Jacques Berleur

The Information society : evolving landscapes

Roots, legitimacy and ideology towards new cultural perspectives? - politics economics artificial intelligence, human mind and image of reality.

An Ethical Global Information Society

New ethical issues related to the global information society have emerged. Extraterritoriality and legal ambiguity are consequences of the global information society and cyberspace. This discussion paper summarizes key ethical issues that need to be addressed in a charter for citizens of the global information society. For each issue, the main implications for citizens of nations and of cyberspace are discussed and statements of principle are developed. These principles, set out as a charter for citizens, are intended for use as: guidelines by law-makers and decisionmakers in government and industry; an ethical framework for possible future international legislation; and as benchmarks for citizens and cybercitizens in assessing their rights and obligations in relation to the global information society and cyberspace.

Progress towards a world-wide code of conduct

In this paper the work of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Task Group on Ethics is described and the recommendations presented to the General Assembly are reviewed. While a common code of ethics or conduct has been not recommended for consideration by the member societies of IFIP, a set of guidelines for the establishment and evaluation of codes has been produced and procedures for the assistance of code development have been established within IFIP. This paper proposes that the data collected by the Task Group and the proposed guidelines can be used as a tool for the study of codes of practice providing a teachable, learnable educational module in courses related to the ethics of computing and computation, and looks at the next steps in bringing ethical awareness to the IT community.

Codes of ethics within IFIP and other computer societies

Creating ‘spaces for discussion’ on ethical issues in computing appears as one of the main tasks of an international association like IFIP. Advances in computer technology in recent years and their spread throughout the whole of society have created new dilemmas which put forward the need for improving the role of the Computer Societies, of re-evaluating the practice of the computer science profession, of including ethical considerations in computer scientists’ curricula, and - why not ? - of teaching children the ABCs of computer ethics2

15 years of ways of Internet governance: Towards a new agenda for action

The “National Information Infrastructure: Agenda for Action” of the US Department of Commerce (National Telecommunications and Information Administration, NTIA) goes back to fifteen years (1993); the “3 Internet Governance Forum” (IGF) will be held in Hyderabad (India) on December 3-6, 2008. Between those two dates, several events, documents, programmes, etc., may be regarded as signposts of Internet policy and governance: the European “Bangemann Report”, followed quickly by similar proposals by different countries, the G7’s “Global Information Infrastructure: Agenda for Cooperation”, the two phases of the World Summit on the Information Society (Geneva, December 10-12, 2003 and Tunis November 16-18, 2005), and its subsequent Internet Governance Forums (Athens 2006, Rio de Janeiro 2007, and Hyderabad at the end of 2008), as well as the 2000 eEurope programme updated in eEurope 2002, and eEurope 2005 and the i2010 Initiative, “i2010 – A European Information Society for growth and employment.” Although those documents are not always per se “policy documents” – they are called from time to time objectives, visions, framework, policy guidelines, programmes, etc. The goal of this paper is to derive some of the main social and political issues on Internet Governance that emerge from those programmes and documents. Our perspective and methodology are both historicocritical and thematic.

What kind of information society? Introduction to the HCC9 conference proceedings

The Human Choice and Computers (HCC) conferences organized by the IFIP Technical Committee 9 (TC9) have been important fora for discussing the impact of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) on society, ranging from the way ICT affect our lives at home and at the workplace to the impact that they have in institutions and communities. These conferences have permitted scholars and practitioners to discuss technology from a social perspective: once we understand that artefacts are not neutral, it becomes necessary to explore their economic, political, cultural, and social implications. In this introduction we recount briefly the history of the HCC conferences, in order to contextualise the contribution made by the HCC9 and the papers published in this book, a topic discussed in section 2.

Governance Challenges: First Lessons from the WSIS — An Ethical and Social Perspective

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), in its Geneva phase (2003) and in its Tunis phase (2005), has surely been an exciting experience, not in terms of the Summit itself, gathering respectively 11,047 participants (representing 1486 entities) and 19,401 (representing 1740 entities): most often the Summits remain events without big surprises — Tunis having perhaps escaped the rule. It has been really exciting in terms of preparation and participation: regional conferences before the Geneva Summit, PrepCom (Preparatory Committees) 1, 2 & 3 before each of the Summit’s phases, organization of different bodies, PrepCom3 resuming just three days before the start of the Tunis Summit, etc. From the time of the first UN Resolution until the post 2005 Summit position of the civil society, thousands of people have been thinking about an age, which seems both still to come, and where we are already living: the Information Age, the Information Society, the knowledge society, the digital society... They have started to think about warnings concerning the social and ethical issues.

Key Issues in IFIP-SIG9.2.2 Approaches to Ethics of Computing

Within IFIP ethics has been a preoccupation for a long time. Debate started formally in 1988 about a proposed international ‘Code of Ethics’. The 1992 General Assembly concluded that the time was not ripe to adopt such a Code and asked a TC9 Task Force to provide recommendations. First, a full analysis of the current codes of IFIP member societies was undertaken. This enlightened the major deontological professional issues, such as respectful general attitude, conscientiousness, competence, promotion of privacy and confidentiality, and transparency of information. A special interest group (SIG9.2.2) was established in 1994 to support the creation of ‘spaces for discussion’ where ethical debate could be promoted and supported throughout IFIP and other constituencies. In a second phase, SIG9.2.2 confronted ethics and the governance of the Internet. It published a monograph that developed the main Internet-related issues that had appeared in new charters, commandments, codes and guidelines. The third phase focuses on the relationship between ethics and self-regulation. Our conclusions are that matters of interest to business and commerce tend to have legal force and regulation, but the real principles and issues of ethics tend still to be subject to no legal force. Society needs to confront this.

Self-regulation: Content, Legitimacy and Efficiency - Governance and Ethics

It is not always easy to speak about ethics in the context of the global information society, at least in some influent circles. People prefer the term ‘governance’, especially if it is associated with self-regulation. This paper summarises the findings of the analysis of some 40 self-regulation documents, using a standardised grid of analysis, carried out by IFIP-SIG9.2.2 (International Federation for Information Processing, Special Interest Group on Ethics of Computing). These documents include general texts about computing and information systems, both for the public and for professionals. There are also more specialised texts dealing with the Internet, and with specific domains. Among the latter, there are still generic documents, but also approaches by specific sectors. A list of the documents analysed is given in the Annex.

Remarks on a “Framework for Social and Ethical Issues” Report

This paper brings a contribution to the clarification of a conceptual framework and rationale presented for defining and integrating ethical and social issues into computer science curriculum. It tries to take into account the reflection on the subject for the last 25 years and suggests a new framework which simplifies the proposal, but keeps its main features.