WSIS FORUM + 10UNESCO, Paris

February 26th, 2013Ethical and Societal Challenges of the

Information Society

Thematic Matrix

Background and Objectives• Building on the 2007 report “Ethical Implications of

Emerging Technologies: A Survey” (Chris Conley & Mary Rundle)

• Reassessing the state of ICT transformation since 2007 with view to identifying the pathways leading from technological transformation to societal and ethical transformation

• Creating analytic frames which bring such reassessment to inform stakeholders and policy-processes.

• Rethinking what “Ethics” and “Humanity” really are in relation to the Information Society.

• Developing foresight-oriented paradigms that anticipate what the next chapter of the “technologies story” will be…

Social MediaTechnological Change: Facebook/Twitter/YouTube etc.

Social Change: “Society”→ Network/Alone in the Network/ Virtual Social Capital/ Collecting “Friends”etc/“Twitter Revolutions”/ Cyber- Bullying

Ethical Change: New Cognitive and Emotional Constitution of the “Human”/Changing Structure of Interpersonal Communications and “Community”/No Indicators for potential act of bullying/ Regulation vs. Internet Freedom/Hate Speech

Google

Technological Change: The Google Revolution

Social Change: Ease of Work and Research/Efficiency and New Horizon of “Knowledge”/ The “Googlisation” of Memory, Learning, and Human Capacities

Ethical Change: Google as Empire/Knowledge Hegemonies/Reduction of Humans to “Applications”/Shifts in Cognitive and Brain

Functions/Attention Economies

Surveillance

Technological Change: RFID/Sensors

Social Change: Logistics/Law Enforcement/Tracking of Citizens in Businesses, Schools, and Institutions

Ethical Change: Violation of Privacy/Violation of the Body/Orwellian Dystopias/ Religious and Cultural Controversies: Saudi Women, the Andrea Hernandez Case/The Stockpiling of Personal Data – by Whom, What for?

“Real” and Virtual Selves

Technological Change: Digital Identities

Social Change: Enhanced Consumer Security/Virtual Freedom of Assembly/Profiling/Identity Fraud

Ethical Change: “Real” vs. “Digital Ethics”/ Is the Virtual World a “World” Girded by Laws, Moral Codes, and Ways of Being or Know How/Citizenship vs. E-Citizenship/Inter-Cultural

Information Ethics

Bio-Politics

Technological Change: Biometrics

Social Change: Profiling/ “Free Citizen” vs. “Potential Terrorist”/The Body as Object of National Security/Population “Management”

Ethical Change: What Constitutes the “Compelling Argument” that Legitimates the “State of Exception?”

Cyber-Politics

Technological Change: Cyber-War/Cyber-Resistance

Social Change: Drones/Hacking of Grids/Hactivism

Ethical Change: Just Cyber-War/Efficacy of Cyber-Micro-Policy/ICTs as Spaces of Subversion/Total War – Citizens as Soldiers being “Trained” On-Line.