“Where We All Get Stuck:”

NEW TECHNOLOGIES—CALLING FOR NEW ETHICS?

Introduction to Workshop 4: Ethics

Aula Meeting of Minds

Helsinki, Saturday 15 September 2001 13:30-16:30

 

 

”Recognizing the many respects in which technologies contribute to defining who people are, what they can and cannot do, and how they understand themselves and their world should dispel the common myth that technologies are morally or politically neutral.”

- Richard Sclove

 

According to philosopher Hans Jonas, new technology has extended the power of human conduct to such an extent that traditional ethics are no longer sufficient to regulate it efficiently. Traditional ’neighborhood ethics’, he argues, were developed in a context where the consequences of human activity were more limited both spatially and temporally.Today, we posses a technology of utopian scale, capable of realizing utopias (and dystopias) that were hardly imaginable a while ago. The realm of the artificial has swallowed the realm of the natural, leaving no place or being on earth immutable to human action, including yet unborn beings. Jonas declares:”The new order of human action requires a commensurate ethics of foresight and responsibility, which is as new as are the issues with which it has to deal.”

But Jonas ends his account puzzled: “…what insight or value-knowledge shall represent the future in the present? And here is where I get stuck, and where we all get stuck.” Since the 1970s when Jonas wrote his article, a whole body of works concerning the ethics of information technology has emerged. Besides, it can also be argued that a new breed of ethics is not needed at all. But still, in that case we are left with the problem of applying existing ethical principles to the context of the emerging network society.

Jonas leaves us wondering, what exactly is the technology that provides us with such omnipotence? Gadgets with specific primary functions and some unintended ones on the side? According to Richard Sclove, technologies qualify as social structure because they regulate social behavior just as do laws and government regulations, for instance. Thus, it would be inaccurate to say that technologies affect society, since they actually constitute a substantial part of the society. Sclove claims that instead of viewing technologies as inevitable, it would be more fruitful to consider them as polypotent social constructions. The difference between technology and laws is that everyone knows laws regulate social behavior whereas most functions of technology are seemingly inconsequential.

Despite there being a plethora of existing laws, tacit conventions and other codes guiding the use and development of technologies, we may still ask whether such external constraints are able to keep up with the speed of technological development unless the innovation is intrinsically guided by strong ethical principles. This question requires us to take a closer look at the organizations where technical innovations are born, developed and deployed.

Some executives speak of ’the profit motive’ as the driving force of their companies without realizing that the phrase was originally invented by leftists criticizing socially ignorant business activities. Profits are just one of the means of rewarding company stakeholders (including executives, employees, investors, customers, and the public). A large part of business ethics is concerned with balancing the interests of different stakeholder groups in the activities of the organization. It follows that doing business is always prescribed by certain values that cannot be reduced to mere ‘profit motive’. Aligning these underlying values with the surrounding society is imperative to running a sustainable business.

Against this backdrop it is hardly surprising to observe growing interest in the ethics of companies and individuals developing information technology. The pioneers of new technology have generally not been pioneers in developing new kinds of social responsibility. One of the peculiarities of the recent shortage of skilled IT workers has been the power that skilled, hard-to-find employees wield against the official line of command in technology companies. Should these influential individuals carry their share of the responsibility of corporate conduct since they possess the means to influence the decisions? Should IT workers develop a professional code of ethics similar to those of journalists, doctors and lawyers?

In fact, it has been proposed that a new kind of work ethic is prevailing within the hacker community­­–one that is in stark contrast with the ‘making a living’ attitude of the industrial working class. But while the passionate way of working associated with hackers might provide more opportunities for self-expression to individual employees, it remains open whether this mode of working manages to account for different stakeholders’ interests more equally in the long run. Hackers or not, the passion among people in high technology has mostly focused on making money during the recent economic developments.

The objective of the workshop is to provide for inspiring discussion and to identify and conceptualize some key issues regarding ethics in the information society. The following readings have been selected to set up a common starting point for discussion. I strongly encourage everybody to read these before Saturday.

 

 

Himanen, Pekka (2000). Excerpt ”Money as a Motive” from book The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age. Random House: New York.

 

Jonas, Hans (1974). Technology and Responsibility: Reflections on the New Task of Ethics. In Winston, Morton E. &  Edelbach, Ralph D. (2000). Society, Ethics and Technology. Wadsworth: Belmont, California.

 

Kakkonen, Kari (2001). Ohjelmistoteollisuuden eettiset pelisäännöt. Economic Trends 3: 42 – 45.

 

Sclove, Richard (1995). I’d Hammer Out Freedom: Technology as Politics and Culture. In Winston, Morton E. &  Edelbach, Ralph D. (2000). Society, Ethics and Technology. Wadsworth: Belmont, California.

 

Solomon, Robert C. (1991). Business Ethics. In Singer, Peter (1991). A Companion to Ethics. Blackwell Publishers: Oxford, UK.

 

Useem, Jerry (2000). New Ethics or No Ethics; Questionable behavior is Silicon Valley’s next big thing. Fortune, March 20: 60 – 64.

 

 

 

 

Best regards,

 

Aleksi Aaltonen

 

 

PS. Many thanks to everyone who helped me in compiling this material.