Norberto Patrignani

Slow tech: bridging computer ethics and business ethics

Purpose – This discussion paper focuses on a notion of information and communication technology (ICT) that is good, clean and fair that the authors call Slow Tech. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the Slow Tech approach in order to explain how to create a suitable bridge between business ethics and computer ethics. Design/methodology/approach – The paper’s approach is discursive. It provides a viewpoint. Its arguments are based in an examination of literature relevant to both business ethics and computer ethics. Justification is produced for the use of Slow Tech approach. A number of potential future research and application issues still to be investigated are also provided. Findings – Slow Tech can be proposed, and used, as a bridging mechanism between companies’ strategies regarding computer ethics and business ethics. Three case studies illustrate the kind of challenges that companies have to tackle when trying to implement Slow Tech in concrete business context. Further study need to be under...

The clean side of Slow Tech: an overview

– This paper aims to provide an overview of clean information and communication technology (ICT), including a brief review of recent developments in the field and a lengthy set of possible reading matter. The need to rethink the impact of ICTs on people’s lives and the survival of the planet is beginning to be addressed by a Slow Tech approach. Among Slow Tech’s main questions are these two: Is ICT sustainable in the long term? What should be done by computer ethics scholars, computer professionals, policy makers and society in general to ensure that clean ICT can be produced, used and appropriately disposed of? , – The paper is based on a comprehensive review of clean tech-related literature and an investigation of progress made in the clean tech field. , – This opening paper of a Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society special session aims to provide an overview of clean ICT, including a brief review of recent developments in the field and a lengthy set of possible reading matter. As a result, it is anticipated that Slow Tech – and in this case, its second component of clean ICT – can provide a compass to steer research, development and the use and reuse of environmentally friendly, sustainable ICT. , – This conceptual paper emphasises that, until only recently, no one questioned the potential long-term sustainability of ICT. This issue is, however, now very much a matter that is on the research and teaching, and action, agenda.

Is the Post-Turing ICT Sustainable?

In this paper we introduce a definition of post-Turing ICT with an initial analysis of its sustainability. At the beginning of the history of computing the attention was concentrated on the single machine: a device able to read and write a memory and able to execute different actions depending on the internal state. It was only in the 1960’s that the fifth function (after input, memory, processing and output) was introduced: the network, the capability of this single computational node to be connected and exchange data with similar machines. In the last fifty years the network has grown at an incredible speed, introducing us into the post-Turing ICT era: billions of electronic devices interconnected. ICT has now a significant environmental impact along all its lifetime phases: manufacturing (based on scarce minerals), application (based on growing power consumption) and e-waste management (with open cycles difficult to close). In this paper, we introduce relevant topics to understand whether the current ICT production and consumption paradigms are sustainable, and the social consequences and implications of such a problem for stakeholders.

Computers, time and speed : Five slow tech case studies

This chapter examines briefly the notions of time and speed. It introduces the notion of Slow Tech: information technology that is good, clean and fair, and places an especial emphasis on technology that is clean. This chapter does not delve deep into the Slow Tech concept. Rather, it highlights a set of arguments about why speed is not always important or necessary. People are now increasingly beginning to think about much longer periods and phases that may extend at least as long as the existence of human beings on the globe. As illustrations, the chapter explores five specific case studies. Each comes from a different location, yet all describe global implications and challenges. One example is in fact a mathematical model. Two sites, in sympathy with the location of the Human Choice and Computing 11 (HCC11) conference, are from Scandinavia – one from Onkalo, Finland, and a second from Svalbard, a northern Norwegian island. A further two cases are from the United States of America. The logic behind these five case studies strengthens the arguments about why − with the support of the Slow Tech concept − it is increasingly important for society and its many stakeholders to question the current information and communication technology (ICT) obsession with speed and rethink the relationships between society and technology.

On the Complex Relationship Between ICT Systems and the Planet

This paper addresses the challenges of designing sustainable Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems. The complexity of ICT systems, the number of stakeholders involved (technology providers, policy makers, users, etc.), and the extension and global scale of ICT supply chain are the main challenges at the core of the complex relationship between ICT systems and the planet Earth. ICT offer an opportunity for an exchange between matter-energy and information: the better use of information offers the great opportunity for decreasing the environmental impact of human activities by decreasing the matter and energy consumption. But, on the other side, like any human activity, the design, production, use, and disposal of complex ICT systems, has as a consequence a growth in entropy. This intriguing dilemma is one of the most difficult challenges in front of designers, ICT companies, users, and policy makers. This paper concentrates on the designers, the engineers’ dilemmas: what are the ethical competences, the skills, the methods for addressing these complex ethical dilemmas? Among the many ethical approaches, the “virtue/future ethics” is proposed as a core ethical competence for the designers and engineers of the future.

Forget About Privacy … or Not?

This book chapter reflects the content of one of the 2017 IFIP summer school’s workshops. This workshop’s focus was chiefly around whether one should forget about privacy as a basic human right. The workshop was co-led by members of the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP)’s working group on social accountability and computing. The challenge was proffered that today’s commercial push for free trade in people’s data, supported by information technologies, requires counterbalancing efforts to be made from the public interest point of view. During the workshop, this preoccupation with the public interest was addressed through a number of different questions, which in turn inspired in-depth discussions. Each of the four questions/topics covered is handled here in a separate section of the book chapter. The four points are illustrated through images and illustrations that have often been drawn from works from the fields of art, education, ethics, film, literature, and philosophy.

Slow Tech: a roadmap for a good, clean and fair ICT

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how Slow Tech can support the celebration of the 20-year series of ETHICOMP conferences, with its ethical and societal focus, building on earlier descriptions of Slow Tech. The paper takes Slow Tech’s ideas a step further to explore how a roadmap and concrete checklist of activities can be developed. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is a thought leadership or conceptual piece. Its approach is based on a normative, qualitative discourse. It, nevertheless, indicates a shift towards concrete actions. Findings – Extracting from a brief historical overview, the paper lays out the means of building a Slow Tech roadmap and a Slow Tech checklist of actions. It also investigates a number of the challenges that might face Slow Tech in the future. Research limitations/implications – The paper has implications for stakeholder fields as far-ranging as corporations, computing professional associations, universities and research institutions and end-users. Origina...