least early in the twentieth century, in the harsh environment of the Canadian arctic, an elderly member of the Kabloona community who was no longer able to contribute to the well-being of the community might voluntarily commit a form of suicide (Boss 2013, 9f.; see Ess 2007).

Again, the ethical relativist argues that these three different practices show that there are no values or norms shared universally across cultures. For the ethical pluralist, however, these three practices stand as three diverse interpretations, applications, and/or judgments as to how to apply a single norm – namely, the health and well-being of the community – in three very different environments and cultures. So, at least the relatively affluent in the US can afford the health insurance that will provide kidney dialysis without age limit; but, even in a relatively wealthy nation such as the UK, failure to set limits on subsidized treatments would (at the time) have bankrupted the National Health Service. Finally, in the unforgiving environments of the Kabloona, the well-being of the community would be jeopardized if scarce resources were diverted to caring for those who no longer could contribute to the community. Hence, such care is literally not affordable by the community – nor, apparently, is it expected by the individual. The practices of each of these communities clearly differ. But, for the ethical pluralist, these different practices rest upon a basic agreement on the well-being of the community as a shared norm or value. Each practice, simply, represents a distinctive interpretation of that norm; the diverse contexts of these communities require each of them to interpret and apply that norm differently.

The ethical pluralist can hence agree with the ethical relativist that (a) we do observe diverse practices as we move through different cultures and times, and that (b) we should tolerate these differences – rather than condemn them straight out, as the ethical absolutist is forced to do – at least insofar as we can understand them to be different interpretations of a shared norm or value. But the ethical pluralist,

unlike the ethical relativist, does not thereby tolerate any and all practices. (Recall: such tolerance entails for the ethical relativist a serious logical contradiction.) Rather, if a practice – for example, genocide – clearly violates a basic norm or value (in this case, the well- being of the community, at least as understood as an inclusive human community rather than an exclusive tribal community), then the ethical pluralist can condemn such a practice as immoral.

And so the ethical pluralist can overcome some of the chief difficulties of ethical relativism, including its logical incoherence and its inability to distinguish between Nobel Peace Prize-winners and the Holocaust. At the same time, however, the ethical pluralist shies away from the sort of intolerance for difference that often follows from ethical absolutism. To recall: the ethical absolutist seems restricted to one and only one set of values and norms that must be interpreted, applied, and practiced the same way by all people in all places and at all times – and so any variation from this one set of norms and practices must be rejected as morally wrong. (In the example of kidney dialysis, a moral absolutist located, say, in the US might then well condemn the practices of the Kabloona as immoral.) By contrast, the ethical pluralist can tolerate – indeed, endorse – these differences in practice, insofar as they can be shown to reflect diverse interpretations and applications of a shared norm or value. In these ways, ethical pluralism seeks to take up at least a limited version of the tolerance for difference enjoined by the ethical relativist, while avoiding a tolerance so complete as to paralyze ethical judgment entirely. An ethical pluralist does so while at the same time taking up at least a limited affirmation of universally valid values, norms, and practices as endorsed by an ethical absolutist, yet avoiding the ethical monism and intolerance of difference that such absolutism easily falls into.

Strengths and limits of ethical pluralism Ethical pluralism thus provides us with an important way of understanding and responding to the sometimes radical differences that we encounter, especially at a global level.

Negatively: if we can choose only between ethical relativism and ethical monism, then any effort to undertake a digital media ethics

that might “work” cross-culturally is doomed to two equally unattractive choices: either we follow the relativist and tolerate any and all practices (saving us, admittedly, the difficult work of having to think about any of this at all ...), or we adopt an absolutism that would result in a kind of ethical colonialism – i.e., the imposition of a single set of practices upon all peoples, because any difference from the right set of values and practices must be wrong.

Positively: ethical pluralism allows us to see – in some important cases, at least – how people in diverse cultures may share important norms and values; but, at the same time, we are able to interpret and apply these norms and values in sometimes very different sorts of practices – ones that reflect diverse cultural contexts and traditions. Ethical pluralism thus allows us to have a global digital media ethics – one that provides a shared set of guidelines for how we may behave ethically in relationship with one another. But these shared norms and values are interpreted through the lenses of different traditions and applied in different cultural contexts. These different interpretations or applications thereby allow us to preserve the practices and characteristics that make each culture distinctive and unique. In this way, ethical pluralism is a crucial element of the “ethical toolkit” we need if we are to develop a global ethics that respects and preserves diverse cultural traditions and identities.

Ethical pluralism enjoys two additional strengths. First, it is a way of approaching ethical matters that is found not only within Western traditions (beginning, at least, with Plato and Aristotle, but extending into contemporary ethical frameworks such as feminism [see Warren 1990]) but also throughout diverse religious and philosophical traditions such as Islam (Eickelman 2003), Confucian thought (Chan 2003), and others. Ethical pluralism thus appears to be a widely shared and recognized way of approaching ethical differences – not simply a provincially Western way. In particular, Shannon Vallor’s extensive synthesis of global traditions of virtue ethics, as then reformulated specifically to help us come to grips with the multiple ethical challenges of contemporary technologies, explicitly includes this pluralistic approach in turn (2016, 54f., 64).

Second, ethical pluralism appears in fact to “work” in contemporary

practices. Perhaps the most important example here is the issue of privacy (Ess 2006; Hongladarom 2007). As we have seen in chapter 2, expectations of privacy and correlative data privacy protection laws vary from country to country – in part as they rest on dramatically different, if not contradictory, understandings of human beings. But it is arguable that there has been an increasing recognition of a shared notion of privacy that holds for both Western and non-Western countries and cultures. This shared notion is interpreted and applied in different ways, reflecting first of all the differences between cultures in terms of the importance they place on the individual vis-à-vis the community. The diverse practices of data privacy protection thereby reflect – and, more importantly, preserve – some of the fundamental values and traditions of each culture. In this way, ethical pluralism seems to “work” as an important component of a global information and computing ethics. And so we might expect that, in other issues of digital media ethics, pluralism will likewise emerge as an important strategy for preserving cultural differences while developing a shared, genuinely global ethics.

Hongladarom has further shown how ethical pluralism works in praxis regarding the deep differences between Confucian and Buddhist understandings of selfhood vis-à-vis a shared right of respect for the person online (Hongladarom 2017). At the same time, however, ethical pluralism will not resolve all the differences we encounter as different cultures and traditions approach the ethical issues of digital media. To use the example of the Muhammad cartoons (Debatin 2007), for at least many (though by no means all) religious believers, cartoons that can only be seen as blasphemy must not be published. For the editors of the Danish newpaper Jyllands-Posten, however, essential ethical and political values were at stake in commissioning and publishing the cartoons – namely, freedom of expression and freedom of the press (Warburton 2009, 18–21, 52). Add to this the cultural observation that, for most Danes, anything – even the queen – is an appropriate occasion for humor (at least, up to a point). It is by no means clear how the conflict here can be resolved in a pluralist fashion. Such an analysis would have to show that these two views are in fact not as contradictory as they appear – that they are, rather, simply diverse interpretations of a shared ethical norm (which

one[s]?). (For additional critiques, see Capurro 2008.)

Hence, in the face of diverse cultural norms, beliefs, and practices, we will not always be able to resolve these sometimes deep and irreducible differences by way of an ethical pluralism. More broadly, then, in the face of such differences, we are obliged to discern whether we most justifiably understand and respond to these differences as an ethical relativist, an ethical absolutist, and/or an ethical pluralist.

REFLECTION/DISCUSSION/WRITING QUESTIONS: META-ETHICS – A FIRST

RUN

As many of the examples we’ve explored in this book should make clear, the culture(s) which surround us, whether during our upbringing and/or in our work and leisure as mature people, play a central role in shaping our ethical thinking. (At the same time, readers should keep in mind here the important caveats and difficulties of using cultural generalizations: see chapter 2, “Interlude,” pp. 49–53.)

In particular, the comparative ethicist Bernd Carsten Stahl notes that, since the twentieth century, at least within the English-speaking world, utilitarian approaches have dominated over alternatives. By contrast, deontological approaches – especially as rooted in Kant and then the contemporary German philosopher Jürgen Habermas – have been favored in the Germanic countries, including much of Scandinavia. These in turn contrast with what Stahl characterizes as French moralism in Montaigne and Ricoeur. On Stahl’s analysis, this approach to ethics is teleological – i.e., oriented toward the goal or telos of discerning and doing what is necessary for the sake of an ethical and social order that makes both individual and community life more fulfilling, productive, etc., through “the propagation of peace and avoidance of violence” (Stahl 2004, 17).

As we will see more fully below, these views further contrast with non- Western traditions. Broadly, modern Western traditions have emphasized the individual as the primary agent of ethical reflection and action, especially as reinforced by Western notions of individual rights. Certainly, these traditions further recognize that individuals’ actions are made within and affect a larger community; and, as we have seen in the examples of Scandinavian notions of allemannsretten

(“all people’s rights”: chapter 3, pp. 115–16) and feminist notions of relational autonomy (chapter 2, pp. 77–8), there are ethical traditions in the modern West that indeed emphasize greater attention to community, not simply individual, actions and goods. But, at least in comparison with modern Western traditions, non-Western traditions – including various forms of Buddhism, Confucian thought, and indigenous traditions in Africa, Australia, and the Americas – lay greater emphasis on the community and community well-being as the primary focus for ethical reflection and choice.

This ethical map becomes even more complicated, first of all, as we recognize that these generalizations will only go so far: again, each cultural generalization immediately implies counterexamples, additional layers and influences, etc. The complexity grows further as we add both:

(a) premodern and contemporary ethical traditions – as we are about to see, the virtue ethics expressed by Socrates and Aristotle and its contemporary expressions; and

(b) contemporary ethical frameworks such as feminism, and especially the ethics of care, along with environmental ethics.

While overwhelming at first, exploring these diverse ethical approaches is both: (a) unavoidable, especially as digital media allow more and more people around the globe to communicate and interact with one another; and (b) necessary – first of all in order to overcome our own ethnocentrism and its attendant dangers. Such exploration should further help us to make better-informed choices regarding our own ethical frameworks and norms – and, ideally, assist us in moving toward a more inclusive, genuinely global digital media ethics that recognizes and fosters our ethical differences alongside our shared norms and values.

At this stage, however, it may be helpful to take a first run at learning how to apply the meta-theoretical positions of ethical relativism, monism, and pluralism.

1. Presuming your own prevailing cultural context(s) and/or culture(s) of origin are primarily Western, review Stahl’s characterization of

various national cultures as principally utilitarian, deontological, and teleological.

(A) Which, if any, of these frameworks seems closest to what you observe in your culture to be a prevailing way of making ethical decisions? Illustrate your response with an example or two – ideally, one drawn from an ethical issue evoked by the use of digital media.

(B) Which, if any, of these frameworks seems furthest away from what you observe in your culture to be a prevailing way of making ethical decisions? You can illustrate and support your response here by applying this framework to the example(s) you describe in 1.A.

(C) What are the results? That is, do the two frameworks that you identify and apply in 1.A and 1.B issue in conflicting ethical conclusions (e.g., undertaking otherwise illegal music downloading because the benefits of doing so seem to outweigh the costs – i.e., a utilitarian analysis – vis-à-vis rejecting such an activity because it violates what may be argued to be a just law – i.e., a deontological analysis)?

And/or: do these two frameworks end up endorsing the same, or at least coherent and complementary, ethical conclusions or claims? (For example, we saw in chapter 2 how both deontological and utilitarian approaches to privacy in the West endorse individual privacy rights as essential – though for characteristically different reasons.)

And/or: do these two frameworks issue in (at least, seemingly) contradictory results?

(D) Especially if these two frameworks issue in different, perhaps contradictory, results, how do you respond? That is: do you interpret or understand these differences primarily as

(i) an ethical relativist?

(ii) an ethical monist?

(iii) an ethical pluralist?

However you respond to these differences, do your best to support and justify your answer with one or more arguments, elements of evidence, etc.

2. The same set of questions – but now encompassing a global range of ethical frameworks – may be asked. In particular: if your cultural context(s) and/or culture(s) of origin are non-Western, so that you already have a strong familiarity with especially non-Western ethical frameworks, now might be a good time to undertake the more global version of these questions. (And/or: you and/or your instructor may decide it’s better to wait on these until the further review of the discussion of these frameworks that is about to follow.)

Either way, this exercise should begin by asking you to take up two frameworks – one characteristically Western (e.g., utilitarianism) and one characteristically non-Western (e.g., Confucian, Buddhist, Hindu, African, etc.). With these two frameworks as your starting point, the questions in (1) can then be pursued.

4. Feminist ethics As the discussion so far demonstrates, virtually all of the philosophers who have developed important ethical frameworks in Western (and, as we will see, Eastern) traditions are men. Especially for the second- wave feminists of the 1960s and 1970s, this observation naturally leads to an important question: is it possible that the conceptions, approaches, values, etc., that make up prevailing ethical (and other philosophical) frameworks reflect characteristically “male” or “masculinist” ways of knowing and thinking? Or, to state it negatively: is it possible that these prevailing ethical frameworks thus tend to ignore or exclude what are characteristically women’s ways of knowing and reflecting on ethical issues?

In the domain of ethics – specifically, in the area of developmental psychology concerned with how people reflect on and seek to resolve ethical difficulties – these questions were given particular force through the work of Carol Gilligan. Gilligan’s landmark book In a Different Voice (1982) documented both important parallels and distinctive differences between the ways in which men and women characteristically approached central ethical dilemmas. Briefly put, Gilligan’s interviews with women facing difficult ethical choices (including the possibility of abortion) challenged the then-prevailing

schema of ethical development established through the work of Lawrence Kohlberg – work that, in fact, built on observations of and interviews with men exclusively. On the one hand, for both Gilligan and Kohlberg, the evidence of their interviews and observations suggested that individuals develop their abilities to recognize and come to grips with ethical issues over time and in ways that can be described by a three-stage schema (with each stage in turn involving two sub-stages). Preconventional morality, describing how pre- adolescents grapple with ethical matters, works on a simple reward– punishment schema: one is “good” because good acts are rewarded, and one (usually) avoids being “bad” because bad acts are punished. Conventional morality, characteristically the moral stage of young adolescents and adults, reflects the values, practices, and expectations prevailing in the larger society, with an emphasis on justice and correlative notions of recognizing and preserving basic individual rights – at least as these contribute to the maintenance of the status quo. Postconventional morality, by contrast, represents a move into significant sorts of ethical autonomy (in Kant’s term), as individuals take conscious responsibility for their ethical principles and reflections in new ways, so as perhaps to radically critique and re-evaluate prevailing social claims regarding rights and justice. As is often the case, such reflections can lead individuals to draw new ethical conclusions regarding right and wrong that run against the prevailing morality of their larger society. Historically, such postconventional moralists have been important for what we think of as ethical and social progress: their postconventional morality has led them to challenge prevailing social practices and values and, in the view of subsequent generations, helped to lead society more broadly to a set of values and practices that are seen as ethically preferable over earlier ones. (To be sure, as the experience of these exemplary thinkers makes clear, moving to a postconventional stage is difficult – indeed, Kohlberg claimed that most people never move beyond the conventional stage.)

While her findings support the outlines of this large framework, Gilligan found that, as they moved through these stages, women’s moral experiences demonstrated important differences. For our purposes, the most important differences are as follows. For Kohlberg

(and, to be fair, for most ethicists in the modern West), the key to moving beyond conventional morality is the critical use of reason – where reason is understood to focus especially on general principles, including rules of social justice and individual rights. So a Martin Luther King, Jr., for example, can argue that segregation laws are unjust because they violate the basic principle of justice in a democracy and the modern liberal state; only those laws that rest on the consent of the governed are just. But segregation laws were passed by a white population, in states where the people of color also affected by these laws had no vote – and hence no possibility of exercising consent. Hence such laws are unjust. On the basis of such arguments, King can then justify disobeying the law of the land – in developmental terms, going beyond conventional morality to a postconventional morality based on clear principles of justice and rights (King [1963] 1964).

To be sure, Gilligan found that women certainly employ reason – minimally, the capacity for inference and the recognition of important general principles – in confronting their ethical quandaries. But, in addition to reflection on general principles, she found that women as a group tended to make three distinctive maneuvers. To begin with, as Piaget had already observed, little girls may be less concerned than their male counterparts with making sure, for example, that all the rules of a game are followed (justice), while they may be more concerned that everyone within a given group has the feeling of being treated fairly, of being included, etc., even if this sometimes means breaking the rules (Gilligan 1982, 32–8). But this means, second, that women as a group tend to focus on the emotive dimensions of an ethical problem. Third, a problem is seen to be ethical especially as it involves a web of interpersonal relationships, not simply individuals as “nodes” in those relationships marked only by defined sets of rights, etc.

So, for example, Kohlberg asked his (male) interviewees to respond to the “Heinz dilemma.” In this scenario, a husband (Heinz) needs to obtain life-saving medicine for his wife; but he cannot afford to do so, and so his pharmacist refuses to provide him with the medicine. In Kohlberg’s analysis, men as a group tended to analyze this dilemma in

terms of the rights and principles involved – e.g., the right of the pharmacist to protect his property (and sources of profit and livelihood) vs. the wife’s ostensible right to life. But, as young women were presented with this dilemma, as a group they tended to want more information – first of all, about the relationships between the three protagonists. For example: would Heinz’s wife really want him to risk going to jail for her sake? Is it possible that they could talk with the pharmacist and work out a way to pay for the drug over time (ibid., 25–32)?

In these ways, the women’s questions often teased out specific details about the possibilities and relationships in play that might otherwise be ignored through an exclusive focus on general principles of justice and abstract rights. In doing so, the women’s questions may suggest alternatives to the simple, either/or dilemma presented at the outset – i.e., either respect the law (and lose your wife) or disobey the law (but save your wife). So, as some of my own students have suggested: if the pharmacist is a friend who knows and trusts Heinz and his wife, why couldn’t he arrange for Heinz to pay for the needed drug over time, rather than insisting on an all-or-nothing payment?

For Gilligan, women’s ethical development could thus be characterized as an ethics of care and responsibility for both others and oneself (the latter, at least, in the post-conventional stage), in contrast with (but not in opposition to) the ethics of principles, rules, and justice that characterized the ethical focus of many (but by no means all) men. Finally, Gilligan emphasized that these two patterns of ethical development, while clearly different, are not mutually exclusive. Rather, both patterns are essential – and, ideally, conjoined in a synthesis that holds both together. (For a more careful discussion, see Tong and Williams 2018.)

Of course, there are any number of controversial and highly contested assumptions and claims at work here, as the subsequent development and debates regarding feminist ethics bring to the forefront. For example, does Gilligan’s schema run the risk of essentialism – of assuming or arguing that there is something (an “essence”) about being biologically female that strongly directs (or simply determines) that all women must follow the lines of ethical development it

articulates? Feminists insist that such essentialism is disastrous as it reinforces gender stereotypes used throughout the history of patriarchy to justify women’s subordination to men. And Gilligan would deny that she is making such an essentialist assumption.

Despite these and related difficulties, however, Gilligan’s work inaugurated important new developments in ethical theory, beginning with greater respect for the positive role of emotions – specifically, care – as developed more extensively by Sara Ruddick (1989) explicitly in terms of an ethics of care. Another foundational figure, Nel Noddings, also highlighted the relational aspects of care ethics: “It is my committed practice of caring for others that sustains and enriches this ethical self” (Noddings 1984, 14, in Vallor 2016b, 225).

To be sure, one does not have to be a feminist to take up an ethics of care: early on in the modern West, David Hume famously argued that ethical reflection is fully reducible to emotions; but, for some of us, this goes too far, especially as it runs the risk of thereby reducing all ethical claims to purely relative ones.

Despite this risk, as we will see again in the context of virtue ethics (section 5, below), there is a growing recognition from a variety of sources – feminist ethics, virtue ethics, neurobiology, and comparative philosophy more broadly – of the central roles played by emotions in ethical decision-making. For example, Joshua D. Greene (2014) notes that “Patients with frontotemporal dementia, which typically involves emotional blunting, are about three times as likely as control subjects to give consequentialist responses” (Mendez, Anderson, and Shipira 2005, cited in Greene 2014, 701f.). By contrast, “People who are more empathetic, or induced to be more empathetic, give more deontological responses” (Conway and Gawronski 2013, cited in Greene 2014, 703).

These turns toward the integral role played by emotions in our decision-making process are further accompanied by feminist attention to what our embodiment means for our thinking/feeling about the world – how we know and navigate it, starting within our relationships. To begin with, embodiment entails a non-dual understanding of the relationship between self and body, as we saw

explored especially by Sara Ruddick in her account of complete sex (1975, 89; see chapter 5, pp. 186–8). In addition to emotions alongside reason, embodiment further highlights the role of tacit knowledge, knowledge that is learned through experience and encoded in our bodies. By definition, tacit knowledge deeply resists our efforts to make it explicit and articulate – say, for the purposes of invoking it in our ethical reflections. But its central role is apparent in our phrases “my gut feeling” (equivalent to the Danish and Norwegian magenfølelse) and “following my heart.” (As with the role of emotions, contemporary neurobiology and cognitive science confirm and helpfully refine these sensibilities – perhaps most strikingly with contemporary theories of “the embodied mind” and “embodied cognition” (Wilson and Foglia 2017).)

These non-dual understandings of body–mind (LeibSubjekt) and thinking/feeling are further important as they resonate with: (a) premodern Western understandings of our ethical life as involving both thought and feeling (e.g., in the Socratic and Aristotelian conception of phronēsis, a practical ethical judgment that is felt as much as thought); and (b) non-Western understandings, for example the Confucian view of the human being as incorporating xin, what Ames and Rosemont translate as “heart-and-mind,” to make the point that “there are no altogether disembodied thoughts for Confucius, nor any raw feelings altogether lacking (what in English would be called) ‘cognitive content’” (1998, 56). The role of emotions in ethics is thus a shared understanding across a literally global scale; as feminist ethics brings this role to the foreground, it thereby points toward what may be a “bridge” concept, a shared understanding between both Western and Eastern views that will play an important role in any global digital media ethics.

Moreover, in emphasizing the importance of webs of interdependent relationships, in contrast with a prevailing emphasis on individual rights, feminist ethics thereby supported and developed alongside (then) new forms of environmental or ecological ethics. Briefly, such ethics extends the modern Western focus on the rational individual human being as the primary moral agent who deserves moral status, so as to argue that non-human entities, including not only living

beings but the larger ecological systems they constitute in relationship with the natural order, also deserve and require moral status and respect in our ethical reflections.

In these ways, feminist ethics helps us move to a more inclusive and comprehensive account of how we may come to grips with the ethical challenges we face.4

Applications to digital media ethics Arguably, an ethics of care is already at work in a number of choices and behaviors associated with digital media. As we’ve seen, for those who enjoy using digital media to copy and distribute songs, videos, etc., that they enjoy, “sharing is caring.” That is, it would appear that a primary motive in such sharing is our pleasure in giving to friends and loved ones the chance to enjoy the same music and videos that we have enjoyed. In particular, insofar as a sense of self as a relational autonomy likewise entails an emphasis on care and caring relationships (Christman 2003, 143), such care is consistent with the inclusive sense of property rights we saw at work in such sharing (chapter 3, pp. 114–15).

More specifically, care ethics is explicitly invoked in the design of so- called carebots – that is, robots intended to take over various chores of health care (van Wynsberghe 2016).

At the same time, it’s important keep in mind an important limitation to an ethics of care. Insofar as care ethics stresses the role of our emotional bonds with one another, it thereby runs the risk of restricting our ethical focus too narrowly – that is, upon a relatively small circle of family, friends, and loved ones. Taken to its extreme, an ethics of care could thus justify our ignoring whole populations around the globe because, simply, we do not experience a relationship of care with such populations. But in a world ever more interwoven via digital media – unless these media help us learn how to care for others beyond our immediate circles – the ethics of care runs the risk of an increasingly inappropriate provincialism.

REFLECTION/DISCUSSION/WRITING QUESTIONS: FEMINIST ETHICS AND

DIGITAL MEDIA

In my view, one of the most important contributions of feminist ethics and an ethics of care is not only that they require us to acknowledge the significance of emotions, including feelings of care, but also that they help us learn to think beyond more dualistic, either/or approaches that have been emphasized in modern Western reflection and teaching about ethics. An especially prominent example here is just the notion of the self as a relational autonomy – that is, a sense of self that overcomes the apparent polarity between individuality and relationality by conjoining elements of both. By moving toward a “both/and” logic (or logic of complementarity), in particular, we are sometimes able to see a third alternative or possibility (or more) – overlooked by more dualistic ways of thinking – that thereby may help us resolve what otherwise seem to be intractable dilemmas of the sort faced by Heinz.

These (for the modern West, new) ways of thinking, moreover, are valuable not only as they help sustain a much needed environmental ethics but, further, as such relational thinking may closely resonate with: (i) contemporary non-Western ethical frameworks (explored more fully below); and (ii) especially the networked or distributed character of ICTs and other digital media linked together through the internet and the Web.

(A) Given what you are able to understand about these two different logics – a logic of dualism as based on the exclusive either/or and a logic of complementarity or “both/and” (discussed in chapter 1, pp. 26–8) – as you observe the larger culture around you, which of these two logics appears to be at work more predominantly than the other? Be sure to provide an example or two to help illustrate your point.

(B) Identify a central issue in digital media ethics that you have already analyzed and responded to with some care in the course of your working through this volume. Review your response: do you seem to rely on one of these logics more than the other in your analyses and resolution(s) of this issue? Be sure to explain carefully how the logic you identify is apparent in your analysis/resolution.

(C) After reviewing your analyses and resolution(s), insofar as they seem to rest on using one logic more than another, would they be any

different in any significant ways if you were to attempt to make them using the other logic instead? If so, how? Be sure to explain carefully how this is so.

[See also the Reflection/Discussion/Writing Question following the next section, as it takes up both care ethics and virtue ethics.]

5. Virtue ethics Virtue ethics is both ancient in the West (associated with especially Socrates and Aristotle) and global, in the sense that we find versions of virtue ethics in diverse philosophical and religious traditions around the world (including, as we will see in the next section, in Confucian and Buddhist thought). In this way, virtue ethics is an important common ground for ethicists from diverse traditions – one that has clear potential to serve as a significant component of a shared global ethics. Indeed, virtue ethics has enjoyed something of a renaissance in recent decades among Western philosophers for a number of important reasons – including precisely its potential for providing a common ethical ground for global ethics. In particular, as we explored in chapter 4, virtue ethics emphasizes the central importance of our relationships with others, beginning with friendship: it is hence an especially appropriate framework in an age of social media, as (a) our sense of selfhood appears to emphasize relationality more and more, in part as (b) our relationships – beginning with our “friends” on social networking sites – are precisely what such venues are designed to facilitate and foster. More comprehensively, Shannon Vallor (2016b) has extensively plumbed these diverse global traditions to develop a list of 12 “techno-moral virtues” that are specifically tuned to the ethical challenges of a technological era. Her list includes care – along with: honesty, self-control, humility, justice, courage, empathy, civility, flexibility, perspective, magnanimity, and “technomoral wisdom,” i.e., the keystone virtue of phronēsis (ibid., 118–55).

Virtue ethics begins with the sensibility that what we ought to do as human beings is, first of all, become excellent human beings. Becoming an excellent human being, more precisely, means to develop and fulfil our most important capacities as human beings. Clearly, as individuals, we may have a distinctive set of potential abilities, such as

athletic or musical abilities. But, for Socrates and Aristotle, our most important abilities as human beings as such, not simply as individuals, are our capacities to reason – and this in two ways. What Aristotle (and later Kant) identified as the “theoretical” function of reason centers on what we now think of as a scientific understanding of the laws and principles that guide the workings of the physical world. For the ancient and medieval thinkers in the West, this capacity to understand reality was important on a number of grounds. In particular, by understanding reality properly, we as human beings can then “attune” ourselves to that reality – that is, we can know better both what to expect of it and how to behave within and in relationship with it, in order to achieve what the Greeks called eudaimonia – often translated as “happiness” but better understood as a kind of fundamental sense of well-being and contentment.

But, if our goal as human beings is to achieve such contentment or eudaimonia, then it is equally important that we develop what Aristotle (and, subsequently, Kant) identified as practical reason. Such practical reason involves first of all our ability – given our best knowledge of reality and thus of our possible choices and actions – to make the sorts of analyses and ethical judgments required for us to do “the right thing,” both for ourselves as individuals (the ethical for Aristotle) and for our larger communities (for Aristotle, the political). As we have seen, these sorts of ethical decision-making further require what Socrates and Aristotle term phronēsis – a practical judgment that is able to discern the right choice (or, sometimes, choices) among the possibilities before us.

This capacity for judgment, we can notice, is one that is capable of learning from its mistakes. So Socrates (as related by Plato) uses the ship’s pilot and the physician in the Republic as primary exemplars of people who exercise such judgment, and notes:

a first-rate pilot [cybernetes] or physician for example, feels [diaisthanetai] the difference between the impossibilities and possibilities in his art and attempts the one and lets the others go; and then, too, if he does happen to trip, he is equal to correcting his error.

(Republic, 360e–361a [Plato 1991]; emphasis added; cf. Republic I, 332c–e; VI, 489c; X, 618b–619a/301)

And learning from mistakes means, as Aristotle emphasized, that our developing these capacities of ethical judgment and analysis, and of reason more broadly, is an ongoing task: just as the athlete or physician must constantly practice if she or he is to maintain, much less improve, his or her abilities, so we as human beings must likewise cultivate in a conscious and ongoing way our rational abilities, including our use of phronēsis.

(Many readers will further recognize the term cybernetes as reminiscent of “cybernetics” – namely, the science of self-correcting information systems founded by Norbert Wiener. “Cybernetics” is at the same time in the title of the first computer ethics book, as we saw above [Wiener 1950]. This means precisely that virtue ethics is “baked into” the very beginnings of information and computing ethics, as we will further explore below.)

To put it somewhat differently: being a human being is not something that is simply given or taken for granted. Rather, becoming a human being – meaning, a being capable of (among other things) making the ethical and political judgments required for living a good (“happy”) life in a community thereby marked by harmony and well-being – is an ongoing task.

Finally, it is important to emphasize that, while developing our other capacities – e.g., as athletes, musicians, lovers, friends, parents, game- players, etc. – is important, for Socrates and Aristotle it is very clear that there is nothing more important than the task of cultivating and practicing excellence as a human being – meaning, as a human being engaged with making ethical and political judgments and choices. In particular, if we subordinate our cultivation of excellence as ethical and political beings to any other activity – e.g., the pursuit of wealth or power – we thereby put our capacity for reason and ethical judgment at risk. Indeed, Socrates and Aristotle argue that, if we allow our interests in wealth and power to persuade us to judge and act against our reason and better judgment, we thereby harm these capacities (just as we would harm a race-horse, to use Socrates’ analogy, by using it as a plow-horse instead). But, if we harm and hence diminish these capacities, we thereby undermine the capacities most central to our discerning what is genuinely good, pursuing it, and thereby achieving

eudaimonia or well-being.

This is not to say, as some later moralists argued, that we can achieve eudaimonia only by abstaining from the pursuit of, say, wealth and power. Rather, Socrates and Aristotle are optimistic that both eudaimonia, as resulting from pursuing our excellence as ethical and political beings, and (at least a moderate amount of) wealth and power can be had together. (Indeed, for Aristotle, a moderate amount of wealth and power is a necessary condition of cultivating theoretical and practical reason, and thereby of achieving eudaimonia.) But the constant danger is to let our interests in wealth and power overshadow our pursuit of excellence as ethical and political beings – and thereby, to paraphrase Jesus four centuries later, to gain the whole world but lose our souls.

So Socrates (again as related by Plato) says, in The Apology:

It is God’s bidding, you must understand that; and I myself believe no greater blessing has ever come to you or to your city than this service of mine to God. I have gone about doing one thing and one thing only, – exhorting all of you, young and old, not to care for your bodies or for money above or beyond your souls and their welfare, telling you that virtue does not come from wealth, but wealth from virtue, even as all other goods, public or private, that man can need.

(The Apology, 29e–30b [Plato 1892]; emphasis added)

In this way, Socrates argues for the absolute priority of human excellence over all other interests if we are to achieve eudaimonia or well-being, but insists thereby that our pursuit of excellence will also lead to the other human goods that we desire and need.

While deontology and consequentialism dominated much of the ethical discussion among Western philosophers in the twentieth century, within the last four decades virtue ethics has enjoyed a remarkable renaissance. Rosalind Hursthouse nicely summarizes why: for all of their strengths, neither deontology nor consequentialism seems to address a number of topics required for a complete moral philosophy, including “moral wisdom or discernment, friendship and family relationships, a deep concept of happiness, the role of the emotions in our moral life, and the questions of what sort of person I

should be” (1999, 3).

All of these elements are important – beginning with moral wisdom or discernment, i.e., phronēsis. As well, as with feminist ethics (above, pp. 251–5), virtue ethics restores our ethical attention to the importance of emotions. As we saw in Confucian thought, in contrast with the Cartesian mind–body split, Ames and Rosemont (1998, 56) translate xin as “heart-and-mind,” in order to emphasize that thought and feeling always accompany each other. As in the case of feminist ethics, when virtue ethics brings to the foreground the importance of emotions in our ethical lives, it thereby points to a post-Cartesian view – one that brings Western ethics closer to at least some of its non- Western counterparts. Doing so may be an essential step in the development of a more global digital media ethics – that is, one that “works” in both Western and non-Western cultures and traditions.

Moreover, virtue ethics, as including a focus on the development of moral judgment (phronēsis), thereby highlights a critical element of learning how to be human – both alone and with others: most importantly, as it is only through developing and exercising such judgment that we can claim to be (relationally) autonomous and (self- )responsible human beings. Without such judgment, simply, we are likely only to follow the dictates of others. In these directions, virtue ethics is deeply interwoven with especially Western traditions of conscientious objection. The figure of Antigone, in Sophocles’ play of the same name, is foundational here. Her brother Polyneices fought on the losing side of the Theban civil war: the victorious King Creon declares that his body (along with those of all others who fought against the king’s forces) must remain unburied – a profound dishonor as well as a stark violation of religious dictates and customs. Antigone is caught squarely between a superior order (as later theory would put it) and what her senses of religious propriety and familial obligation to her brother require. As Socrates – and many others – would subsequently, Antigone ultimately chooses to disobey Creon’s order, even though it means her own death. Much of the language in the play circles around phronēsis and the quest for what moral wisdom would discern in the face of such a dilemma. As Martha Nussbaum has pointed out, Antigone thus roots a central feature of

phronēsis as “the idea that the value of certain constituents of the good human life is inseparable from the risk of opposition, therefore of conflict” (Nussbaum [1986] 2001, 353, in Wall 2003, 323). More broadly, this capacity of phronetic judgment is central to modern understandings of law in constitutional democracies – namely, their hallmarks of “Self-rule, disobedience and contestability” (Hildebrandt 2015, 10).

Finally, we have seen that some modern Western ethical frameworks contrast starkly with their non-Western counterparts. Aristotle’s virtue ethics, however, resonates with similar emphases on becoming an excellent or exemplary human being as a focus of one’s life that are found in a number of philosophical and religious traditions around the world, including Buddhism and Confucian thought (cf. Vallor 2016b, 41). We will explore this more fully below.

Virtue ethics: sample applications to digital media An initial way of applying a virtue ethics to digital media, as noted in the previous chapter, is to ask the question: what sort of person do I want/need to become to be content – not simply in the immediate present, but across the course of my entire (I hope, long) life? Along these lines: what sorts of habits should I cultivate in my behaviors that will lead to fostering my reason (both theoretical and practical) and thereby lead to greater harmony in myself and with others, including the larger natural (and, for religious folk, supernatural) orders?

As part of its resurgence in the contemporary West, virtue ethics has found wide application, beginning with such increasingly urgent topics as designing ethics for robots (e.g., Coleman 2001; see discussion of carebots, below). Most broadly, Julie Cohen (2012) draws on the work of virtue ethicist Martha Nussbaum and communitarian political philosopher Amartya Sen vis-à-vis a range of issues facing contemporary users of digital media, including copyright (ch. 3) and privacy (chs. 5, 6). Most remarkably, virtue ethics, coupled with deontology, has become central in ICT design broadly. Examples here include James Hughes’s Buddhist approach to “Compassionate AI and Selfless Robots” (2012) and Sarah Spiekermann’s foundational textbook for “eudaimonic” ICT design (2016). More specifically, within

the European Union, central philosophical and policy-related documents take up the language of flourishing and well-being (eudaimonia). So Floridi et al. (2018) appeal to human dignity (as resting on explicitly Kantian notions of autonomy) and flourishing as the key ethical pillars of their ethical roadmap for moving toward “a Good AI Society” (2–3). In particular, “self-realisation” is a primary capacity to be preserved and enhanced by AI: their definition is instantly recognizable from virtue ethics – namely, “the ability for people to flourish in terms of their own characteristics, interests, potential abilities or skills, aspirations, and life projects” (ibid., 4; cf. Burgess et al. 2018).

While the authors do not make the linkage explicit, this focus on self- realization and virtue ethics more broadly is inaugurated, as we noted above, in Norbert Wiener’s foundational text for computer ethics ([1950] 1954: above, pp. 262–3). It is hence especially fitting that the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers’ work to develop global standards for new Artificial and Independent Systems focuses on “ethically aligned design”: the ethics in play here are precisely deontology and virtue ethics – beginning with Aristotle’s conception of eudaimonia (IEEE 2019, 2).

In this volume, I have applied virtue ethics especially to the topic of friendship online (chapter 4) and to pornography* and sex and violence vis-à-vis robots and computer games in chapter 5.

REFLECTION/DISCUSSION/WRITING QUESTIONS: THE VIRTUES OF CARING, COURAGE, AND HONESTY VIS-À-VIS CAREBOTS

As noted above, Shannon Vallor has carefully developed a set of “Technomoral virtues” that she argues are central to good lives of flourishing in an era deeply shaped by rapidly evolving technologies. These are: honesty, self-control, humility, justice, courage, empathy, care, civility, flexibility, perspective, magnanimity, and technomoral wisdom – the last of which incorporates phronēsis (Vallor 2016b, 120).

One of Vallor’s primary explorations and applications of these virtues takes up care and the practices (virtues must always be practiced) of care-giving. The specific example is of caring for elderly parents vis-à-

vis “offloading” the chores and obligations of such caring to carebots. (For examples of such carebots, see Vallor 2016b, 219.) Caring further requires the virtue of courage:

Caring requires courage because care will likely bring precisely those pains and losses the carer fears most – grief, longing, anger, exhaustion. But when these pains are incorporated into lives sustained by loving and reciprocal relations of selfless service and empathic concern, our character is open to being shaped not only by fear and anxiety, but also by gratitude, love, hope, trust, humor, compassion, and mercy.

(Ibid., 226)

Lastly, caring and courage are required for confronting our existential situation with open eyes:

Caring practices also foster fuller and more honest moral perspectives on the meaning and value of life itself, perspectives that acknowledge the finitude and fragility of our existence rather than hide it.

(Ibid.)

That is, for Vallor, the large project of developing such virtues is driven not only by their particular fit and usefulness in a technology-driven world: still more fundamentally, she invokes the philosopher José Ortega y Gassett, who foregrounds the central existentialist project of acknowledging our mortality as an essential step toward discerning and creating meaning in our lives. Ortega y Gassett is particularly fitting here as he foregrounds the role of technology in the “project” of becoming ourselves: “the mission of technology consists in releasing man [sic] for the task of being himself” (Ortega y Gasset 2002, 118, in Vallor 2016b, 247). This understanding of technology as emancipatory – as freeing us to become more fully our best selves – is a theme announced by Norbert Wiener at the beginning of information and computing ethics ([1950] 1954, 106). At the same time, Vallor thus stands among a growing number of contemporary scholars and researchers who are rediscovering and/or applying existentialist philosophy in new ways, precisely with a focus on digital media (Lagerkvist 2016; Ess 2018a).

As we saw in chapter 5 in connection with sexbots (pp. 194–5), Vallor argues that a primary ethical issue evoked by contemporary technologies is the problem of “deskilling.” Again, caring is a virtue or a skill: “It is difficult to know how to care for people well – emotionally, physically, financially, and otherwise, in the right ways, at the right times, and for the right persons” (Vallor 2016b, 221). As with (more or less) all other technologies, carebots are designed to make our lives easier – in this case, to help “offload” or transfer the less pleasant and more difficult dimensions of caring, for example, for the elderly. While much of this would seem to be most welcome – first of all, for the primary care-givers – Vallor points out that such offloading thereby reduces our opportunities and requirements to cultivate and improve on our capacities to care. As we saw in the example of sexbots, then, the risk of relying more and more on technologies that demand less and less of us (cf. Turkle 2011) is that we ourselves become less capable of exercising the virtues requisite for good lives of flourishing – including caring, loving itself, as well as courage, and patience, perseverance, and empathy as essential to human communication, deep friendship, long-term intimate relationships, and so on. To state this more bluntly: such ethical deskilling, in the worst-case scenario, renders us more and more like the robots and machines we interact with (ibid.; Hildebrandt 2015, 71f.).

A. Review the list of virtues affiliated with care: along with care itself, which of these virtues do you think/feel are indeed central to a good life of flourishing as you best understand it?

B. Identify either a real-world or imagined example of a carebot – or, perhaps, choose examples of “virtual assistants,” such as Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Google Voice, etc. – and/or the holographic robot now available from Gatebox (www.youtube.com/watch? v=nkcKaNqfykg).

As you imagine and/or actually interact with one or more of these devices –

(i) which of the important virtues you have listed come into play and thus are practiced and perhaps improved upon?

(ii) which of these virtues are not reinforced – and/or may be

countered by other forms of practice that interaction with such assistants require?

(iii) Given your responses to the above – is Vallor (along with Turkle, Hildebrandt, and now many others in the “tech world”) onto something with the concern about ethical deskilling? Why – and/or why not?

6. Confucian ethics Confucian thought begins with a very different understanding of the human being than that held in modern Western theories.

Modern Western thought tends strongly to assume that human beings are “atomic” individuals – that is, that the human being as an individual is the most basic element or component of society, one that begins and can remain in complete solitude from others. (This atomism is traceable to the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes and the French philosopher René Descartes, but that story is too long to develop here.) Henry Rosemont (2006) has characterized this as the “peach-pit” view of human beings. That is, a peach presents us with a surface – one that grows, changes, and finally dies over time. But, underneath these surface changes, is the peach-pit – a stony, hard core that remains (relatively) unchanged over time. The peach-pit is thus closely analogous to traditional Christian and Islamic conceptions of the soul and modern conceptions of the atomistic self. That is, underlying a surface body that grows, changes, and ultimately dies with time there is thought to be the “real” self, the identity that remains the same through time, “underneath” the outward and surface appearances of the mortal body. To be sure, this conception of the self resolves some important philosophical and ethical problems concerning identity – for example, if there is no substantive, real self underneath the constant changes of a body, then who or what is responsible for that body’s actions? That is, if the body associated with “you” committed a terrible crime five years ago, is it reasonable to say something like “that wasn’t really me – I [meaning, my body] have changed and can no longer be held responsible for what I [my body] did five years ago?” Generally, in the modern West, we do think that individuals remain responsible for their acts through time; thinking

this way makes sense on the assumption of a “peach-pit” or atomistic self/identity that remains more or less the same over the life-course.

Such a conception of the self, however, can be understood as the result of a long development in Western societies. As we have seen, Foucault as well as Medium Theory affiliate this conception with writing as a “technology of the self” (1987, 1988). This conception is amplified and “democratized” – that is, made accessible to ever-expanding numbers of people – with the development of the printing press as the (then) new media technology that helped fuel the Protestant Reformation and the Protestant emphasis on the individual soul and salvation. These conceptions are then philosophically refined and secularized in figures such as Descartes. Making real such a conception of the self further appears to depend on the wealth generated through industrialization. (As we have seen in the discussion of privacy, such a conception of the self, while initially alien to such Eastern societies as China, Japan, and Thailand, is becoming increasingly apparent there – in part, as these societies develop the wealth that make individual privacy realizable, e.g., through the luxury of private rooms for children, etc.)

By contrast, in classical Confucian thought (and elsewhere, as we have seen), human beings are understood first of all as relational beings: we are who we are always and only as we are taken up in specific relationships with others. For me, this means that I am always – and only – someone’s son, brother, spouse, father, uncle, friend, employee, boss, beneficiary, etc.; and how I am – i.e., my choices, attitudes, behaviors, etc. – is always shaped in specific ways by each specific relationship. And so, how I am in relationship with my parents is different from how I am in relationship with my spouse, my siblings, my own children, my students, etc. To continue with Henry Rosemont’s (2006) organic metaphors, in classical Chinese thought, human beings are like onions, not peaches: each of our distinctive relationships with others – including the larger social and political communities and, finally, the natural order at large (Tian) – constitutes one of the multiple layers that in turn make up who we are as human beings. In contrast with the peach-pit model, however, if we remove the layers of relationship from the onion, there’s nothing left.

In ways closely analogous to the virtue ethics in the West, this understanding of the human being as a relational being means that ethics is primarily about becoming a (more) complete human being – first of all, by cultivating the behaviors and attitudes required for establishing harmony both among members of the human community (beginning with the family) and with the larger order (Tian) as such. In classical Confucian thought, this begins with learning and practicing filial piety, respect and care for one’s parents, and ritual propriety. But the ultimate aim is to become an exemplary person (junzi) – someone who has cultivated and practiced appropriate attention to and care for others to such a degree that this exemplary behavior is who that person is. So Confucius describes the exemplary person as follows:

The Master said, “Having a sense of appropriate conduct (yi) as one’s basic disposition (zhi), developing it in observing ritual propriety (li), expressing it with modesty, and consummating it in making good on one’s word (xin): this then is an exemplary person (junzi).”

(15.18; Ames and Rosemont 1998, 188)

The exemplary person, in short, is one who has shaped his or her basic character or disposition through the practice of appropriate conduct and ritual propriety. The primary markers of such a character are modesty and integrity.

Much as Socrates and Aristotle emphasized achieving human excellence through cultivating and practicing the right habits throughout one’s lifetime, Confucian ethics emphasizes that the project of becoming an exemplary person (always in relationship with others) is a life-long project. As one of the most famous of the Analects has it:

At fifteen my heart-and-mind was set on learning.

At thirty my character had been formed.

At forty I had no more perplexities.

At fifty I realized the propensities of tian (T’ian-ming).

At sixty I was at ease with whatever I heard.

At seventy I could give my heart-and-mind free rein without overstepping the boundaries.

(2:4; Ames and Rosemont 1998, 76f.)

This is to say, for Confucius, cultivating the virtues or excellences, beginning with filial piety, leads to a sense of harmony or resonant relationship both with other human beings and with the larger order of things – a sort of freedom and contentment that can be achieved in no other way.

And because, finally, it is believed that such ultimate freedom and contentment can be achieved only through the cultivation of excellence as a human being, we are always mistaken when we believe we will achieve happiness through other means instead, such as wealth and honor. So, just as Socrates and Aristotle later emphasized the importance of putting such human excellence first, in the same way Confucius insists that such excellence or virtue – for Confucius, following the proper dao or path – must always come first:

The Master said, “Wealth and honor are what people want, but if they are the consequence of deviating from the way (dao), I would have no part of them. Poverty and disgrace are what people deplore, but if they are the consequence of staying on the way, I would not avoid them.”

(4.5; Ames and Rosemont 1998, 90; see also 4.11)

Confucian ethics and digital media: sample applications We have seen that Confucian ethics is at the center of a major conflict between Western and Eastern attitudes and practices regarding copyright (chapter 3). As a reminder, within a Confucian framework, an exemplary person, as benevolent toward others, would want to share the important insights that have allowed him or her to become such a person with others who likewise seek such excellence. Hence, the text he or she produces to record such insights is seen not primarily as a matter of personal property, but rather as a gift to be given to others – one that, indeed, may work as a kind of essential toolkit for the larger life-project of becoming an exemplary person. The appropriate response of those benefiting from this gift might include copying it and giving it to others – first of all, as a mark of

respect and gratitude for the work of the exemplary person. In this light, copying and distributing a text is not principally a matter of violating one’s personal property as articulated in terms of copyright limitations; it is rather a matter of showing respect and gratitude for the gift of a benevolent master.

More recently, Pak-hang Wong (2013) has applied Confucian thought to a range of ethical issues affiliated with Web 2.0 technologies and venues, including Social Networking Sites (SNSs). His “Confucian Social Media: An Oxymoron?” addresses conflicts between Confucian values and those ostensibly embedded in the design of the contemporary internet and Web. Endorsing a Confucian virtue ethics approach, Wong provides three recommendations for practices (or virtues), beginning with “A skilful engagement with social media” that includes careful use of privacy settings and techniques such as “social steganography” (as in boyd 2010) for sustaining a strong sense of who one’s audience is (Wong 2013, 293). His further recommendations – a “reinvigoration of rites in the online world” and “prioritisation of the offline world” – likewise seek to sustain Confucian virtues in our use of social media (ibid., 293f.).

In this direction, Wong’s point that “social media can only be viewed as a supplement of the offline world” (ibid., 294) is a comparatively early argument in the direction of a postdigital era – and in keeping with the now very extensive chorus of voices arguing precisely for a ratcheting down of our screen and online time in favor of more real- world engagements and relationships. Finally, Wong further adds two (re)design recommendations, namely “Designing contextual awareness into social media” and “(re)introduction of role responsibility into social media” (ibid., 294f.)

Subsequently, the literature of Confucian approaches to contemporary technologies has developed considerably. For example, Wong’s analyses are somewhat countered by Tom Wang (2016). Specifically, Wang argues that a (re)design of SNSs as guided by tian xia, “a basic structuring principle of Confucian philosophy,” would thereby bring SNS into alignment with Confucian thought – that is, as they would then offer and foster a “moral space in which all inhabitants of the world are thought to participate as members – as different individuals

– who are moral equals” (2016, 240).5

To date, the most extensive application of Confucian thought to life in a technological era is Shannon Vallor’s review of Confucian tradition and virtues (2016, 37–9) and then their synthesis within the more global technomoral virtues: as we have seen, these are then applied to an array of digital media, including SNSs and carebots.

7. African perspectives Colleagues engaged in the global dialogues on information and computing ethics represent a number of important linguistic/cultural domains – certainly Western perspectives (the US, the UK, Australia, Northern and Southern Europe, including Scandinavia) as well as Asian perspectives (including China, Japan, Thailand, India). Early on, there was comparatively less representation and participation (at least in the English-language literature) from Latin American countries and Africa. But, most fortunately, this has begun to change. Uruguayan-born Rafael Capurro, for example, has been a pivotal figure in both Spanish- and English-language information and computing ethics (e.g., Capurro 2012).

At the same time, African thinkers have become more engaged in these global dialogues – sparked in part by the first African Information Ethics conference, held in Pretoria, South Africa, in February 2007. In his opening address to the conference, Rafael Capurro (2007, 6) emphasized the importance of ubuntu as an indigenous philosophical tradition and framework for developing an information ethics appropriate to the African context. As we saw in an introductory way in the discussion of Open Source and FLOSS (chapter 3), ubuntu (as inspiring the popular Ubuntu distribution of Linux) emphasizes that we are human beings in and through our relationships with other human beings: “to be human is to affirm one’s humanity by recognizing the humanity of others and, on that basis, establish humane respectful relations with them” (Ramose 2002, 644; cited in Capurro 2007, 6; cf. Capurro 2012, 120f.). While not all peoples and traditions in Africa recognize the term ubuntu, this notion of being human as involving an intrinsic interrelationship with and interdependence upon others is widely characteristic of African

thought. So Barbara Paterson has observed that, “In African philosophy, a person is defined through his or her relationships with other persons, not through an isolated quality such as rationality [Menkiti 1979; Shutte 1993]” (Paterson 2007, 157; emphasis added). And just as Confucian thought, in beginning with the person as a relational being, thereby stresses interaction with the larger community (both human and natural), so, Paterson continues, in African thought, in community, “Through being affirmed by others and through the desire to help and support others, the individual grows, personhood is developed, and personal freedom comes into being” (ibid., 158). This means that personhood is not a given, but rather an ongoing project: “African thought sees a person as a being under construction whose character changes as the relations to other persons change. To grow older means to become more of a person and more worthy of respect” (ibid.; emphasis added). Again, given this concept of the individual, engagement with the community is paramount: “The individual belongs to the group and is linked to members of the group through interaction; conversation and dialogue are both purpose and activity of the community” (ibid.).

What kind of person we are to become is articulated by no less a moral authority than Archbishop Desmond Tutu:

When we want to give high praise to someone we say, Yu, u nobuntu; hey, so-and-so has Ubuntu. Then you are generous, you are hospitable, and you are friendly and caring and compassionate. You share what you have. It is to say, my humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours. We belong in a bundle of life. We say a person is a person through other persons. It is not I think therefore I am. It says rather: I am human because I belong, I participate, and I share. A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed, or treated as if they were less than who they are.

(www.tutufoundationusa.org/desmond-tutu-peace-foundation)

In other terms, ubuntu involves the project of acquiring and practicing certain virtues, including a strong sense of interconnectedness with one’s larger community and the states and fates of others in that community – in part as this contributes to the virtue of “proper self- assurance.”

Alongside their rich distinctiveness, in these ways African traditions closely parallel both Confucian thought and Aristotelian virtue ethics, beginning with their shared emphasis on the individual human being as first of all engaged with the larger human (and natural) communities, for the sake of both individual and community harmony and flourishing. Hence, Confucian and Aristotelian approaches may provide helpful analogues for African thinkers as they explore and develop their own forms of information and computing ethics. But all of this is still emerging: it will be very interesting to see where African philosophers and users of digital media take us – both for their own sake, and for the sake of the larger global dialogue regarding ICE and digital ethics more generally.

Applications For a host of reasons – beginning with the effects and consequences of centuries of Western colonialism – a good deal of recent work on information ethics in African contexts focuses on urgent matters of development, including ICT4D (ICT for development), justice, and digital literacy.

Coetzee Bester and Beverley Malan (2016) Information Ethics in Africa: Curriculum Design and Implementation, Innovation: Journal of Appropriate Librarianship and Information Work in Southern Africa (52): 19–35.

A subsequent development of the first African Information Ethics conference in 2007 was the establishment of the Africa Centre of Excellence for Information Ethics (ACEIE) in 2012. One of the aims of the ACEIE is to develop a Curriculum Framework for information ethics. This article describes components of the Framework and its possible contributions to information ethics as well as to “the development of Africa as a globally competitive information and

knowledge society.”

Liezel Cilliers (2017) Evaluation of Information Ethical Issues among Undergraduate Students: An Exploratory Study, South African Journal of Information Management, 19(1): 1–5.

Perhaps not surprisingly, plagiarism is a common problem among young adults in higher education – including Africa. The author recommends that “information ethics must be included in the undergraduate curriculum in order to prepare students to deal with these ethical problems” (2017, 1).

Koliwe Majama (2018) Exploring Africa’s Digitalisation Agenda in the Context of Promoting Civil Liberties. Keynote address to “Digitalisation in Africa: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Technology, Development, and Justice,” International Center for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities (IZEW), Tübingen, Germany, 26–27 Sept. 2018, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gz3gagSG3TwwwmLZMdSl8APN3EIY0Get/view

Majama observes that (deontological) interests in human rights, including a right to internet access articulated in the African Declaration on Internet Rights and Freedoms, as well as matters of justice and gender equality, are overshadowed in African contexts by more (utilitarian) profit interests, patterns of despotic regimes using internet shutdowns to quell dissent, and the central problem of fulfilling basic needs via jobs and education vs. higher-level interests in rights.

REFLECTION/DISCUSSION/WRITING QUESTIONS: ETHICS AND META-ETHICS

Now that you have reviewed a global range of ethical frameworks, review one or two of the specific issues/cases of digital media ethics that you have analyzed and perhaps resolved with some care in the course of working through this volume.

1. Which of the ethical frameworks that we have now explored, i.e.,

utilitarianism

deontology

feminist ethics / ethics of care

virtue ethics

Confucian ethics

African ethics

seem(s) to have been most in play in your reflections and decision- making? Explain your response here with some care, making clear for yourself (and your reader, if applicable) how your analyses and resolutions fit the patterns and approaches of a given ethical framework.

2. Choose a framework that seems very far away from your own ethical starting points (identified in [1]). Take up this same ethical issue and, as best you can, provide an analysis and resolution of the issue using this alternative framework. How far are the results similar to and/or different from the results using your original ethical theory/theories?

3. How do you respond to these differences? That is, given what we’ve now learned about

ethical relativism

ethical monism/absolutism

ethical pluralism

which of these three meta-ethical frameworks are you most likely/able to apply to any differences that may emerge between the analyses and resolutions you have developed in (1) and (2)?

SUGGESTED RESOURCES FOR FURTHER RESEARCH/ REFLECTION/WRITING

INTERCULTURAL INFORMATION ETHICS (IIE)

Bielby, Jared (2015) Comparative Philosophies in Intercultural Information Ethics, Confluence: Online Journal of World Philosophies, 2: 233–53.

Bielby offers a comprehensive overview of the emergence and development of IIE with application to key issues such as privacy and pluralism. The article is a gateway into the many standard references and figures in the field, most especially the extensive work of Rafael

Capurro.

Wong, Pak-hang (2012) Dao, Harmony and Personhood: Towards a Confucian Ethics of Technology, Philosophy and Technology, 25(1): 67–86.

Wong provides a more general introduction and discussion of basic Confucian concepts and how they may contribute to a specifically Confucian ethics of technology.

ETHICAL RELATIVISM AND PLURALISM

Floridi, Luciano (2007) Global Information Ethics: The Importance of Being Environmentally Earnest, Journal of Technology and Human Interaction, 3(3): 1–11.

Floridi – the author of a widely influential framework for information and computing ethics – takes up here the specific challenges of cultural diversity to a global ICE. He argues specifically for an ethical pluralism in the form of what he calls a “lite” information ontology.

Mackenzie, Catriona (2008) Relational Autonomy, Normative Authority and Perfectionism, Journal of Social Philosophy, 39(4): 512–33.

Mackenzie is a leading expositor of a feminist understanding of relational autonomy. Here she refines her earlier accounts to offer a “weak substantive, relational approach to autonomy that grounds an agent’s normative authority over decisions of import to her life in her practical identity and in relations of intersubjective recognition” (512) – in part as such autonomy is central to a life of flourishing, that is, the overriding focus of a virtue ethics (529). Mackenzie’s account of relational autonomy further includes a “value pluralism.”

Notes 1 Specifically, in the subsequent decades of the Cold War, the world

has barely escaped massive nuclear annihilation – read: hundreds of millions of human lives lost immediately, not to mention even more extensive and long-term devastation of the larger environment. And this happened more than once, and sometimes

only by dint of remarkable courage and the willingness to rely on one’s human judgment rather than what early warning systems and computer analyses claimed: as in the example of the Soviet Lt. Colonel Stanislav Petrov in September, 1983 (Lewis et al. 2014, 13). How would these possibilities, coupled with some degree of probability, figure into the hedonic calculus?

2 Plato references are to the Stephanus volume and page number.

3 See note 4, below.

4 A further and very great complication in these debates results from the complex ways in which feminism has unfolded over the past four decades or so – i.e., from the “second wave” feminism of the 1960s and 1970s through third-wave and then post-feminism, and/or a “‘fourth wave’ social media-based feminist activism” or perhaps a “post-post-feminism” (Gill 2016, 613). Broadly, these developments have involved dramatic shifts from strong opposition to pornography* (as objectifying women and contributing to their subjugation) to an embrace of both production and consumption of pornography* as part of women’s choice, celebration of their bodies, and taking control of their own sexualities – and then to further critique of sexism and patriarchy. In particular, the “#freethenipple” campaign appropriates the tropes of pornography in order to protest against patriarchy (Rúdólfsdóttir and Jóhannsdóttir 2018). At the same time, other feminists object that doing so only reinforces patriarchal gender stereotypes and does little for furthering women’s emancipation and equality (Matich, Ashman, and Parsons 2018). For the sake of relative simplicity in this introduction, I can only point to these developments and complications as frameworks and issues for further research and reflection. (My very great thanks to Professor Amanda Karlsson, Aarhus University, for her invaluable help here, including the reference to Gill [2016].)

5 My very great thanks to Pak-Hang Wong for these and additional suggestions.

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Index 4Chan 38 Aarseth, Espen 199 Abidin, Crystal 148, 152 abortion 239–40, 241, 251–2 Abramson, Jeffrey 167 absolutism 26, 28

see also ethical absolutism Academia 130 academics / social media 130 ACEIE (Africa Centre of Excellence for Information Ethics) 279 ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) 216 active choice-plus 184–5, 190–1 activist movements 166–7 Adams, Carol J. 175 add-ons 40–2 advertising 38, 43, 111, 131, 134, 160, 164, 201 affirming the consequent 29n1, 235–6 Africa Centre of Excellence for Information Ethics (ACEIE) 279 African Declaration on Internet Rights and Freedoms 280 African Information Ethics 277, 279 African perspectives 21, 23, 34, 215, 276–83

see also ubuntu agency 21, 135, 138, 175, 257 aggression: see violence ahimsa (nonviolence) 227 Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud 157 AI (Artificial Intelligence)

algorithms 8, 19 deontology 217 ethical guidelines xiii, xvi, 25 eudaimonia 267–8 increasing role of xii

privacy 24 virtue ethics 217 well-being 25

Akemu, Ona 153 Albrechtslund, Anders 18, 59 Alexa 37–8 Alexander, Leigh 206 algorithms ix, 8, 19, 31, 164, 218 Allcott, Hunt 145 allemannsretten (“all people’s rights”) 105, 115, 116, 127, 248 alt porn 172, 207–8 Amazon 43, 177, 270 Ames, Roger 51, 257, 265, 273, 274 analogical arguments 91, 97–8, 123–4, 141–2, 197 analogue technologies 11, 12–14, 22–3 Anderson, Eric 256 Anderson, Yvonne xii animism 193 anonymity online 3, 5, 37, 44, 87, 205–6 anonymizer software 44 Anonymous 2, 5–6 Antigone (Sophocles) 265–6 AoIR (Association of Internet Researchers) xvi–xvii, 25, 26 Aphrodite 192 Apology, The (Plato) 264 Apple 56, 132, 165, 177, 270 Arab Springs xii–xiii, 129, 157 Arab Winters xii, 129, 157 Arendt, Hannah 88 arguments 29, 80, 82, 88, 91, 97, 180 Aristotle

and African traditions 279 ethical pluralism 245 ethics as practice 209–10 eudaimonia 65–6n2, 262, 264 excellence 264, 274 individual/community 72

judgment 263–4 phronēsis xi, 25, 31–2, 97, 201, 218, 256–7 reason 261–2 virtue ethics 124, 249, 260–1, 266

art/pornography 176, 179 Artificial and Independent Systems 166 Artificial Intelligence: see AI Ashman, Rachel 258n4 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) 216 Association of Internet Researchers: see AoIR atomic bombs example 224 attitudinal change 171, 179, 183, 204–5 Attwood, Feona 172, 182 Aufderheide, Pat 102 Augustine, Saint 177, 186, 192 authoritarianism 65, 160, 163–4

see also digital authoritarianism autonomy

deontology 24, 189–90, 207–9 feminist 206 flourishing 283 freedom 21, 25, 64, 66, 135 gaming 206 “just meat” 229 Kant 25, 180, 229, 230, 252 personhood 188 pornography 175 RapeLay 208 rights 24 self 59–60 SEMs 180, 181 sexual identity 180, 181 see also relational autonomy

Bäcke, Maria 206 bank data 46, 54, 55, 69 Banks, David xvii

Baron, Naomi 20 Batman movie killings 200 Baumol, William J. 133 BDSM (Bondage-Discipline-Sadism-Masochism) 206, 207 Becker, Barbara 187, 201 Benhabib, Seyla 161 Bentham, Jeremy 133, 194, 220, 221–2, 223–4 Berbers, Yolande 24, 44, 56 bereaved parents 147–8 Berry, David 11, 14 Bester, Coetzee 279 Bewley, Susan 195 Bezos, Jeff 174 Bezos vs. American Media 174 Bielby, Jared 217, 282 Big Data xii, 8, 19, 44, 59, 131, 164 Birkner, Christine 11, 200 BitTorrent 45, 99 Black Mirror 58 Bleaney, Rob 2 Blinder, Alan S. 133 blogs 17, 77 Boateng, Boetema 99, 101, 122–3 body

Confucian ethics 271–2 dissatisfaction with 183 identity 271–2 information 53 “just meat” 190 materialism 186–7 mind 187, 256, 265 rights 241 self 256 sexuality 177n5, 186, 189–90, 192 social media 166 soul 146, 186 see also dualism

body-subject (Leibsubjekt) 187, 188, 189, 201 Bondage-Discipline-Sadism-Masochism (BDSM) 206, 207 books, printed 12, 112n2 Booth, Paul 11 Boss, Judith 243 both/and logic 28, 217, 259, 260 boyd, danah 36, 275 Braghieri, Luca 145 Braidotti, Rosi 14, 217 Brandeis, Louis 16, 61, 75 Breivik, Anders Behring 200 Bromseth, Janne 175 Brown, John Seely 152 Brown, Pat 170, 200 Brown, T. 21 Brownlee, Kimberley 123 Buchanan, Elizabeth 216 Buddhism

community well-being 248 and Confucianism 74–5 discontent 80–1 ethics 21 Hughes 267 individual 23, 72 person 53 privacy 53, 80 property rights 126–7 Pure Land tradition 66–7 relational self 63 sacredness of life 226 selfhood 67, 246–7 virtue ethics 260–1, 266–7

Bunz, Mercedes 19–20 Burgess, J. Peter 25, 57, 217, 267 Burk, Dan xvii, 36, 67, 69–70, 101, 112–13 BusinessGhana 106 Bynum, Terrell Ward 216, 217

California 70 Cambridge Analytica xiii, 8, 11, 164–5 Campbell, Heidi 18 Canonical Ltd 106 capitalism

communicative 131, 165 multinational 30 surveillance xiii, 166

Capurro, Rafael 217, 247, 277, 282 care 255, 261, 268, 269–70

see also ethics of care carebots 258, 267, 268, 269–70 Carey, Benedict 145 Carey, James 158–9 Carlsen, Amanda 258n4 cartoons of Muhammad 225, 246–7 Cascone, Kim 11, 14 case-studies 34–5 CaTaC (Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and Communication) xvi Categorical Imperative (Kant) 227–8 CC (Creative Commons) 104–5, 125–6 CDs xvii, 91, 92, 95, 120–1 celebrity photographs 16 censorship 182–3, 184 CEPE (Computer Ethics: Professional Enquiries) xvi Chan, Joseph 245 cheating 57, 189 Chen, Zhen Troy 86, 89 Cheong, Pauline 53 Cheung, Ming 86, 89 child pornography 179, 183 child slavery 212 China, People’s Republic of

privacy 85–6 relational self 70–1 SCS xiii, 8, 20, 48, 57, 58, 71, 78, 166

Christianity 81–2, 226 Christman, John 77–8, 258 Cilliers, Liezei 280 citizens 11, 57–8, 129, 158, 160 civil rights movement 231 Coates, D. Justin 187 Coban, Aydin 6 Coeckelbergh, Mark 162, 173n2, 192 Coffey, Ann 184–5 Cohen, Julie 267 Cold War 224n1 Coleman, Kari Gwen 267 Columbine killings 200 commodification 88, 131, 134–5 commons 116, 124

see also Creative Commons (CC) communication technologies 1, 159

see also ICTs communication venues 38, 172–3 communications

digital media 17–22 online 5, 38, 140–1, 145, 149 selfhood 20–1 skills 142 Snowden 36 SNSs 17

communicative capitalism 131, 165 communitarianism 162–3, 167–8, 267 community

copying 113 eudaimonia 126 good 103, 113 harmony 47, 48, 70, 113, 125, 253, 273 and individual 67, 72 and self 278–9 well-being 25, 107, 113, 114, 126, 243–4, 248–9

compatibilism 187 complementarity, logic of 259, 260 complete sex 186–90, 197, 256 computer ethics 216, 263, 267 Computer Ethics: Professional Enquiries (CEPE) xvi computer viruses 55, 99 conclusions 29, 31 Confessore, Nicolas 8 conflict minerals 153, 154, 212 Confucian ethics 21, 34, 215

and African traditions 279 body 271–2 Buddhism 74–5 community well-being 248 copying 90, 91–2, 113 copyright 275 digital media 275–6 ethical pluralism 245 Golden Rule 81–2 harmony 274, 279 heart-and-mind 257, 265, 274 human beings 271, 272–3 individual 23 knowledge transmission 125 privacy 67, 72, 115 property rights 118, 126–7 relational self 63 selfhood 246–7 virtue ethics 260–1, 266–7 xin 257, 265, 273

Congo, Democratic Republic of 153 Consalvo, Mia xvi, 192, 202–3 conscientious objection 226, 265–6 consent 15–16, 69–70 consequentialism

decision-making 220–1, 225 dementia, frontotemporal 256

ethical dilemma 232–3 illegal downloads 94, 96 limitations 221–3 pornography 180 state 225 stealing 95 utilitarianism 93, 219–25 wartime 223–4

consumers 11, 70, 160, 173, 191, 211–12 contentment 65–6n2, 139, 142–3, 226–7, 262, 266–7, 274

see also eudaimonia convergence 12–16 Conway, Paul 256 copy protection schemes 99 copying

analogue 13 Confucianism 90, 91–2, 113 distribution 114, 275 ethical pluralism 119 Facebook 90 information 98 legality 116–17 property rights 91 ubuntu 91–2

copyleft approaches 91, 101–11, 114 copyright

Confucian ethics 275 deontology 101, 122–4 Sen 267 Thailand 112–13 ubuntu 111 utilitarianism 100–1 virtue ethics 124–6

Copyright Act, USA 112n2 copyright law

cosmopolitanism 20

deontology 123–4 disobeying 122, 123, 125–6 fair use 112 illegal downloads 30 photography 15 Pirate Party 100 USA/EU 91, 109, 112, 119, 165

corporations 70, 166, 177–8 cosmopolitanism 20 Couch, Danielle xvii Couldry, Nick 11 Council of Europe 36, 47 courage 216 (virtue), 224n1, 268, 269, 270 Cox-George, Chantal 195 CPR numbers, Denmark 54 Creative Commons (CC) 104–5, 125–6

see also commons Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 108 creativity 60, 201 credit card accounts 54 credit-rating companies 57–8 Crito (Plato) 220, 226 Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and Communication (CaTaC) xvi culture

death 151 deontology 137, 162 differences 52, 72–5, 82–5, 91–2, 162, 178, 215 ethical relativism 118–19, 234, 237 ethics 23 gender 52 generalizations 51–3, 111, 117, 126, 247–9 hybridization 52, 66, 237–8 identity 50 intellectual property 111–12 norms/values 26, 74, 215 Norway 49, 50

pornography 170–1, 175, 178–9 privacy 37, 45–9 selfhood 82 sexuality 207 shifts in 63–4 state 64, 137n2 stereotypes 49

Cumiskey, Kathleen M. 151 Custer’s Revenge 210, 211 Cuthbertson, Anthony 195 cyberbullying 1, 2, 9, 19, 131, 175 cyberlibertarianism 163–4 cybernetics 262–3 cyberspace 163, 186, 192 Dahlberg, Lincoln 8, 162–3 Daily Mail Reporter 7, 200 Danaher, John 19, 37, 214 Dark Web 171–2, 183 data commissioners, EU 44 Data Privacy Directives, EU 68–9, 79–80 data privacy protection 44, 48, 68, 69–70, 80–1 data-mining 43 Davis, Nicola 195 Davisson, Amber 11 Dean, Jodi 131, 165 death online xiv, 34, 128–9, 146–52 Death Online Research (DOR) 146–7 death threats 2, 6, 38 Debatin, Bernhard 61, 69, 88, 225, 246–7 DeCew, Judith 61 decisional privacy 75 decision-making 7, 160, 220–1, 225, 262

see also ethical decision-making Declaration of Independence 229 dementia, frontotemporal 256 democracy

authoritarianism 65 citizens 129 communication technologies 159 deontology 168 digital media 157 feminist ethics 167, 168 freedom 167 law 266 libertarian 167–8 norms 9, 34 online 159 post-digital age 158, 167 rights 9 technology 158–69 virtue ethics 168

Dencik, Lina 57 Denmark

art/pornography 176 blogs 77 CPR numbers 54 data protection laws 48 freedom 48 Muhammad cartoons 246–7 pornography 175 privacy 42, 61–2 religion 48

deontology xv–xvi, 34, 225–32, 248 AI/Internet 217 autonomy 24, 189–90, 207–9 copyright 101, 122–4 culture 137, 162 democracy 168 empathy 256 equality 188, 197–8 ethical absolutism 229 EU 69

as framework 215 freedom 136 identity 21 illegal downloads 94, 95, 96, 250 individualistic 155 “just meat” 180, 181 Kant 227–9, 248 Netherlands 153 pornography 171, 173, 180, 191–2 privacy 3, 80 promise 222, 225, 232 property rights 126 religion 225–6 respect 189–90 Scandinavia 248 sexbots 193, 194 SNSs 133–6 stealing 93, 95 virtue ethics 92

Descartes, René 162, 186, 265, 271, 272 design

contextual awareness 276 ethically aligned xiv, 153, 166, 217, 268 slow 152, 154 virtue ethics xiv, xvi, 267

desire 170, 172, 187–8, 190, 194–5, 196–8 deskilling 195, 198, 269–71 determinism 83, 187 Dewey, Caitlin 203 dialogical approaches 26, 28, 78, 162 Dibbell, Julian 175, 205, 206 digital authoritarianism xiii, 58, 129, 157, 164, 165, 167 digital cameras 37 digital detox xiii, 11, 145, 149 digital divide 98, 107 digital footprint 54 Digital Futures project, European Commission 7

digital legacies 129 digital literacy 279 digital media 7

and analogue communication 11–12 communications 1, 17–22 Confucianism 275–6 convergence 12–16 democracy 157 entertainment 159–60 feminist ethics 259–60 internet-connected 3 studies of 11

digital media ethics 1, 24–5, 216–17, 258–60 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) 99 Digital Religion 18 digital rights management (DRM) 99 digital technologies 9, 11, 12–14 discontent 66, 80–1 disobedience 9, 122–4, 125–6, 253, 254, 266 distribution 76, 98, 114, 275 DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) 99 dogmatism ix, 208, 209 DOR (Death Online Research) 146–7 Dota2 199, 210 doxxing 38 DRM (digital rights management) 99 Drotner, Kirsten 4, 9 dualism 187, 189, 190, 192, 259–60 Duhigg, Charles 43 Dungeons and Dragons 205 Düsterhöft, Isabel K. 214 DVDs xvii EAG (Ethics Advisory Group) 24 Earp, Brian D. 19, 37 ecological systems 257 EDPS (European Data Protection Supervisor) 24 education, as extrinsic good 65–6

EFF (Electronic Freedom Foundation) 41, 99, 100 egalitarian dialogue 162 Egypt 166–7 Eichmeyer, Sarah 145 Eickelman, Dale F. 245 Eisenstein, Elizabeth 20 either/or thinking 4, 10, 12, 26–8, 32, 92, 116, 259 elderly care 270 Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) 41, 99, 100 electronics industry 154 Elshtain, Jean Beth 159, 160, 163–4 emails 17, 38–40 emancipation

gaming 207 pornography 175, 180, 205 technology 269 women’s 77, 176, 181, 207, 229, 230, 258n4

embodiment analogue reception 14 emotions 256–7 phenomenology 186 relationships 256 resistance 167 sexbots 171, 192 sexual experiences 187–8 and virtual communities 163

emotion artificial 196 care 255, 269 embodiment 256–7 feminist ethics 255–6 morality 265 virtue ethics 255–6 women 253–4

empathy deontology 256

deskilling 198 friendship 139–40, 194–5 Habermasian and feminist ideals 165 solidarity 161–2 as virtue 143, 161n4, 168 virtue ethics 194

encryption software 44 Engels, Friedrich 162 Enli, Gunn xiii, 130, 145, 149 enslavement 51, 154, 162, 212, 229, 231 Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) 201–2 entitlement rights 56–7 environmental ethics 249 equality 162, 180, 188, 197–8

gender 83–4, 176, 193, 258n4 eros 176, 214 ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) 201–2 Ess, Charles

AoIR 25 commons 116 community well-being 243 copying 91 Creative Commons 125 democracy 168 digital immortality 146 empathy 195 existentialism xii, 269 Fairphone 156 ICE 217 Original Sin 177n5 political parties 164 post-digital era 11 privacy 59, 246 Pygmalion 192 relational self 21, 115 SNSs 130

essentialism 83, 255 ethical absolutism

abortion 239–40 deontology 229 and ethical relativism 119, 239–40, 243 human rights 229 as meta-ethical position 34, 37, 215 monism 26, 238–41 and pluralism 73

ethical choices 135, 155, 156, 212, 251 ethical decision-making 7, 82, 171, 186, 220–1, 249, 256, 262 ethical dilemmas 14, 218–19, 232–3 ethical guidelines xiii, xvi ethical monism 26, 27, 28, 73–4, 209

see also ethical absolutism ethical pluralism 241–7

both/and 28 copying 119 and ethical relativism 236–7, 282–3 greeting/parting rituals 234 as meta-ethical position 34, 37, 208, 215, 236 as middle ground 74 privacy 27, 72–3, 74, 75, 246 shared norms 119 strengths/limits 244–5 tolerance 235

ethical relativism 233–8 affirming the consequent 235–6 culture 118–19, 234, 237 and ethical absolutism 119, 239–40, 243 and ethical pluralism 236–7, 282–3 as meta-ethical position 34, 37, 127 and monism 26, 27, 28 moral judgment 237 privacy 73, 75 property rights 118

ethical toolkit xi–xii, 21, 215, 218, 245 ETHICOMP (Ethics and Computing) xvi ethics

agency 21 Aristotle 209–10 consent/copyright 15–16 design xiv, 153, 166, 217, 268 digital media age 1, 23, 24 global 37 information 280 terms used 29n1

Ethics Advisory Group (EAG) 24 Ethics and Computing (ETHICOMP) xvi ethics of care

digital media ethics 258–9 and feminist ethics 34, 92, 171, 215, 249 pornography 171 relations 77–8 responsibility 254–5

Ethics of Computer Games, The (Sicart) 201 ethnocentrism 51, 249 eudaimonia

AI 267–8 Aristotle 65–6n2, 262, 264 community 126 EU 267 ICT design 267 judgment 226–7 SNSs 143 Socrates 264 virtue ethics 139 see also contentment

European Commission 7, 153 European Convention on Human Rights 36 European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) 24 European Journal of Communication 5

European Union copyright laws 91, 100–1, 109, 112, 119, 165 data commissioners 44 Data Privacy Directives 68–9, 79–80 data protection laws 68 deontological approach 69 ethical guidelines xiii eudaimonia 267 GDPR xiii, 24, 44, 68–9, 71, 86 Google 45 KidsOnline survey 175–6 law/ethics 27 privacy 44, 61, 65–6, 75, 166

excellence Aristotle 264, 274 Confucius 274–5 eudaimonia 126, 139, 264 gaming 203 human beings 261–2, 263 Socrates 274 virtue ethics 125, 168 virtues 141

exceptions to the rule 52, 232 exemplary person (junzi) 273–4, 275 existentialism xii, 269 Facebook xiii

communication 17 copying 90 deceased person’s page 148 friendship 128 intellectual property 90 “like” button 11, 145 micro-targeting 43 mood manipulation 8 “napalm girl” (Kim Phûc) 178 privacy 18, 56, 88

scandals 8, 130 surveillance 59 Terms of Use 90, 110 Todd, Amanda 2 withdrawal from 60, 145

fair use 112 fairness 154, 253 Fairphone xiv, 129, 153–5, 156, 203, 211–12, 213 Fairtrade 129, 154, 155, 212 fake news 8, 129, 161, 164, 166 faking it 196–7 FDL (Free Documentation Licenses) 109 Federalist Papers 158–9 FEMEN movement 176 feminism

autonomy in gaming 206 contemporary 177n4, 249 ethical pluralism 245 on Habermas 161 pornography 214 relational autonomy 230, 248, 283 second-wave 251, 257n4 sexualities 207

feminist ethics 251–60 complete sex 186–90 cultural differences 215 democracy 167, 168 digital media 259–60 emotion 255–6 ethics of care 34, 92, 171, 215, 249 on Habermas 161–2, 165 moral wisdom 265 pornography 171 relational aspects 21 selfhood 77 sexuality/identity 171, 187

violence 34 file-sharing 99, 115 filter bubbles 8, 164 Finneman, Niels Ole 124 Firefox 40–2, 107 First Amendment justifications 202 first-person shooter (FPS) 199 Floridi, Luciano

AI xiii, 25 Big Data 59 distributed morality 155 flourishing 267 Global Information Ethics 282 human dignity 267 Internet of Things 217 my information concept 53–4, 61 onlife 7 privacy 63 “Red” products 213 shared responsibility 135–6, 212 shopping Samaritan 55, 156

FLOSS (Free/Libre/Open Source Software) copyleft approaches 91, 101–5, 114 Linux 105–7 in practice 107–11 ubuntu 277

flourishing autonomy 283 Floridi 267 freedom of speech 182 individual/community 279 relationships 198 Vallor 194–5, 268 virtue ethics 24–5, 139, 143, 152 virtues 270

fluidity 17–18, 20

Fødselsnummer, Norway 54 Foglia, Lucia 256 FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) 102 Foucault, Michel 21, 58, 272 Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (Kant) 227–8 Fourth Amendment 61 FPS (first-person shooter) 199 France xiii, 248 Frankenstein (Shelley) 10, 192 Free/Libre/Open Source Software: see FLOSS Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) 102 Free Documentation Licenses (FDL) 109 free software 90, 102–3, 104, 105, 106–7 Free Software Foundation (FSF) 102–3, 107, 108 freedom

African thought 278 autonomy 21, 25, 64, 66, 135 collective 11 contentment 274 corporate 70 democracy 167 Denmark 48 deontology 136 existentialism xii of expression 9, 77, 174, 178, 183, 239, 247 in free software 102–3, 104, 107 as illusion 187 individual 8, 9, 11, 115, 163 internet 157 of opinion 66 of press 247 privacy 75 of speech 182, 183 utilitarianism 231 women 60, 77

Freedom House 58 Freelon, Deen xvii

#freethenipple 176, 258n4 friendship

communication skills 142 cyberbullying 131 empathy 139–40, 194 Facebook 128 online 129–37, 138–46, 165, 268 post-digital age 129, 138 selfhood 22 SNSs 128, 261 virtue ethics 128, 138–9 see also relationships

FSF (Free Software Foundation) 108 Fuchs, Christian 88 Gabriels, Katleen 19, 37 #Gamergate xiv, 38, 203, 212 Games Research Network listserv 213 gaming

Consalvo xvi, 202 creativity 201 as emancipation 207 feminist autonomy 206 mobile devices 199 phronēsis 211 professional 199–200 rape 205 and real life 206–7, 209 role-playing 199, 206 sex 204–6 skills 203–4 as toxic culture 202–3, 212 utilitarianism 200–1, 204 violence 7, 138, 170–1, 173, 199–201, 204–6 virtue ethics 209 virtues 210–11

Gandhi, Mahatma 122, 227, 231

Gawronski, Bertram 256 gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and/or queer (GLBTq) 174–5 GDPR (General Data Privacy Regulation) xiii, 24, 44, 68–9, 71, 86 Gehl, Robert W. 171–2 gender

culture 52 equality 83–4, 176, 193, 258n4 rules/fairness 253 sexuality 172, 174 stereotyping 255 see also masculinity; women

General Data Privacy Regulation: see GDPR generalizations 51–3, 111, 117, 126, 247–9 Genesis, Book of 177n5 genocide 28, 237, 244 Gentile, Douglas A. 200–1 Gentzkow, Matthew 145 Gerber, Nina 85, 89 Gerber, Paul 85, 89 German Ideology, The (Marx and Engels) 162 Germany 60, 61–2, 66, 202, 248 Ghosh, S. 175 Gibson, William 146, 186 Gill, Rosalind 257n4, 258n4 Gilligan, Carol 251–2, 253–5 Glancy, Dorothy J. 16, 75 Glassman, Michael xvii GLBTq (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and/or queer) 174–5 Global Information Ethics (Floridi) 282 Global Kids Online 5 GNU Operating System 90, 105, 108–9 gold market 154 Golden Rule 81–2, 226 Good Samaritan 156, 213 goods

advertising 134 common 48, 124, 125

community/individual 248 copyright 100 extrinsic/instrinsic 65–6, 80 public 101, 124, 127 Socrates 264

Google xiii, 44, 45, 56, 165 Google Voice 37–8 GPS-equipped digital cameras 37 Grand Theft Auto V 206, 210 greased information 12, 16, 54 green electronics 154 Greene, Joshua D. 256 Greenleaf, Graham 71 Greenpeace 154 greeting/parting rituals 234 grieving 128–9, 147–8 Grodzinsky, Frances S. 170–1 Guess, Andrew 166 Guillory, Jamie E. 8 Habermas, Jürgen 88, 161, 165, 167, 168, 248 hackers 5, 8, 19, 43, 45, 56 Haddon, Leslie 175 Hallnäs, Lars 152 Hancock, Jeffrey T. 8 Hansen, Mette Halskov 68 Hård af Segerstad, Ylva 147, 217 Harding, Luk 178 Hargittai, Eszter 56, 87, 88–9 harm reduction 184–5 harmony

community 47, 48, 70, 113, 125, 253, 273 Confucius 274, 279 contentment 226 Japan 81 reason 267 ubuntu 48 well-being 263

see also eudaimonia Harviainen, J. Tuomas xvi health care 229–30 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act 69 health-tracking devices 37 hedonic calculus 221–2, 224n1 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 72 “Heinz dilemma” 254 Henaff, Marcel 160 Henderson, Kathrine Andrews 216 heuristic 52, 83, 126 Hick, Darren 112n2 Hildebrandt, Mireille 8, 9, 63, 266, 270 Hintz, Arne 57 Hjorth, Larissa 151 Hobbes, Thomas 78, 271 Hoffman, Samantha 58 Hoffmann, E. T. A. 9–10, 192 Holmes, James 200 Holocaust 237, 239 Holpuch, Armand 56 Holst, Catherine 193 Homo ludens 200 Hong Kong 70–1, 166–7 Hongladarom, Soraj

intercultural dialogue xvi pluralism 74, 246 privacy 53, 72–3, 74, 80, 82, 88, 246 self 73–5 Thai ID 46

Horizon 2020 program 153 Hornung, Peter Michael 176 Hovde, Astrid Linnea 148–9 Howard, Phillip N. 157, 164 Hsu, Shang Hwa 202 Hughes, James 267 Huizinga, Johan 200

human beings 196, 261–2, 271–3 human dignity 25, 166, 267 human rights 36, 229, 230–1, 241, 280 Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society, The (Wiener) 216 Hume, David 255 Hursthouse, Rosalind 264–5 IACAP (International Association for Computing and Philosophy) xvi ICE (information and computing ethics) 24, 216–17, 282 Ice – Jeff on Top Pulling Out (Koons) 176 Iceland, Pirate Party 100 ICT4D (ICT for development) 279 ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) xiv

design 267 dualism 259–60 eudaimonia 267 Scandinavia 124 state support 124 virtue ethics 267 Wiener 269

identity body 271–2 commodification 88 culture 50 deontology 21 government information 54 group norms 51 literacy 21 privacy 22 relational 63, 81, 106 responsibility 21 selfhood 20–1, 60, 63 sexual 171, 172, 180, 181, 187 utilitarianism 21

identity theft 54, 55 IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) xv–xvi, 138, 166, 217, 267–8

IIE (Intercultural Information Ethics) 282 illegal downloads

consequentialism 94, 96 copyright law 30 deontology 94, 95, 96, 250 developing country 120–1 music industry 90, 93–4, 99 utilitarian analysis 94, 250

immortality, digital 146 In a Different Voice (Gilligan) 251 India 175, 230

see also Gandhi, Mahatma indigenous traditions

community well-being 107, 248 cultural differences 178 privacy 67 ubuntu 277 US dominance 101, 123

individual atomic 271 Buddhism 23, 72 and community 72, 279 Confucianism 23 deontology 155 freedom 8, 9, 11, 115, 163 moral agency 257 privacy 22, 48, 66, 67, 73, 115 property rights 122 rights 248, 252, 253 selfhood 21, 138, 217 utilitarianism 155

Indonesia 175 influencers 165 information

analogue technologies 13 body 53

as common good 124, 125 copying 98 digitized 17 distribution 98 ethics 280 Floridi on 53–4, 61 greased 12, 16, 54 personal/sensitive 42, 44, 53 privacy 37–8, 54–5, 75–6, 79 protection 43

Information and Communication Technologies: see ICTs information and computing ethics: see ICE information gathering 69–70 information sharing 14–15, 17, 45, 76 Innis, Harold 20 Instagram 59, 60, 129, 130, 140–1, 174 instant messaging 45 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers: see IEEE instrumentalism, technological 158 Intellectual Property (IP) 90, 91, 98–109, 110, 111–12, 117, 134 Intercultural Information Ethics (IIE) 282 International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP) xvi internet 3, 6–7, 19, 27, 157, 171–2, 216 Internet of Things: see IoT Internet Protocol (IP) address 40, 42–3, 44 Internet Service Providers (ISPs) 184 Internet World Stats 17 intimate spheres (intimsfære) 42, 62, 80 IoT (Internet of Things)

emerging xii, 8 ethics xvi privacy 24 Smart Cities 19–20, 55–6 virtue ethics 217

IP: see Intellectual Property IP: see Internet Protocol Iran 157

Islam 81–2, 245 isolationism, moral 237–8 ISPs (Internet Service Providers) 184 Japan 81, 192–3, 202, 224

see also RapeLay Jaspers, Karl xi–xii Jefferson, Thomas 229 Jenkins, Henry 15 Jensen, Jakob Linaa 19 Jesus Christ 264 Jin, Dal Yong 165–6, 178 Jóhannsdóttir, Ásta 176, 258n4 Johnson, Deborah 65–6 Judaism 81–2 judgments, ethical 29–32

consequences 7 discernment 226–7, 265 hedonic calculus 224n1 Midgley 237 phronēsis xiv, 25, 226, 256–7, 265 and politics 263–4

Jünger, Jakob xvii “just meat”

autonomy 229 body 190 deontology 180, 181 materialism 187 means/ends, Kantian 188, 229 objectification 175, 180 rape 207 sexuality 190

justice 122–4, 227, 250, 252–4, 279 Jyllands-Posten 247 Kabloona community 237, 239, 243, 244 Kang, Cecilia xiii Kant, Immanuel

autonomy 25, 180, 229, 230, 252 Categorical Imperative 227–8 deontology 227–9, 248 lies 231–2 means/ends 188, 229 promises 227–9 reason 261–2

Kasperowski, Dick 147 Keneally, Meghan 2, 6 Kennedy, Steve 154 Khandelwal, Swati 55 kidney disease 242–3, 244 KidsOnline survey 175–6 killing 241 Kimppa, Kai xvi King, Martin Luther, Jr. 122, 123, 227, 231, 253 Kirwil, Lucyna 4–5 Kitiyadisai, Krisana 46, 66 knowledge transmission 125 Kobie, Nicole 57, 58 Kohlberg, Lawrence 252, 254 Kondon, Zsuzsanna 20 Koons, Jeff 176, 177 Kostka, Genia 8, 48, 57, 58 Kramera, Adam D. I. 8 Kraus, Ashley 7 Lagerkvist, Amanda xii, 152, 269 Lang, Fritz 192 Lange, Patricia G. 63 Latin America 102, 108, 277 Latonero, Mark 91 law

and conscience 239 democracy 266 digital technologies 9 disobedience 125–6, 253, 254 EU 27

just/unjust 122–4, 227, 250 Norwegian non-owners’ rights 115–16 platform imperialism 166 privacy protection 246 religion 225 women’s clothing 175 see also copyright law

Leaver, Tama 152 Levin, Sam 178 Levinas, Emmanuel 74 Levy, David 170, 193, 195 Lewis, Patricia 224n1 Lewis, Paul 11, 145 libertarian democracy 167–8 LibreOffice 107–8 licensing 108, 109, 114 lies 226, 231–2 Lightbeam add-on 40–2 Lim, Merlyna 128, 166–7, 175 Lindgren, Simon 11 Ling, Rich xvi, 19 Linkedin 130 Linux 105–7, 277 Liptak, Adam 202 literacy 21, 88, 279 Livingstone, Sonia 4–5, 131, 134, 175 Loccioni 153 Locke, John 229 logic, terms of 29 Lomborg, Stine 77, 130 Love and Sex with Robots (Levy) 193 loving 188, 190, 194 Lu, Jessica 152 Lü, Yao-Hui 67 Lüders, Marika 130 Luke, St 156 Lukesch, Helmut 202

MacAskill, Ewen 36 Mackenzie, Catriona 282–3 Majama, Koliwe 280 Malan, Beverley 279 Malaysia 166–7 Maner, Walter 216 manipulation 8, 160, 161, 164 Martens, H. 21 Martin, Daniel 184 Marwick, Alice 36, 56, 87, 88–9 Marx, Karl 162 masculinity 190, 212, 251 Massanari, Adrienne L. 38, 203 massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) 199 Massumi, Brian 14 materialism 186–7 Matich, Margaret 258n4 McArthur, Neil 214 McKenna, Michael 187 McLuhan, Marshall 20, 158 meat as term 186, 192

see also “just meat” media log 131–2, 142–3 mediatization 173–4 Medium Theory 20 Meikle, Graham 19–20 memorial pages 149 Mendez, Mario F. 256 Menkiti, Ifeanyi A. 277 Messenger 129, 147 meta-ethical frameworks 34, 37, 215

absolutism (monism) 238–41 issues 198–9, 217 pluralism 241–7 relativism 233–8

meta-theory 33, 96, 200–1

Metropolis (Lang) 192 Meyrowitz, Joshua 20 microblogging 42, 171–2 Microsoft 56, 114 micro-targeting of advertising 43, 131, 160 Midgley, Mary 1, 215, 237–8 Mikkola, Mari 214 Mill, John Stuart 182–3, 220, 223–4 mind/body dualism 187, 189, 190, 256, 265 Mittelstadt, Brent Daniel 153, 216 MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games) 199 mobile devices xvi, 151, 171–2, 199 Modern Warfare 2 200 monism 26, 27, 28, 215, 238–41

see also absolutism; ethical monism Montaigne, Michel de 248 Moor, James H. 16, 54, 76 MOOs 205 moral panics 3, 4, 9, 10, 29 morality 155, 252, 253, 254–5, 265 Moseley, Raam 99 mourning online 128, 149, 150–1 Moyer, Melinda Wenner 200–1 MP3 13–14 MUDs 205 Muhammad, Prophet 225, 246–7 Mukwege, Denis 237, 239 Mullins, Phil 17 Murad, Nadia 237, 239 Musgrave, Frank W. 242–3 Musi (“no-self”) 66–7 music industry 90, 93–4, 99

see also illegal downloads music recording equipment 12–13 Myska, Bjørn 196, 231 Nakada, Makoto 67

“napalm girl” (Kim Phûc) 178 Nash, Victoria 173, 205 National Committees for Research Ethics (NESH) 62 national identity cards 46–8 National Rifle Association 4 National Security Agency xiii, 8 #neda 157 NESH (National Committee for Research Ethics) 62 Netflix 103 Netherlands 153 netiquette 149, 150–1 neurobiology 256 Neuromancer (Gibson) 146, 186 New Media 7 newspapers 12, 16 Ní Bhroin, Namh 62n2 nirvana 67 Nissenbaum, Helen 62, 76, 80 Nixon, Paul G. 214 Nobel Peace Prize-winners 237, 239, 244 Noddings, Nell 255 nonviolence 227, 231 norms

applications 27, 28 culture 26, 74, 215 democracy 34 group 51 misjudgments 50, 51 shared 119, 243–4, 245 universally valid 238–9 and values 31–2

Nørskov, Marko 194 Norway

allemannsretten 105, 115–16, 248 culture 49, 50 Fødselsnummer 54 NESH 62

Outdoor Recreation Act 116 privacy 42, 61–2 privacy protection 86 public photographs 15 sexting 176 tax records 48

NoScript 41–2, 44 no-self (musi) 66–7 NSA (National Security Agency) databases 36 Nussbaum, Martha 266, 267 Nyhan, Brendan 166 Nyholm, Sven 19, 37 objectification 175, 180 obligations, supererogatory 156 obscenity 190 offline time 18, 60, 275–6 Øian, Hogne 115–16 Ólafsson, Kjartan 176 Olivetti 153 Ong, Walter 20 Onlife 7 online communication 5, 38, 145 online democracy 159 Open Source Initiative (OSI) 102, 106–7, 277 operating system 105n1 orality 20–1, 158, 159 Original Sin, doctrine of 177, 177n5, 181 Ortega y Gassett, José 269 OSI: see Open Source Initiative Other 74, 188, 196, 237 Outdoor Recreation Act 116 outliers 52 pacifism 226, 227, 231 Pane, Lisa Marie 4 Papacharissi, Zizi 151–2, 165 Pariser, Eli 8, 164 Parsons, Elizabeth 258n4

Passonen, Susanna xvi, 170, 172, 177, 181–2 passwords 55, 56 Paterson, Barbara 216, 277–8 patience 139–40, 141–2, 143, 194 patriarchy 176, 255, 258n4 Patrignani, Norberto 152, 153, 154 Paul, Christopher A. 213–14 PC (personal computer) 216 peer-to-peer networks 45, 94, 99 Perlroth, Nicole 55 perseverance (virtue) 139–40, 141–2, 143, 194 personal computer (PC) 216 personality, right to 60, 66 personhood 53, 188, 278 persuasive technologies 131 Petrov, Stanislav 224n1 Pew Research Center 5 phenomenological view 186–90 Phiri, Sam xvii photographs 15, 16 phronēsis

Aristotle xi, 25, 31–2, 97, 201, 218, 256–7 decision-making 262 gaming 211 judgment xiv, 25, 226, 256–7 moral wisdom 265 practice of 210 relational autonomy 265 Socrates 256–7, 266 technomoral wisdom 261, 268

Phûc, Kim (“napalm girl”) 178 Piaget, Jean 253 PINs 55 piracy 90, 99, 120–2 Pirate Bay 99 Pirate Party 99–100 plagiarism 280

platform imperialism 165–6, 178 Plato 159, 214, 245

Apology, The 264 Crito 220, 226 Republic 226, 227, 262–3

pleasure 194, 221–2 plebiscitism 160, 161, 163–4, 167–8 pluralism 27, 28, 73

see also ethical pluralism polarization of thinking 10, 26 Politiken 176 Ponte, Christina 4–5 Porn Studies 172 pornography xvi, 179

academic studies 172 art 176, 179 autonomy 175 blocking 184–5, 190–1 communication venues 172–3 consequentialism 180 consumption 173 cosmopolitanism 20 culture 170–1, 175, 178–9 cyberbullying 9 Denmark 175 deontology 171, 173, 180, 191–2 emancipation 175, 180, 205 ethics of 170–8, 181–2 exposure to 179–80, 183, 190, 208 feminism 171, 214 producers/consumers 172, 257n4 religion 177, 181 Scandinavia 175, 177 self-commodification 131 SNSs 171–2 USA 177–8

utilitarianism 171, 173, 180, 182–6 victimization 184 violence 7, 22, 34, 179 virtue ethics 171, 191–2, 268 see also alt porn; child pornography; revenge porn

porntube 182 Porte de Choisy 174 post-digital age xiii

democracy 158, 167 ethical life 11–22 friendship 129, 138 media xiv, 14 offline time 18 slow technology 152–3 well-being 18

post-feminist era 176, 257n4 Postman, Neil xii premises 29 Pretty Good Privacy 44–5 privacy

accessibility 75 AI 24 anonymity 3, 37 Buddhism 53, 80 California 70 China 85–6 collective 22, 59, 66, 115 Confucianism 67, 72, 115 cosmopolitanism 20 creativity 60 culture 37, 45–9 Denmark 42, 61–2 deontology 3, 80 ethical pluralism 27, 72–3, 74, 75, 246 ethical relativism 73, 75 as expectation 61

Facebook 18, 56, 88 freedom 75 global metropolis 53–6 globalization 67–8 group 19–20, 59, 63, 115 identity 22 indigenous traditions 67 individual 22, 48, 66, 67, 73, 115 information 37–8, 54–5, 75–6, 79 intimate spheres 42 law 246 newspapers 16 Norway 42, 61–2 online 42 private life 47, 59–60, 61–2, 65–71, 72–5, 80 relational self 70–1, 76 as right 3, 9, 24, 36, 47, 66, 69, 133–4, 166 SCS 71, 78 selfhood 22, 58, 68, 75–8, 114–15, 272 smartphones 16 state 47, 69, 72 ubuntu 36, 47, 48, 49, 62–3, 115 USA/EU 44, 61, 65–6, 75, 166 utilitarianism 4, 80 violated 55–6, 174 virtue ethics 267

Privacy Badger 41, 42 privacy literacy 88 “privacy not included” 87 privacy paradox 85–9 privacy protection 56, 86, 166, 246 private life (privatlivet) 42, 47, 59–60, 61–2, 65–71, 72–5, 80 produsage sites 171–2 profitability 70, 102 promises 222, 225, 227–9, 232, 241 property 83, 101, 114, 115–16 property rights

Buddhism 126–7 Confucianism 118, 126–7 copying 91 deontology 126 ethical relativism 118 exclusive/inclusive 22, 103–4, 113–14, 117, 258 Fourth Amendment 61 individual 122 ubuntu 105, 126–7 utilitarianism 126, 231 virtue ethics 126–7 see also Intellectual Property

Protestant Reformation 21, 272 public goods 101, 124, 127 public sphere 157, 165, 166, 172 Pure Land tradition 66–7 Pygmalion 192 Quantified Relationship (QR) 21 Rachels, James 75, 76 racism 83, 167, 235 radio 12, 21, 61 Ramose, Mogobe B. 277 ransomware 55 rape

Custer’s Revenge 210 gaming 205 “just meat” 207 marital 197 threats 38 violence 171, 179 war 237 see also RapeLay

rape fantasies 206, 207 RapeLay 202, 205, 206, 208, 210 Raspberry Pi 106 Raymond, Eric 102

Reading, Anna 174 reason 253–4, 256, 261–2, 263–4, 267 Recording Industry Association of America: see RIAA “Red” products 155, 213 Reddit 38, 203 Redström, Johan 152 Reiffler, Jason 166 relational autonomy

Christman 77–8 distributed responsibility 155 either/or thinking 116 feminism 230, 248, 283 phronēsis 265 self 64, 115, 213, 259 sharing 258 virtue ethics 21, 78

relational self 21, 63, 70–1, 76, 113, 115 relationships

close 62 embodiment 256 flourishing 198 human beings 272–3 identity 63, 81, 106 interdependent 257 interpersonal 254 intimate 188–9, 194 technology 173n2 virtue ethics 261

relativism 26, 28 see also ethical relativism

religion 48, 177, 181, 225–6 Republic (Plato) 226, 227, 262–3 reputation right 71 Research Gate 130 respect 189–90, 196, 197–8 responsibility

distributed 23, 136, 155, 156, 212, 213 ethics of care 254–5 identity 21 shared/individual 135–6, 212

revenge porn 15, 19 reward–punishment 252 Rheingold, Howard 159, 160, 163 RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) 90, 100, 122 Richardson, Kathleen 193, 194, 198 Ricoeur, Paul 248 rights

absolute 231 autonomy 24 body 241 democratic norms 9 equality 180 individual 248, 252, 253 justice 254 negative/positive 229–30 privacy 3, 9, 24, 36, 47, 66, 69, 133–4, 166 utilitarianism 126, 231 violated 230–1 see also allemannesretten; human rights; property rights

Robinson, Jessica 86n7 Robo-philosophy conferences xvi robots 138, 170, 192–3, 267 Rohner, Ronald P. 52 role-playing 199, 206 Romm, Tony xiii, 44 Roose, Kevin xiii, 18 Rosemont, Henry, Jr. 51, 257, 265, 271, 273, 274 Rosenstein, Justin 11, 145 Rouvroy, Antoinette 19–20 Ruddick, Sara 186–90, 191, 197, 255, 256 Rúdólfsdóttir. Annadis G. 176, 258n4 Rusbridger, Alan 36 Rwanda 237

Sabra, Jakob Borrits 128, 149 sacredness of life 226 Sandmann, Der (Hoffmann) 9–10, 192 Satariano, Adam 55 #sayhername 167 scandals xiii, 8, 11, 19, 130, 164–5 Scandinavia

allemannsretten 105, 248 deontology 248 gender equality 83–4, 193 ICTs 124 pornography 175, 177

Schmücker, Reinold 112n2 school shootings 200 Schwartz, Margaret 167 Schwartz, Shalom H. 229, 230 Screen Time, Apple 132 SCS (Social Credit System)

digital authoritarianism xiii, 58 privacy 71, 78 resistance 48 surveillance 8, 20, 57, 78, 166

security cameras 57 segregation laws 253 self

autonomy 59–60 body 256 commodification 131, 134–5 community 278–9 as illusion 80–1 relational autonomy 64, 115, 213, 259 technology of 21, 272 see also body-subject; relational self; selfhood

self-defense 226, 241 selfhood xvi

Buddhism 67, 246–7

communications 20–1 Confucianism 246–7 culture 82 friendship 22 identity 20–1, 60, 63 individual 21, 138, 217 privacy 22, 58, 68, 75–8, 114–15, 272 property 114, 115 relational 20–1, 63, 76–7, 115, 138, 155, 213, 217, 261

self-restraint 88 SEMNetporn 172 SEMs (sexually explicit materials)

active choice-plus 184–5 autonomy 180, 181 cyberbullying 175 diversity 179, 182 internet-connected media 171, 179 marginalized sexualities 174 mediatization 173 Netporn 172 objectification 175 producers/consumers 172, 185 virtue ethics 138

Sen, Amartya 267 September 11, 2001 attacks 57 Sesame 57 sex

complete 186–90, 197, 256 desire 170, 172, 187–8, 190, 194–5, 196–8 gaming 204–6 phenomenology 186–7 pre-marital 241 violence 204–6, 268 virtual 205–6

sexbots xii, xiv, 34 advantages 195–6

cosmopolitanism 20 deontology 193, 194 desire 194, 195, 197 deskilling 269, 270 development of 171, 192, 193, 270 embodiment 171, 192 hacked 195 Sullins 214 utilitarianism 193–4, 198 virtue ethics 138, 193, 195, 196

sexting 19, 174, 176 sexual identity 171, 172, 180, 181, 187 sexual violence 5, 7, 179, 184, 202, 203, 205, 237 sexuality

attitudes 179, 207 body 177n5, 186, 189–90, 192 children/adolescents 175 culture 207 feminism 207 gender 172, 174 identity 171, 172, 180, 181, 187 “just meat” 190 marginalized 174 patriarchy 258n4 preferences 175

sexually explicit materials: see SEMs Shahbaz, Adrian xiii, 58, 157 sharing 108–9, 258 Shelley, Mary 10, 192 Shipira, Jill S. 256 shooting of student 157 shopping Samaritan 155, 156 Shutte, Augustine 277 Sicart, Miguel 201, 209–10 Signal 45 Sigot, Nathalie 221 Simon, Judith 23, 135–6, 155

Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter 221 Sinnreich, Aram xvii, 91 Siri 37–8 slow technology xiv, 11, 129, 152–3, 154 smart assistants 37–8 Smart Cities 19–20, 55–6 smart ID project 45–6, 48 smart mobs 18 smartphones

changing text 17–18 conflict minerals 153, 154 digital codes 14 information-sharing 45 internet access 172 photographs 15 privacy 16 tracking 18–19, 37–8

Smith, Aaron 86 Snapchat 15, 17, 60, 130, 140–1, 174 Snowden, Edward xiii, 8, 36, 38, 57 SNSs (social network sites) 130

anonymity 5 commodification 88 communication 17 death 151–2 deontology 133–6 ethical choices 135 eudaimonia 143 filter bubbles 164 friendship 128, 261 negative/positive experiences 132–3 pornography 171–2 redesigning 276 sexting 174 Terms of Service 134 Terms of Use 110–11 utilitarianism 131–2, 136–7

Vallor on 129–30, 135, 139–41 snuff films 179 Social Credit System: see SCS social media 8, 129–30, 144–5, 166, 261 social network sites: see SNSs Social Security numbers 54 Socrates

Crito 220 eudaimonia 264 excellence 274 judgment 263–4 paraphrased 78 phronēsis 256–7, 266 reason 261–2 virtue ethics 249, 260–1

software filtering 208 solidarity 150, 161–2, 167, 168 Solon, Olivia 11 Sophocles 265–6 Søraker, Johnny 49 soul 146, 186, 193, 227, 264, 271, 272 South Korea 202 Spencer, Michael K. xiii Spiekermann, Sarah 153, 267 Spotify 103 Stahl, Bernd Carsten 153, 216, 220, 247–8, 249 Staksrud, Elisabeth 4–5, 176, 176n3 Stald, Gitte 175 stalking 2, 3, 5–6 Stallman, Richard 90, 102–3, 104 state

consequentialism 225 culture 64, 137n2 entitlement rights 56–7 human rights 229 ICT support 124

information gathering 69–70 justice 253 privacy 47, 69, 72 surveillance 8, 56–8, 59 trust in 86, 87

stealing 91, 92, 93, 95 Steele, Catherine 152 steganography 275 stereotyping 49, 51–2, 53, 255 streaming 40, 103, 160 Stromer-Galley, Jennifer 164 Strong, Tracy 160 subordination of women 193, 207, 255 Sui, Suli 71 suicide 2–3, 6, 131, 150, 243 Sullins, John 196, 214 Sundén, Jenny 175 Sunstein, Cass 164 Super Columbine Massacre RPG! 210 supererogatory obligations 213 surveillance

Arab Springs xii–xiii of citizens 57 Facebook 59 SCS 8, 20, 57, 78, 166 state 8, 56–8, 59 total 20, 157 voluntary 18, 59, 174

surveillance capitalism xiii, 166 Surveillance Self-Defense 87 Svarverud, Rune 68 Sweden 100, 147–8 Syvertsen, Trine xiii, 130, 145, 149 Taiwan 108 Tamura, Takanori 67 Tang, Raymond 71

Target chain store 43 Tavani, Herman T. 29n1, 75–6, 124, 125–6, 217 Taylor, Linnet 59, 63 techno-liberation 162 technology

democracy 158–69 emancipation 269 relationships 173n2 of the self 21, 272

technomoral virtues 261, 268–9, 276 techno-utopianism 164 Telegram 45 teleological approach 248 television 12, 18, 21, 158, 159 Terms of Service (ToS) 134 Terms of Use 90, 110–11 terrorism 56–8 Thailand 45–6, 48, 53, 72, 80, 112–13 Thomson, Judith Jarvis 156 Thorn, Clarisse 175, 206 Thorseth, May 162 Thunderbird 107 Tian (natural order) 273 Time 175 Timmermans, Job 153, 216 Todd, Amanda 2–3, 4, 6, 131 Tokunaga, Robert S. 7 tolerance 234, 235, 236–7, 243–4 Tong, Rosemarie 255 Tor 44, 45 torture 179, 278 Torvalds, Linus 105 ToS (Terms of Service) 134 toxic masculinity 212 tracking 18–19, 37–8 trial by Internet 6–7, 19 Trump, Donald 8, 160

Tsan, Amie 55 tube sites 182 tumblr 2 Tunisia xii, 157, 166–7 Turkle, Sherry 270 Tutu, Desmond 278 Twitter 17, 42, 59 tyranny of the majority 159 Ublock Origin 41 ubuntu 106

community/individual 67 copying 91–2 copyright 111 FLOSS 277 harmony 48 privacy 36, 47, 48, 49, 62–3, 115 property rights 105, 126–7 relational self 113 virtues 278–9

Ubuntu distribution of Linux 106–7, 277 United Kingdom 242–3 United Nations: Universal Declaration of Human Rights 229 United States of America

consumers 70 copyright law 91, 100–1, 109, 112, 119, 165 data privacy protection 69–70 dominance 101, 123 ESRB 201–2 Facebook fined xiii First Amendment 202 Fourth Amendment 61 health care 229–30 kidney disease 242–3 national identity card 47–8 National Security Agency xiii, 8 pornography 177–8

presidential elections 8, 160, 164 privacy 61, 65–6, 75, 94, 166 public photographs 15 Social Security numbers 54 Thailand compared 53 utilitarianism 70

Universal Declaration of Human Rights 229 universalizing maxim (Kant) 227–8, 233 Unix 105 utilitarianism 34

consequences 7, 195–6 consequentialism 93, 219–25 copyright 100–1 cost–benefit analysis 184–6, 204, 218–20 domination of 248 ethically aligned design 217 as framework 215 freedom 231 gaming studies 200–1, 204 greatest good for greatest number 230–1 identity 21 illegal downloads 94, 250 individualistic 155 limitations 221–3 nation/culture 137 pornography 171, 173, 180, 182–6 privacy 4, 80 profitability 70 property rights 126, 231 sexbots 193–4, 198 SNSs use 131–2, 136–7 US approach 70 virtue ethics 92 wartime 230–1

utils 132–3n1, 173, 184, 195–6, 221–2 Vallor, Shannon

deskilling 269–70, 271 empathy 194–5 existentialism xii flourishing 194, 268 on SNSs 129–30, 135, 139–41 technomoral virtues 261, 268–9, 276 virtue ethics xiv, xv–xvi, 88, 246, 266 virtues 139–42, 143

van Abel, Bas 153 van der Mark, Peter 153 van der Sloot, Bart 59, 63 van der Velden, Maja xvi, 154 van Wynsberghe, Aimee 258 Verbeek, Peter-Paul 173n2 Verrier, Antonin 174 victimization 184 video cameras 45 video gaming 170 vigilantes 3 Vignoles, V. L. 53 violence

active choice-plus policy 190–1 cosmopolitanism 20 feminist ethics 34 gaming 7, 138, 170–1, 173, 199–201, 204–6 pornography 7, 22, 34, 179 racism 167 rape 171, 179 self-defense 226 sex 204–6, 268 toward women and girls 7, 167, 173 see also sexual violence

virtual assistants 270 virtual communities 163 Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) 40 virtual sex 205–6 virtue ethics xv–xvi, 34, 215, 260–71

AI / Internet of Things 217 Aristotle 124, 249, 260–1, 266 Buddhism 260–1, 266–7 Confucianism 260–1, 266–7 copyright 124–6 democracy 168 deontology 92 design of ICTs xiv, xvi, 267 emotion 255–6 empathy 194 ethical dilemmas 14 eudaimonia 139 excellence 125, 168 flourishing 24–5, 139, 143, 152 friendship 128, 138–9 gaming / everyday life 209 global 246, 260–1 Golden Rule 81–2 loving 188, 190 pornography 171, 191–2, 268 property rights 126–7 relational 21, 78 relationships 261 SEMs 138 sexbots 138, 193, 195, 196 Socrates 249, 260–1 utilitarianism 92 Vallor xiv, xv–xvi, 88, 246, 266 well-being 152–3

virtues deskilling 270–1 empathy 143, 161–2, 168 excellence 141 flourishing 270 gaming 210–11 technomoral 261, 268–9, 276 ubuntu 278–9

Vallor 139–42, 143 Volkamer, Melanie 85, 89 VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) 40 Wahl-Jorgensen, Karin 57 Wakabayashi, Daisuki 70 Wall, John 266 Wallen, Jack 41 Wang, Tom 276 Warburton, Nigel 183, 247 Ward, Stephen J. A. 183 Warren, Karen J. 245 Warren, Lydia 2, 6 Warren, Samuel 16, 61, 75 wartime 223–4, 230–1, 237 web-browsing 40–1, 43 Webster, Andrew 200 WeChat 86 Weiser, Mark 152 well-being

AI society 25 community 25, 107, 113, 114, 126, 243–4, 248–9 and contentment 139, 142, 143, 262 harmony 263 post-digital 18 slow technology 152 virtue ethics 152–3 see also eudaimonia

Wen, Ming-Hui 202 Westlund, Andrea 78 Weston, Anthony 29n1 WhatsApp 45, 129, 147 WhatsMyIP website 40 Wheeler, Deborah 157 White, Aoife 44 Whitehouse, Diane 152, 153, 154 Whiteman, Gail 153

Whitman, James Q. 60, 61, 66, 70 Wichowski, Amber 164 Wiener, Norbert 216, 263, 267–8, 269 wifi networks 55 Wikipedia 108–9 Williams, Nancy 255 Wilson, Robert A. 256 wisdom 261, 265, 268

see also phronēsis women

clothing laws 175 emancipation 77, 176, 181, 207, 229, 230, 258n4 emotion 253–4 freedom 60, 77 gaming 207 objectification 175 oppression of 237 reduction in harm against 184–5 sexual violence against 202, 203 subordination of 193, 207, 255 suffrage 229 violence against 7, 167, 173

Wong, Julie Carrie 178 Wong, Pak-hang 275–6, 282 Woolf, Virginia 59–60 World Economic Forum 83–4 World of Warcraft 199, 200 World Values Survey 84–5 World Wide Web 216 Wright, Paul J. 7 writing 21, 272 Wu, Muh-Cherng 202 Xiao, Bang 57 xin, Confucianism 257, 265, 273 Xu, Vicky Xiuzhong 57 Yan, Yunxiang 68

Young, Iris Marion 161 YouTube 2, 17, 42, 171–2 Yu, Peter K. 90, 113, 125 Zuboff, Shoshana xiii, 166

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