The following notes were written by Charles Ess President of the Association for Internet Researchers (AOIR) and a Professor of Philosophy at Drury University and Aarhus University. On May 22nd. we hosted Charles Ess and Elizabeth Buchanan in a research seminar at the Information School in University of Washington. The topic was Internet and changes in Human Subjects but later it took the direction of ethics of research in an information age. I am thankful to Charles who accepted my invitation to upload his notes here. Hopefully it will create a discussion on the topic.

Notes By Charles Ess:

We began with an epistemological continuum – from “subjective” on the left to “objective” on the right. (These terms are in scare quotes because these distinctions derive from 19^th century assumptions about knowledge that no longer hold for important but complex reasons. Another story for another time.) To illustrate and provide examples of methodologies and/or disciplines that undertake research more affiliated with one side of the continuum than the other, I suggested:

But on top of this these, further, are the ethical frameworks that we most frequently bring into play – along with foundational assumptions regarding the nature of the self. 

So, we find (especially in the U.S. and the U.K.) on the right side of the line, a tendency towards utilitarianism – a kind of ethical “cost-benefit” analysis that, in language familiar to anyone who has read the relevant regulations and guidelines, seeks to minimize risk of harm to subjects – but justifies such risks in terms of the greater good, i.e., the potential benefits of such research for the larger community. 

At the same time, however, we also use (more especially in the Germanic countries, for example) deontologies that emphasize the (near-)absolute rights of human beings. These rights include the foundational rights that are protected under Human Subjects – i.e., rights to informed consent (respecting the basic right of consent essential to beings that are free), privacy and thereby anonymity and confidentiality. This ethical approach, moreover, is affiliated with a modern Western conception of the self as something of an “atomistic self” – the radical individual of modernity that begins with the Protestant Reformation and is articulated by such political philosophers as Thomas Hobbes. (For discussion, see Ess 2009a, ch. 6.)

Conceptions of Self/selves. Here’s where things start to get a little complicated. While utilitarianism tends to assume and be affiliated with a more atomistic conception of the self – deontologies extend at least through a kind of middle conception of the self, what we might call a communitarian conception, one that recognizes that the self is bound up in important ways with those around it, e.g., a close circle of family and friends:

Here, the NESH reference is to the Norwegian guidelines for Internet research. These guidelines explicitly oblige researchers to respect and protect not only the privacy, anonymity, and/or confidentiality of a given individual subject – but also those of his/her close friends and family. The intuition/assumption here is quite simple: publication of sensitive information about a given individual, e.g., as being HIV positive, will not only likely have very negative consequences for the individual, but also for his/her close circle of friends and family. Hence, there are deontologically-based requirements to protect these rights to privacy, etc., for both the individual subject and his/her immediate circle of close relationships.

This takes us still further to the left – to the sense of self as relational or, in slightly different terms, “smeared out.” This is a sense of self that is characteristic of many cultures and peoples around the world, including those countries shaped by Confucian traditions, as well as indigenous peoples, e.g., in Africa (see Paterson 2007), North America, the polar peoples, etc. My friend and colleague Henry Rosemont, Jr., uses the metaphor of the onion vs. the peach. The atomistic self is something like the peach-pit that underlies an external body: while the external body undergoes change and decay – the peach-pit remains the same through time. Relationships with others for such a self are always extrinsic: even if all such relationships are removed, the peach-pit will continue to exist. By contrast, the relational self is constituted by its diverse relationships with others – e.g., friends, family, the larger community, etc. – with each relationship analogous to a layer in the onion. Such relationships are intrinsic to such a self: remove the relationships – peel away every layer of the onion – and there is nothing left.

Such relational selves, finally, are affiliated – so far as I can tell, in every culture and tradition I have explored – with virtue ethics. Precisely because there is no self as “given” – i.e., the peach-pit that remains the same through time – our task as understood within virtue ethics is to become better, more excellent human beings: but this means, human beings characterized by their practices and habits, including the excellences or virtues, e.g., of patience, perseverance, humility, compassion, forgiveness, and so forth. In Confucian thought, as an example, the virtues or human(e) excellences brought to the forefront are those that contribute not only to the well-being of the individual, but also to community harmony.

A central point: we in the “Western” cultures have been moving towards both this (for the moment, more “Eastern”) conception of the relational self for at least a few decades – and with it, towards a (re)new(ed) emphasis on virtue ethics. Very briefly: both environmental and feminist thought – e.g., as Carol Gilligan put it in 1982, the self as interwoven in a “web of relationships,” and as the two are brought together in the work of eco-feminist Karen Warren (1990) – thereby stress our interconnections with one another and larger communities. At the same time, virtue ethics is in the midst of a significant renaissance, as our experience with utilitarian and even deontological frameworks highlights important lacks or deficits that virtue ethics can overcome. As Rosalind Hursthouse puts it, for all of their strengths, neither deontology nor utilitarianism seem 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). In supplementing utilitarianism and deontology in these ways, virtue ethics thus promises to thus work with these frameworks in complementary fashion.

While all of this pre-dates the emergence of the internet and the world wide web – the introduction and explosive diffusion of these technologies have accelerated this turn towards the relational self. Most briefly, in the phrase of Wellman and Haythornthwaite (2002), these technologies foster the emergence of the networked individual, i.e., an individual who is inextricably interwoven with both strong-tie and weak-tie relationships – numberings in the hundreds, if not the thousands – by way of networked computers and other forms of networked digital communications. More recently, i.e., loosely in conjunction with so-called “Web 2.0,” – i.e., applications that emphasize interactivity, whether in the form of Social Networking Sites and micro-blogging, and/or in the form of sites such as YouTube, Wikipedia, and others – what Axel Bruns calls the “pro/sumer” appears: such “pro/summers” are both active producers and consumers of self-generated content, in contrast with the more traditional (and comparatively more passive) consumers of professionally-produced mass media content (see Burnett, Consalvo, & Ess 2009). 

Finally, we can think of the self as engaged with Others via social networking sites, blogs, etc., as a “smeared-out” self. That is, via a Facebook or Twitter status update, chat possibilities, etc., at any moment in time, we exist as selves with hundreds, if not thousands of potential connections and interactions. These potentials are realized, however, a few or only one at a time – a friend comments on your status in FB or responds to a specific “tweet,” and you in turn may decide to respond, either with a further comment, a direct message, perhaps an email or perhaps a chat – or not at all. In this way, our self as a web of manifold but largely potential relationships is realized with just a few relationships, or perhaps only one relationship at a time. In this way, our sense of self as a relational self is “smeared-out” among a cloud of possible relationships.

This means at the same time, however, that what Anders Albrechstlund (2008) has helpfully identified as “lateral surveillance” becomes increasingly important – and increasingly the norm. It’s as if such a relational self is more dependent upon the recognition and reinforcement of the Others in its network in order to have a sense of its own reality and significance. And so we seek – perhaps crave – the recognition of Others, if only in the form of phatic communication (e.g., the quick “like” or comment response to a FB status, the quick poke or brief message, etc.) This lateral surveillance, as Albrechtslund points out, is a very old phenomenon among human communities, where such surveillance and communication help bind the community together.

At the same time, however, such a relational or smeared-out self, as so deeply interwoven with such networked communities, thereby practices and expects a very different sort of “privacy” than the atomistic self that has predominated in the modern west, especially over the last century or so (see Meeler 2008). At least, it appears that younger people seem to be much more willing to reveal what people in my generation would regard as extremely personal and thus extremely private sorts of information to others via CMC technologies: indeed, from the standpoint of such an atomistic self, such willful self-disclosure seems to run dangerously close to a kind of “big brother” surveillance society. For us – those of us presuming the modern atomistic self (as foundational to liberal, democratic societies) – this willful self-disclosure seems naïve, if not terribly dangerous.

But seen from the standpoint of the relational or smeared-out self – such self-disclosure is part and parcel of what Albrechtslund calls voluntary or participatory surveillance, forms of surveillance that include the lateral surveillance essential to such selves as interwoven with one another in extensive and complex webs of relationships.

Insofar as any of this is true, then we can expand our diagram still further:

It can be said here, finally, that these transformations are part and parcel of a larger transformation and convergence that seems to be taking place between “Western” and “Eastern” cultures. That is, on the one hand, the phenomenon of lateral surveillance suggests a move towards a more Eastern sense of the self as a relational self – and with it, a lack of insistence on the kind of privacy affiliated with the modern Western atomistic self, especially over the past century or so (ref to first definition of privacy as a legal right). On the other hand, young people in Eastern cultures – specifically Japan, China, and Thailand – have increasingly come to insist on a more Western-style sense of individual privacy, much to the consternation of their parents (Ess 2005). 

Along these same lines, as I have discussed earlier, Soraj Hongladarom has offered a model of a Buddhist empirical self, one that resembles the classical modern Western self that justifies and legitimates liberal democracies. This Buddhist cousin to the Western individual would thereby move Thailand, for example, towards a more democratic, liberal society: but at the same time, this Buddhist concept remains distinctively Buddhist, reflecting the Theravadan Buddhism that defines over 90% of Thais. What emerges here, then, is a pluralistic conception of self – and with it, both ethics and politics. That is, while we may agree in both West and East on a relational self, affiliated with virtue ethics, and justifying a liberal democracy – how these shared norms and beliefs are applied, interpreted, and understood in say, the U.S. vis-à-vis Thailand, will remain distinct in ways that directly reflect and reinforce the foundational values, etc., that define each set of cultural traditions (Hongladarom 2007). Such a pluralism, I have argued, is crucial to any global ethic that seeks not only to establish a shared sense of norms, etc., but also preserve the irreducible differences that define individual and cultural identities (Ess 2005, 2006, 2009b).

In these and other ways, then, it appears that there is a growing convergence towards a more shared, global sense of self – and with it, what will likely be a shared sense of ethical norms, values, practices, etc. that will constitute a pluralistic and global information ethics, including internet research ethics as one particular component (Ess 2006, 2007). That is, as we converge towards more relational senses of self, this sense of self will bring in its train an increased emphasis on the sorts of virtue ethics appropriate to such selves. 

This leads us to the diagram in its final form:

Acknowledgements. My profound thanks to Karine Barzilai-Nahon, Alpha DeLap, Bob Mason, and Tanya Matthews for their invitation and delightful hospitality during our two days of workshops at the University of Washington. Many thanks as well to the participants, especially in Friday’s workshop, for their contributions, insights, and enthusiasm. Particular thanks go to Lori Miller, Director of the UW GenOM Project, for the question about virtue ethics that sparked this effort at response. 

References

Albrechstlund, Anders. 2008. Online Social Networking as Participatory Surveillance. First Monday, vol. 13, no. 3 (March 3, 2008). <http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2142/1949>

Burnett, Robert, Consalvo, Mia, and Ess, Charles. 2009. The Blackwell Handbook of internet Studies. New York: Wiley-Blackwell.

Ess, Charles. 2005. ‘‘Lost in translation’’?: Intercultural dialogues on privacy and information ethics (Introduction to special issue on Privacy and Data Privacy Protection in Asia), Ethics and Information Technology 7 (1): 1–6.

Ess, Charles. 2006. Ethical pluralism and global information ethics.  Ethics and Information Technology, Vol. 8, Number 4 (November): pp. 215-26.

Ess, Charles. 2007. Bridging Cultures: Theoretical and Practical Approaches to Unity and Diversity Online. Introduction to special issue, Information Ethics, International Journal of Technology and Human Interaction 3 (3 –July-September, 2007), iii-x.

Ess, Charles. 2009a. Digital Media Ethics. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Ess, Charles. 2009b. Floridi's Philosophy of Information and Information Ethics: Current Perspectives, Future Directions. The Information Society,25 (3),159-168.

Hongladarom, Soraj. 2007. Analysis and Justification of Privacy from a Buddhist Perspective. In S. Hongladarom and C. Ess (eds.), Information Technology Ethics: Cultural Perspectives,108-122. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

Meeler, David. 2008. Is Information All We Need to Protect? The Monist , vol. 1, no. 1 (January 2008), pp. 151–169.

National Committees for Research Ethics in the Sciences and the Humanities (NESH), Norway(2003). Research Ethics Guidelines for Internet Research. Retrieved December 10, 2008, from <http://www.etikkom.no/English/Publications/internet03/view_publikasjon>

Paterson, Barbara. 2007. We Cannot Eat Data: The Need for Computer Ethics to Address the Cultural and Ecological Impacts of Computing. In S. Hongladarom and C. Ess (eds.), Information Technology Ethics: Cultural Perspectives, 153-168. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

Warren, Karen. 1990. The power and the promise of ecological feminism, Environmental Ethics 12: 2 (Summer), 123-146.

Wellman, Barry, and Haythornthwaite, Caroline (eds.). 2002. The internet in Everyday Life. Oxford: Blackwell.

I was really impressed by Talal Abu-Ghazaleh statement in the UN Commission for Science and Technology for Development. While most of the speakers in the the opening ceremony were very ceremonial, he was provocative. He kindly gave me his speech and allowed me to post it here. Here it is:

"1. Allow me to start by admitting that I come from business, and for the developing world - proudly so. Thanks for inviting me in both capacities.

2. To begin with we do not live in one world. The divide, in more than one way, is our major challenge. A WSIS in Geneva and in Tunis I spoke of the unfair race between Lions and Gazelles. The gap between the developed and the developing seems to grow rather than to narrow.

3. Accordingly, we need to develop different paradigms for the developed and for the developing and to be courageous about it. Yes, there are variations in each of the two worlds. But they have one thing in common: being on one side or the other of the dividing line.

4. We need to admit that we, all of us, failed to achieve the MDGs and to stop searching for fractional successes. If so, let us all go back to scratch board and draft new MDGs. We should not give up.

5. "ICT for Development"? Yes. Yet I also believe that "ICT Development" itself is a prerequisite for "ICT for Development".  Let us emphasize both tracks-interrelated as they are. I call on UNCTAD leadership to take the lead on this.

6. Infrastructure development in all its aspects must be a priority, for the developing world of course.

7. Information Technology is moving faster than Telecom technology development. A failure by business. Industry needs to accelerate telecommunications technology development to catch up. I call on ITU leadership to take the lead on this and to get business in full gear.

8. Braodband potential is underutilized - for the benefit of the developing of course. Much more needs to be done - by business too under ITU leadership.

9. I call on governments and intergovernmental organizations to engage business as full and equal partners with equal responsibilities. Business is the major creator of knowledge and wealth. Business role is crucial for all purposes. Business should be seen as more than a subject or a tax payer for government.

10. The financial crisis attack has been reasonable absorbed. We now face the much more serious economic crisis attach. he first is like a hurricane. The second is like and epidemic.

11. I know that many will disagree with me. The solution is not in avoiding protectionism, but is rather in a balance between liberalization and  protectionism. Let us admit that this is what the developed countries are doing now.

12. Innovations in the IT were accelerated by business profit motivation. The freedom in cyberspace encouraged greater investment in IT. There, the world is yours.

13. Telecom is to be credited for its role as a medium for the interent. Yet telecom should become more of a free space in itself rather than just a free space for IT. Governments and Business should jointly work towards jointly work towards that goal.

14. I foresee a telecom revolution similar to that in IT, making telecom universally free in access and free in cost! Only that can lead us to the realization of the so-called "death of distance" dream!

15. In this world of short-terminism, we lost sight of the fact that IP, innovation and R&D are the major weapons of economic power and competitveness. We need to go back to basics. We need to motivate profit motivation for innovation in all fields.

16. We need to search for answers why didn't "mobile telephony" become the "telephone", just like how "e-mail" becomes the "mail".

17. At "Unesco vision 2025" forum, two weeks ago, I called for action oriented mandates by international organizations parallel with policy formulation. In the developing world, we need implementation sponsorships more than advice.

18. Thankd you UNCTAD. Distinguished colleagues I salute you for your tolerance. Remember idiots may be right, sometimes, as Churchill once said.

Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, Geneva, May 25, 2009, UNCTAD

The first thought that crossed my mind when I prepared myself to the meeting is that being a scholar and representing a country at the same time may pose a challenge. What if the stance I will need to represent is against my opinions? I try convincing myself that this is a commission on a professional subject and therefore the political forces are rather minor. Although, I am a great believer that politics is everywhere (I promise to update in the next posts whether I felt stretched as a scholar or not).

According to the official documents main topics that will be discussed in this meeting are twofold:

1. "To discuss development-oriented policies for socio-economic inclusive information societies, including access, infrastructure and an enabling environment. It will also discuss the building of Indigenous capabilities in science, technology and innovation, which are essential for the achievement of both short- and long-term development goals."

2. The Commission will review the progress made in the implementation of and follow-up to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) outcomes at the regional and international levels. "

It makes me excited and disappointed at the same time. I am always happy to know that topics and challenges in the information society are being discussed at high-level of policy-makers forums. But then, how can one possibly cover these two topics in five days? My skeptical inner voice says that basically it is analogous to solve all the problems of the world in five days.

Another question that I ask myself is how much the "rich" countries will be committed to an agenda that is focused on development in developing countries. It is an important question.  Once a venue becomes identified only with 'less-strong politically' countries (and it doesn't matter whether objectively they are or they are not), the discourse and discussion becomes local and silo making it difficult to solve anything.

Here is the link to the agenda of the Commission some documents about the content. I will update daily from there.

Specially, I am interested to understand the latent interests of the different actors coming to that event. For example I already learned that since it is a UN event only representatives of countries vote, putting other bodies like NGOs at a disadvantage in the process. I am not sure that such an exclusive process leaves hope for an inclusive solution. Stay tuned.

Code 2 - Lessig

Lawrence Lessig’s Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace turns 10 this year (see an update version of the book that is interactive with users - Code: Version 2.0). The Cato Institute hosted a debate about the book for this occation. Below you can find Declan McCullagh's article which criticizes Lessig's approach and the response fromJonathan Zittrain, Adam Thierer and Lessig himself.

Lead Essay

• What Larry Didn’t Get by Declan McCullagh

Responses

• How to Get What We All Want by Jonathan Zittrain
• Code, Pessimism, and the Illusion of “Perfect Control” by Adam Thierer
• Continuing the work of Code by Lawrence Lessig

Virality of Networks

One of the hottest topics currently under investigation is in the area of virality and campaigns, or the role of the Internet in political campaigns. Here are several articles from a conference titled "You Tube and the 2008 Election Cycle in the United States" -

Bob Boynton Going Viral

Kevin Wallsten "'Yes We Can': How Online Viewership, Blog Discussion, Campaign Statements and Mainstream Media Coverage Produced a Viral Video Phenomenon

LaChrystal Ricke A New Opportunity for Democratic Engagement: The CNN-YouTube Presidential Candidate Debates

Hillary Savoie YouTube, Community, and Me: The New Media Balance Between Self and Community

You can find the full list of articles and posters here: http://youtubeandthe2008election.jitp2.net/frontpage

e-Government track HICSS-42

Good papers were presented at the eGovernment track at HICSS-42. One particular paper that attracted my attention was the paper of John Bertot titled Emerging Role of Public Librarians as E-Government Providers. According to the paper libraries are becoming a central place for certain populations to access e-Government services. Some of these services you can see in the following figure taken from the article:

One of the main findings of the article is that, the demand for e-government services in libraries pose challenges. Suddenly librarians are requested to do things they were not trained for. For example, help filling up a driving license form, a birth certificate, helping with medical records etc...  Add to that the belief that many librarians share about their "neutral" role, and consequenly the article shows that librarians in some cases may serve as an obstacle to e-government deployment in Libraries. I thought one way to interprete their reluctance can be through Network Gatekeeping Theory . Gatekeepers have different rationales for gatekeeping and so librarians - it looks like one of these is the attempt to preserve their culture, the librarian's culture. E-government activities may be grasped as a threat to their training, to their neutral professional stance. Also, from a power perspective, some of them do not have enough skills to help users/patrons. That makes them feel uncomfortable and maybe afraid to be reflected externally as non-professionals or technically not-competent.

BTW - It was nice to learn that there are 17,000 public libraries in the US (which is more than the number of McDonalds branches in the US).

Understanding Global Digital Inequality: The Impact of Government, Investment in Business and Technology, and Socioeconomic Factors on Technology Utilization/Rasool Azari and James B. Pick

Another paper that received attention was this of Coward, Gomez and Ambikar - An Assessment of Venues Providing Public Access to ICT:A Tale of 25 Countries. This paper reflects the landscape project under The Center for Information & Society (CIS). which examined public access venues (Libraries, telecenters and cybercafes) and theirimpact in the context of 25 countries. Recentely I published with two colleagues from CIS (Gomez and Ambikar) a paper that elaborates the methodology of analyzing digital divide/s and inequalities, and we exemplified it through this project. The methodology paper can be found here: http://ekarine.org/wp-admin/pub/BarzilaiGomezAmbikar.pdf andt he full reports of the 25 countries can be found here .

Here are the other two papers that presented in this session:

Local-Global: Reconciling Mismatched Ontologies in Development Information Systems/Jessica Seddon Wallack and Ramesh Srinivasan

Social Ties, Literacy, Location and the Perception of Economic Opportunity: Factors Influencing Telecentre Success in a Development Context/Arlene Bailey and Ojelanki Ngwenyama

HICSS-42, Hawaii, Big Island

freedom of information

This is the first post about freedom of information. Here are some important links to different reports about freedom of information. The next phase would be reading and analyzing these reports. So stay tuned:

· Privacy International – Report about freedom of information around the world 2006 - http://www.privacyinternational.org/foi/foisurvey2006.pdf

· UN - http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/files/26159/12054862803freedom_information_en.pdf/freedom_information_en.pdf

· US government - http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07441.pdf

· UNESCO – Freedom of Information around the world 2006 http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/files/26159/12054862803freedom_information_en.pdf/freedom_information_en.pdf

· Council of Europe - http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/EN/Reports/Html/164.htm

· UK – FOI act - http://www.justice.gov.uk/publications/freedomofinformationquarterly.htm

· UK – Annual Report 2007 in the UK about freedom of information - http://www.justice.gov.uk/docs/foi-report-2007-final-web.pdf

· US Department of Justice - Reading Rooms - http://www.usdoj.gov/oip/04_2.html

An ultra-Orthodox in a cybercafe

Cultured Technology is an article that presents a theoretical framework to understand the relationship between religious fundamentalist communities and the Internet, through addressing four dimensions of tensions and challenges: hierarchy, patriarchy, discipline, and seclusion. Together with Prof. Gad Barzilai, we develop the concept of cultured technology, and analyzed the ways communities reshape technology and make it as part of their culture, while on the other hand allowing this technology to make certain changes in their customary way of life and in their unwritten laws. We also exemplified our theoretical framework through an empirical examination of ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in Israel. Our empirical study was based on an original dataset of 686,192 users and 60,346 virtual communities, while also relying on extensive literature review and secondary data. The results show the complexity of interactions between religious fundamentalism and Internet, and invite further discussions of cultured technology as a means to adapt Internet and to be adapted into it in various communities that incline to challenge technological innovations.

Click here for the full text paper in English.

Click here for the full text paper in Hebrew.

Photograph taken by Jon Hickey