Concepts from a 1986 article: relevance and application today

ETHICS & INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Ethics & Technology

The first aspect of this article that struck the author is how human beings began as hunter-gatherers of food, materials for shelter, and defense -- and now human beings are hunter gatherers of information. Just as hunting and gathering affected the kind of society humans were millions of years ago, hunting and gathering information in the 21st century affects the kinds of societies present in the west and in other cultures that are technologically advanced as well as technologically integrated to a substantial degree. While the materials that we hunt may have changed, the urge and commitment to hunting and gathering remains strong in the human species.

The article is a general meditation on ethics during the information age, now, and what the implications for ethics are with the advent of technologies that change our daily lives. In this way, the topic of this article is relevant. No matter at what point in human history we are in, technology affects human beings on many levels including socially, economically, politically, and otherwise. From early forms of technology such as fire and writing, to current technologies such as nanotechnology and cloud computing engage, challenge, and questions the ethics of the people who create it, distribute it, and use it. Technology is often an exercise in defining the ethics of the people who make it and use it. Technology in of itself is neutral, but how societies use technology is a reflection of many aspects of that society, including its ethics. Thus, that Mason wishes to study the implication and primary ethical situations the technology of the information age present and reflect about the 21st century societies that have integrated them into their ways of life.

Mason summarizes the main ethical questions of the information with an acronym: PAPA. Broken down, PAPA stands for Privacy, Accessibility, Property, and Accuracy. Privacy is one of the most obvious issues in the information age especially with serious issues such as identity theft and computer cracking in general. Some of the largest corporations have been cracked and these intrusions have been publicized, such as the crackers (not to be confused with hackers) who infiltrated companies such as Sony, Citibank, and News Corp (Fox). Accessibility is a very basic issue -- there are many people in many countries that have poor, limited, or no access to information technologies that are normative and basic for other cultures. There is not equal access to even basic technologies such as a stable Internet connection. Should Internet and technology access be a basic human right such as water, literacy, shelter, and freedom? Property is further an issue. Mason contends:

One of the most complex issues we face as a society is the question of intellectual property rights. There are substantial economic and ethical concerns surrounding these rights; concerns revolving around the special attributes of information itself and the means by which it is transmitted. Any individual item of information can be extremely costly to produce in the first instance. Yet, once it is produced, that information has the illusive quality of being easy to reproduce and to share with others. Moreover, this replication can take place without destroying the original. This makes information hard to safeguard since, unlike tangible property, it becomes communicable and hard to keep it to one's self. (Page 5)

What is property when many people's bank accounts, capital, products, services and other assets are digital or otherwise virtual? Is information property? Should there be ownership of information? These are the ethical concerns Mason wants readers to consider. Intellectual property has risen to the forefront of business and in ethics in the information age, all of which are issues Mason confronts in this article.