Wessel Reijers

The illusion of the digital commons : ‘False consciousness’ in online alternative economies

Digital commons such as Wikipedia, open-source software, and hospitality exchanges are frequently seen as forms of resistance to capitalist modes of production and consumption, as elements of alternative economies. In this article, however, we argue that the digital commons cannot by themselves constitute genuine forms of resistance for they are vulnerable to what we call ‘the illusion of the digital commons’, which leads to a form of ‘false consciousness’ that Sloterdijk designates as deep-rooted cynicism. This cynicism, we argue, ties in with the contemporary discontent with practices in the ‘sharing economy’, in which we pay particular attention to the practice of hospitality exchange on platforms such as BeWelcome, Couchsurfing, and Airbnb. We utilize Georg Simmel’s theory of money to explicate how exchange relations are mediated by technologically enabled explicit and implicit price mechanisms. Accordingly, we argue that the technologically mediated practice of digital commoning can constitute the ‘illusion of the commons’, an apparent form of commoning through digital exchanges that is inherently vulnerable to foster non-emancipatory practices. We argue that this results in a form of cynicism: of commoners that are disillusioned by ‘the power of things’. Only a ‘politics of the digital commons’, a democratic governance that keeps a check on the vulnerability of digital exchanges, and a free relation to technologies can help in avoiding the illusion of the digital commons.

Methods for Practising Ethics in Research and Innovation: A Literature Review, Critical Analysis and Recommendations

This paper provides a systematic literature review, analysis and discussion of methods that are proposed to practise ethics in research and innovation (R&I). Ethical considerations concerning the impacts of R&I are increasingly important, due to the quickening pace of technological innovation and the ubiquitous use of the outcomes of R&I processes in society. For this reason, several methods for practising ethics have been developed in different fields of R&I. The paper first of all presents a systematic search of academic sources that present and discuss such methods. Secondly, it provides a categorisation of these methods according to three main kinds: (1) ex ante methods, dealing with emerging technologies, (2) intra methods, dealing with technology design, and (3) ex post methods, dealing with ethical analysis of existing technologies. Thirdly, it discusses the methods by considering problems in the way they deal with the uncertainty of technological change, ethical technology design, the identification, analysis and resolving of ethical impacts of technologies and stakeholder participation. The results and discussion of our literature review are valuable for gaining an overview of the state of the art and serve as an outline of a future research agenda of methods for practising ethics in R&I.

Narrative Ethics of Personalisation Technologies

Personalisation of digital content is becoming one of the major focus areas of contemporary research in human-computer interaction. Interactions between humans and computer systems such as information retrieval operations, digital learning and self-monitoring are “tailored” to the needs of the human user. In this paper, we aim to increase our philosophical understanding of personalisation and of its ethical implications. We utilise a framework of ethics of narrative technologies that is based on the narrative theory of Paul Ricoeur to explicate how personalisation processes shape the person and interpersonal relations. We argue that personalisation processes can actively configure the narrative understanding of a person they interact with – by which they can implicitly change or re-enforce a person’s normative worldview. Also, personalisation processes can abstract from the world of action by means of profiling – which can have significant risks with regards to the consistency of a person’s character.

The BigFoot Initiative: An Investigation of Digital Footprint Awareness in Social Media

Social media has become an important part of modern-day communication. Advantages span from instant communication via direct messages to sharing and consuming content and experiences. Lately, social media applications have been criticized for assisting the spreading of harmful or fake news and distorting reality by enabling unauthentic self-representation. It is often argued, that social media platforms are solely responsible for these challenges and for offering solutions. This research uses the notion of a digital footprint, a codified representation of a users social media engagement, to facilitate user reflection. This footprint, however, is mostly a product of the users deliberate and conscious engagement. This paper argues that users also have a responsibility in addressing the above-mentioned challenges by increasing their awareness of their social media usage. This paper presents a study with close to 300 participants investigating if they are aware of their digital footprint in social media. The paper presents the overall challenges, as well as experimental design and results, with the goal of motivating further debate regarding user awareness of their social media usage.

Digital commoning and its challenges

This article is a reply to Kostakis’ paper ‘In Defense of Digital Commoning’. It welcomes the criticisms raised by Kostakis against our initial account of the Illusion of the Digital Commons. We argue that we can largely defend our initial account by (1) justifying our choice for discussing ‘hybrid’ forms of digital commoning, (2) explaining the strategy of our approach, and (3) offering an additional critique of the digital platform as a basis for political action.

Discussing Ethical Impacts in Research and Innovation: The Ethics Canvas

Technologies are increasingly intertwined with people’s daily lives. Consequently, there is an increasing need to consider the ethical impacts that research and innovation (R&I) processes, both in commercial and non-commercial contexts, bring about. However, current methods that offer tools for practicing ethics in R&I inadequately allow for non-ethicists such as engineers and computer scientists to practise ethics in a way that fits the character of their work. As a response, we propose a tool for identifying ethical impacts of R&I that is inspired by a method for the generation of business models, the Business Model Canvas. This tool, the Ethics Canvas, enables researchers to engage with the ethical impacts of their R&I activities in a collaborative manner by discussing different building blocks that together constitute a comprehensive ethical interpretation of a technology. To assess the perceived usefulness of the Ethics Canvas, a classroom experiment was conducted, followed-up by a questionnaire. The results suggest that the Ethics Canvas (1) is perceived as useful for identifying relevant stakeholders and potential ethical impacts and (2) potentially triggers reconsiderations of technology designs or business models.

Narrative technologies meets virtue ethics in alternate reality: investigating the possibility of a narrative virtue ethics of technology, using the example of pokémon go

Virtue ethics offers a promising starting point for thinking about ethics of technology. Usually, virtue ethics of technology focuses on explaining how we can cultivate our technomoral virtues to cope with technological change. However, it is not clear yet how exactly technologies in turn mediate technomoral virtues, or more precisely how the technological practices that cultivate these virtues do so. Inspired by Ricoeur and MacIntyre, this paper responds to this challenge with an account of technological mediation based on Ricoeurs narrative theory, and explores the possibility of a narrative virtue ethics of technology. We argue that the virtues are technologically mediated because particular technologies configure the practices by which people cultivate their virtues. We demonstrate how this approach could be applied by discussing the example of Pokémon Go: an alternate reality game that enjoyed a brief time of great global popularity and allows players to act through the game in the real world.

Mark Coeckelbergh: Money machines: electronic financial technologies, distancing, and responsibility in global finance

Abstract This book review critically analyzes Mark Coecelbergh’s newest work: “Money Machines”. In his book, Coeckelbergh discusses the epistemic, social and moral distances that are created by modern financial technologies. It consists of a historical analysis of financial technologies from cowrie shells to digital money, a theoretical analysis of the distancing effects of financial technologies which revolves around the theories of Simmel and McLuhan and a discussion of the empirical instances of modern money machines within the framework of distancing. Two problems and one missed opportunity of the book are discussed in this review: the underdeveloped nature of the theory of distancing which leaves the reader with multiple open questions, the absence of established theories of money and the sometimes uncritical comparison of different theories applied to analyse financial technologies. Nevertheless, the book convincingly manages to open up a novel branch of research in the field philosophy and ethics of technology. Its highly original discussion of financial technologies and embracement of Simmel as a philosopher of technology provide for interesting prospects for future work.