Cover page

Series title

Digital Media and Society Series

Digital Media Ethics

Third Edition

charles ess

polity

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

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.