Computer Ethics

Tavani, Chap 10.1__10.4 “Reconceptualizing the Digital Divide” (Warshauer)

Variable saturation

 

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The saturation of cybertechnology, a continuum:

  _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

sparse  variably saturated universal

Saturation in terms of

1. type

2. access vs. service

3. productive use

Demographic variables:

1. Wealth and modernization of nation (2011 North America internet penetration rate of 78.3%, Africa rate of 5.3% (Cited in Tavani, page 305))

2. Class/education (2002 college educated access rate of 65%, less than high school access rate of 11.7% (Cited in Tavani, page 298 ed 2))

income

3. Race (as a function of class) (a black home is less than half as likely to have a computer or have Internet access compared to a white home. (Fairlie, R, Race and the Digital Divide, 2004) Tavani p. 312

4. Gender  Tavani  p. 314

5. Disability Tavani p. 309

 Update 2016:  Lee Rainie, Director Internet Science and Technology Research at the Pew Intstitute, in a speech to the Internet Governance Forum

 http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/07/14/digital-divides-2016/

Why is the digital divide an ethical issue?

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Negative rights:  Must not deny access and use because it would be a violation of autonomy and liberty.

Positive rights: Must provide access and conditions for productive use.

A positive rights argument must include principles or higher ends.

Justice (or distributive justice) as the principle:

1. variable access/use entails advantages for haves and disadvantages for have nots

2. these advantages and disadvantages pertain to vital goods as opposed to discretionary goods

This transforms it into an issue of social justice (or social equality) when considered in light of variability across social groups.

Answer in your journal:

Where does cybertechnology fit in?  Is it more like driving a porsche rather than a kia?   Or, is it more like having access to health care and food?

Discussion Points: What are the advantages of ICT access/use?

What are the disadvantages associated with ICT lack of access/use?

What vital goods, if any, are implicated?

 

· Some influential theories of distributive justice, fairness and equality, like that of John Rawls, discuss fair distribution in terms of shares of primary goods available to people.

· The main criticism of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum of these views is that it is not the goods that are ultimately important, but what they allow us to do and be, the kind of lives they enable us to live.

· Giving everyone a laptop or some other piece of technology is no good in and by itself, according to their ‘capability approach’. Some people will be able to make good use of it and increase their level of functioning, whereas others who are for example illiterate or do not have access to a reliable power supply cannot possibly convert their possession of this particular technology into anything useful in their lives.

· Human functioning and capabilities are therefore at the centre of the work of Nussbaum and Sen. The capability approach is thoroughly normative, since it demands that people are brought to a minimum level of capabilities necessary to lead flourishing lives.

Public Education model

 

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Education, Universal Access, and Democracy

Colonial America had carried over forms of social exclusion, mainly justified according to some form of elitism, and the assumption that certain categories of people could not or should not participate in governance, and only certain men could:

1. Property owners (first-born sons)

2. Believers of a specific religion

3. Those with money

4. Europeans

5. Men

6. Non-slaves

7. Literate

8. Non-convicts

9. Other than low IQ

Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and others encouraged social inclusion for some of these disenfranchised groups. (Our country has since followed a path of greater inclusion, e.g., those with sensory or other physical disabilities.)

 

Jefferson writing in the Declaration of Independence takes the interesting step (inadvertently?) of undermining all forms of social exclusion by claiming an essential state of equality:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,  Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Jefferson asserted that public education was a necessary resource for democracy:

1. all citizens should be responsible participants in democracy

2. citizens are less likely to be misinformed (education=power), manipulated or led to relinquish rights (the end of democracy) if educated

It was made compulsory throughout the country. (Even when health care, adequate nutrition were not!)

In this context, the question becomes whether access to information technology/internet is another necessary resource for democracy.