The ethics of information de Luciano Floridi
Luciano Floridi develops an original ethical framework for dealing with
the new challenges posed by Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs).
ICTs have profoundly changed many aspects of life, including the nature of
entertainment, work, communication, education, health care, industrial
production and business, social relations, and conflicts. They have had a
radical and widespread impact on our moral lives and on contemporary ethical
debates. Privacy, ownership, freedom of speech, responsibility, technological
determinism, the digital divide, and pornography online are only some of the
pressing issues that characterise the ethical discourse in the information
society. They are the subject of Information Ethics (IE), the new philosophical
area of research that investigates the ethical impact of ICTs on human life and
society.
Since the seventies, IE has been a standard
topic in many curricula. In recent years, there has been a flourishing of new
university courses, international conferences, workshops, professional
organizations, specialized periodicals and research centres. However,
investigations have so far been largely influenced by professional and
technical approaches, addressing mainly legal, social, cultural and
technological problems. This book is the first philosophical monograph entirely
and exclusively dedicated to it.
Floridi lays down, for the first time, the
conceptual foundations for IE. He does so systematically, by pursuing three
goals:
a) a metatheoretical goal: it describes what IE
is, its problems, approaches and methods;
b) an introductory goal: it helps the reader to
gain a better grasp of the complex and multifarious nature of the various
concepts and phenomena related to computer ethics;
c) an analytic goal: it answers several key
theoretical questions of great philosophical interest, arising from the
investigation of the ethical implications of ICTs.
Although entirely independent of The Philosophy of Information (OUP, 2011), Floridi's previous book, The Ethics of Information complements it as new work on the
foundations of the philosophy of information.
Readership: Scholars and advanced students of
philosophy, computer science, information theory, and related disciplines.
Sursa: Oxford
University Press
