Ethical Principles for the Information Age

Richard Severson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317471165
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Public Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This text presents the author's model of following principled ethics together with by chapters on each of the guiding principles: respect for intellectual property, principle of fair representation, privacy, and the principle of nonmalfeasance. It avoids the use of technical jargon.

Chapter 1

Introduction to Principled Ethics

Almost thirty years before he published The Origin of Species (1859), Charles Darwin spent five years exploring South America’s coasts as an unpaid naturalist aboard the ship HMS Beagle. The rigors of the trip—its isolation, physical labors, and abundant exposure to exotic species and geological formations—helped transform Darwin into a skilled observer and writer. At the southern tip of South America is the large island called Tierra del Fuego, which means “land of fire.” It was heavily forested, cold, cloudy, and sparsely inhabited by tribal natives at the time of Darwin’s visit. In his memoir, Darwin describes several encounters with the Fuegian people. He was struck by what interested (and did not interest) the Fuegians about their European visitors. They were fascinated by the colorful clothing of the Europeans and the rowboats that were used to shuttle from ship to shore. Darwin noticed that the row-boats were roughly the same size as the dugout canoes that the Fuegians used. But no Fuegians paid the slightest attention to the massive sailing ship that lay anchored in their waters. It was as if the ship were so far removed from the everyday world of Tierra del Fuego that the Fuegians had no way to conceive its purpose. Without conception of its place in their world, they were forced to pretend it did not exist.¹

At first glance, it might seem appropriate to think of computer technology as a modern-day version of the Beagle. There is a temptation (at least for some of us) to “act like Fuegians” by avoiding computers and scoffing at people who hype the “information age.” Taking a skeptical stance can be healthy and refreshing. In the end, however, we will all become efficient computer users. Automated teller machines (ATMs) are too convenient to ignore for long, as are automated library catalogs and even E-mail accounts. How the Internet works is not a worrisome question for generations raised on Star Trek We know how to conceive exotic new technologies, which function more like Darwin’s rowboat in our ever-changing society. Our difficulty is different from the Fuegians’.

We have become accustomed to an electronic world that is far removed from the rhythms of nature that used to govern human activities. When the sun goes down, electric lights give us other options than going to bed.² Telephones and television have created a sense of instant intimacy between cultures and places that used to be permanently foreign. CNN coverage of the nighttime bombing of Baghdad in 1991 comes to mind as an eerie example of how electronic media have overcome the age-old barrier of physical distance. As unregulated conduits of information and commerce, computer networks (the next evolutionary stage in electronic technologies) now threaten the integrity and meaning of national borders.

The benefits and blessings of life in the electronic age are undeniable. So, too, is the fact that we are becoming more and more dependent on technology. Technology dependence has made human life permanently more complicated. Complexity is one of the unthought consequences of life in an electronic world. It has infiltrated every aspect of our lives, including the way we think. Have you noticed this? There is a tendency to make everything more complicated. Now that we have the world of information at our fingertips on the Web, we don’t know how to stop searching and come to a conclusion. Or think of the millions of new pages of law that are being promulgated by the federal government in order to maintain some sense of national “order.” A New York attorney recently wrote a best-seller about how too much law is killing America.³ He said that we have lost our common sense, and I agree. Whereas the Fuegians lived in a simple world and had difficulty conceiving complex intrusions, we live in a complex world and have difficulty grasping the simple truths that make life meaningful.

The ship that we have a tendency to ignore is not computer technology but our own moral compass. Morality gives direction to our lives because it enables us to determine what is good and what isn’t. It is a deliberative practice that we acquire from our upbringing and culture. A critical part of our moral upbringing is the development of a conscience or inner voice that will guide us in our deliberations about what is good and right. Morality and conscience can’t function properly, however, if we don’t stop and listen. Here is the problem with too much technology dependence and complexity: we get so busy and fill our lives with so many distractions that we forget how important it is to sit quietly. Does it feel awkward when you find yourself alone in a silent room? If you are like me, your life is full and fast-paced: I usually read the paper with my breakfast, listen to the radio on the drive to work, log onto the computer first thing at my desk, listen to music on a portable CD player when I exercise, and watch television for relaxation at night. With so many opportunities to be entertained every moment when I am awake, there is little opportunity for reflection. Yet it is an essential part of human experience simply to ruminate about how and why to be good. How can I listen to my conscience if I don’t make time for quiet reflection?

When we consistently ignore the moral reflection that gives meaning and direction to our lives, I believe there is an eventual negative effect. I agree with the Time magazine columnist who claims we may have created a world of false electronic intimacies that reduces our morality to a kind of sleaze entertainment whereby only the unimaginable (the horrible murder of Susan Smith’s children, for example) gets through to us.⁴ In other words, we have a tendency to become spectators rather than moral agents, easily bored, awaiting the next O.J. Simpson trial or billion-dollar Barings bank shutdown to break through the heavy flow of everyday news that anesthetizes us. When we forget to be our moral selves, we lose a sense of community or shared responsibility and start blaming others if life doesn’t go exactly as we wish.

One hope I have for this book is that it will persuade you to take more time for moral reflection in our busy, technology-driven world. A moral compass is like muscle tone: it must be exercised frequently in order to maintain vigor. It is just as easy to forget about one’s moral well-being as it is to forget about one’s physical health. It may be hard to pinpoint the onset of difficulties due to the neglect of physical or moral exercise, but it isn’t hard to see trends such as an increase in heart disease cases or civil lawsuits. The moral life requires nurture, especially in a time such as ours when it is easy to be distracted day after day. In the next section, I indicate how ethics can help us stay on track with our moral responsibilities. It is too late for the Fuegians to realize that the new culture represented by Darwin’s visiting ship would eventually overwhelm their own culture; I hope we do not continue to ignore the increasingly invisible ship of our moral compass.

Morality and Ethics

Most people use the terms morality and ethics interchangeably. That is certainly acceptable, but I believe it leads to confusion about the purpose of ethics. As I have already suggested, morality refers to the sense of conscience and right and wrong that we derive from our upbringing. Morality is highly personal and often functions instinctively. Suppose I am shopping in a music store and the clerk leaves for several minutes. It would be tempting to pocket the CD I am inspecting and walk out the door. Let’s assume there are no electromagnetic alarm systems to worry about, so the risk of being apprehended for shoplifting is very small. Then what happens? My conscience kicks in and tells me that stealing the CD would be wrong. Heeding my conscience, I decide to wait for the clerk to ring up my sale. This is a typical moral experience, which happens almost automatically (like a reflex). Ethics, on the other hand, is more structured and deliberative; it is a kind of critical thinking about the moral life.

In normal circumstances, our morality works fine. Its guidance and warning signals (the voice of conscience, a feeling of guilt or apprehension, an immediate conviction of being right or wrong) are usually enough to ensure our goodness. The problem is that our moral instincts don’t function well in situations that are new and complex. As with most endeavors, like playing the piano, our morals depend on habit and practice. In order to become a good piano player, I must develop the habit of practicing every day; in order to become a good moral agent, I must also develop and practice good habits. What if I only practice chopsticks and simple melodies on the piano? No matter how much practice time I put in, I will be unable to play a Bach concerto because it would require experience and ability of a much higher order. This kind of discrepancy between levels of difficulty happens in the moral life, too. In order to overcome the gap between my piano experience and the experience required to play Bach, a guide or teacher must be found. The same is true for morality. Ethics is a guide for our morality when we face complicated situations that eclipse the level of our prior moral experience.

Ethics brings the discipline of thinking to the moral life so that we can figure out what to do when our instincts become overloaded. Think of what has happened in high-tech hospitals. New medical machines and drugs are capable of keeping people alive beyond the point of what we used to think of as natural death (i.e., loss of breath and heartbeat). The normal moral instinct to fight for life can become burdensome, even ludicrous, in some cases when life-sustaining technologies are misapplied. When do we stop using every available means to save a life and allow the patient to die with dignity? This is a dramatic example of how technological innovation can create a new and more complex world that outruns our moral experience. Over the past several decades, biomedical ethicists have developed a short list of ethical principles to which medical professionals can refer as they counsel patients and their families about options for treatment.⁵ I believe that information technologies have advanced to the point at which an analogy to the hospital situation of a generation ago is appropriate.

One of the early symbols of moral crisis in health care was Karen Anne Quinlan’s tragic story, which was widely reported in 1975 and 1976. Involved in a life-threatening accident at the age of twenty-one, Quinlan was in a deep coma and required the use of a respirator to breathe. Her parents asked that the respirator be turned off so that their daughter could die a natural death. The doctors refused because they believed it would violate their ethical obligation to protect life and avoid taking any action that might lead to a patient’s death. A lower court upheld the doctors’ position, but the New Jersey supreme court sided with the parents. Ironically, after the respirator was turned off, Quinlan began to breathe on her own and lived in a comatose state for more than nine years. This heart-wrenching case forced us to see that the ancient moral principle to do no harm (which had guided doctors for hundreds of years) was no longer sufficient in medical practice. Because of new and expensive technologies, other considerations are equally important. For instance, we must respect the privacy and autonomy of patients who wish to decline lifesaving measures. We also have to think about how much good is being done for the individual and society at large when great expense is incurred to satisfy a doctor’s desire to preserve life. Biomedical ethicists try to point out the competing moral interests that are at stake in high-tech health care. Sticking to just one rule or principle (do no harm) is too simplistic now.

A number of cases are potentially just as important for information ethics as Quintan’s case was for biomedical ethics. There is the 1988 case of Robert Morris, the Cornell University student who devised a worm program that crippled much of the Internet, supposedly spreading as a virus to more than six thousand computers before being detected. Morris was suspended from school for violating the university’s code of academic conduct. The punishment was little more than a slap on the wrist. Nevertheless, the case helped focus attention on the need for moral guidelines regarding computer networks. There is also the case of Colonel Oliver North’s supposedly deleted E-mail regarding the illegal sale of arms to Iran and the subsequent transmission of aid to the contras in Nicaragua. An operative in the Ronald Reagan administration, North sent Email messages to Admiral John Poindexter and others about his covert activities. North and Poindexter assumed that hitting the delete button erased all traces of their electronic correspondence. They were mistaken. Backup copies of North’s E-mail were retrieved and used in court. The case focused attention on the proprietary issues surrounding electronic mail. Is E-mail the private property of the correspondents? Or does it belong to the employer that makes the system available?

Admiral Jeremy Boorda’s surprising suicide in May 1996 seems especially analogous to the Quinlan case because it pertains to our perceptions of death and dying. There must have been many reasons for America’s highest-ranking naval officer to end his life in such a fashion. One that he specifically revealed in two suicide notes pertained to the negative attention the press was paying to his Vietnam medals. The media were questioning his right to wear combat “v” insignia. To blame the media for Boorda’s death would be unjust. But we must wonder about the “in-your-face, rush-to-judgment” mentality that often prevails in our society. News is not just the news anymore; it has to compete with other entertainment venues. In an information society, the average story cannot break through the glut of competing stories without being sensationalized to some extent. When a child starves in an African village, the whole world can witness it through television. This capacity to publicly document every event and experience often creates situations of unbearable moral intensity, according to one ethical commentator.⁶ I believe Boorda’s sense of everyday morality was overrun by the unrealistic intensity and censure that is a consequence of high-tech media pressures. It is my contention that ethics, as disciplined reflection on the moral life, can help us to restore our sense of moral balance when life becomes overly intensified.

In a thoughtful tribute to Boorda, retired Admiral Leon Edney made the observation that Americans are losing the ability to debate and disagree.⁷ In order to have a debate, we must first be civil. Ci...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1. Introduction to Principled Ethics
• Chapter 2. Respect for Intellectual Property
• Chapter 3. Respect for Privacy
• Chapter 4. Fair Representation
• Chapter 5. Nonmaleficence
• Appendix: Case Studies
• Bibliography
• Index