Week 7 Discussion – Impacts of Information Technology The readings this week raise issues that are direct or indirect effects of the use of information technology: a) the digital divide b) online addictions c) online media fact or fiction d) positive and negative impacts of information technology on society Choose one of the topics to explore. Do some additional research on the topic. And cite your sources. Please do NOT make Wikipedia your primary source. You may use it, but there should be other reputable sources included first. When you post your response, put the chosen topic in the subject line. How serious an impact does your chosen problem have on quality of life? What could you do to lessen the impact in your life or the lives of loved ones? Discussion Criteria 1. Response must be relevant and specific to the discussion topic, well supported with outside research and assigned reading. 2. Demonstrate reading concept by reflecting critical thinking and analysis that demonstrate an understanding of the topic as it applies to America. 3. At least 1-2 citation in APA format. 4. No grammatical, punctuation or spelling errors. 5. Direct quotes are less than 10% of the total essay. 6. In Arial 12-point font 7. Text is double spaced. 8. See addition material at the below FuturICT The road towards ethical ICT J. van den Hoven1a, D. Helbing2, D. Pedreschi3, J. Domingo-Ferrer4, F. Gianotti3 and M. Christen5 1 Philosophy Section, Delft University of Technology, Jaffalaan 5, PO Box 5015, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands 2 Chair of Sociology, in particular of Modeling and Simulation, ETH Zurich, Clausiusstrasse 50, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland 3 Dipartimento di Informatica, Universita di Pisa, via Buonarroti, 2g56125 Pisa, Italia 4 Department of Computer Engineering and Maths, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Av. Pasos Catalans, 26, 43007 Tarragona, Catalonia 5 Institute of Biomedical Ethics, University of Zurich, Pestalozzistrasse 24, 8032 Zurich, Switzerland Psychology Department, University of Notre Dame, IN, USA a e-mail: M.J.vandenHoven@tudelft.nl Revised: 9 October 2012 Published online: 5 December 2012 Abstract The pervasive use of information and communication technology (ICT) in modern societies enables countless opportunities for individuals, institutions, businesses and scientists, but also raises difficult ethical and social problems. In particular, ICT helped to make societies more complex and thus harder to understand, which impedes social and political interventions to avoid harm and to increase the common good. To overcome this obstacle, the large-scale EU flagship proposal FuturICT intends to create a platform for accessing global human knowledge as a public good and instruments to increase our understanding of the information society by making use of ICT-based research. In this contribution, we outline the ethical justification for such an endeavor. We argue that the ethical issues raised by FuturICT research projects overlap substantially with many of the known ethical problems emerging from ICT use in general. By referring to the notion of Value Sensitive Design, we show for the example of privacy how this core value of responsible ICT can be protected in pursuing research in the framework of FuturICT. In addition, we discuss further ethical issues and outline the institutional design of FuturICT allowing to address them.
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