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The Ethics of Information technology

Information technology has become ubiquitous, invading all aspects of human existence. Most everyday technologies such as elevators, automobiles, microwaves, watches, and so forth depend on microprocessors for their ongoing operation. Most organizations and institutions have become reliant on their information technology infrastructure to a large degree. Indeed information technology is seen by many as a cost-efficient way to solve a multitude of problems facing our complex contemporary society. One can almost say that information technology has become construed as the default technology for solving a whole raft of technical and social problems such as health provision, security, governance, etc. One could also argue that it has become synonymous with society's view of modernization and progress. For most it seems obvious that information technology has made it possible for humans to continue to construct increasingly complex systems of coordination and social ordering; systems without which contemporary society would not be able to exist in its present form. The economic and organizational benefit of information technology is not widely disputed. The dispute is more often about the way information technology is changing or transforming the social domain, and in particular, the ethical domain. This dispute is largely centered around different ways of conceptualizing and interpreting the nature of the information technology and society interrelationship.
• 1. Views on the Nature of Information Technology
o 1.1 Information Technology as an Artifact or Tool
o 1.2 Information Technology as Socially Constructed Artifacts and Actors
o 1.3 Information Technology as an Ongoing Horizon of Meaning and Action
• 2. Phenomenological Approaches to Technology
o 2.1 A Fundamental Critique of the Technological Attitude
o 2.2 The Technological Attitude in Contemporary Society and Technologies
o 2.3 A Phenomenology of the Human/Technology Relationship
• 3. Ethics and Information Technology
o 3.1 The Impact of Information Technology and the Application of Ethical Theory
o 3.2 The Politics of Information Technology and a Disclosive Ethics
o 3.3 Information Technology, Ethics and our Human way of Being
• 4. Phenomenology, Ethics and Information Technology: The Case of Virtuality
• 5. Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries