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Ethics and information systems — Guest editors’ introduction

2009; Springer Science+Business Media; Volume: 12; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/s10796-009-9198-4

1572-9419

Maria Carla Calzarossa, I. De Lotto, Simon Rogerson,

Open Source Software Innovations

The technological evolution characterised by convergence into Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and divergence of applications has led to the birth of the Information Society. Where once scientists in white coats toiled in backroom laboratories to satisfy the needs of organisations, today children are ICT experts, consumers are major customers of applications and ICT is a widespread community notion. The Information Society has ushered out the Computer Science mantra and has ushered in the Information Provision perspective. New media such as wikis, podcasts, blogs and mobile downloads support all forms of communication relationships: many-to-many, oneto-many, many-to-one and one-to-one. ICT has changed the meaning of information through adding value to or subtracting value from traditional forms of presentation and access (Rogerson 2007). Perceptions of such transformations vary greatly particularly between creators and consumers of these new forms of information. The evolution continues. In the beginning the scientists and technologists were elitist, but then professionals in organisations embraced ICT as an instrument for increased productivity. Knowledgeable citizens then enthusiastically consumed ICT but became sceptical as ICT system failures became commonplace. These citizens finally became realistic in their expectations of what ICT might deliver. The final evolutionary stage is where everyone, or nearly everyone, will use acceptable and increasingly invisible ICT. All systems will need to be fit-for-purpose characterised as accessible, trustworthy or reliable, useful and usable (Rogerson 2008). Today’s Information Society is in this final stage of evolution— it is a stage that will continue for the foreseeable future. In this society we cannot simply live with ICT, we need to live, work and learn beyond ICT. The papers in this special issue focus on these challenges. Preliminary versions were presented at the Tenth ETHICOMP International Conference on the Social and Ethical Impacts of Information and Communication Technology held in September 2008 at the University of Pavia at Mantua, Italy. The Information Society must be built on a foundation in which integrity and rigour for good science will promote quality ICT and good ethics will promote good professional practice. These appear to be reasonable causal links but there can be and exceptions. These exceptions will impact dramatically on society in ways which we might be able to predict and in other ways whose impact, particularly in the long term, is simply unknown. Indicative of this is the paper Analysis of MySpace User Profiles (Massari 2009) in which the author explains that social network sites, such as MySpace have increased the opportunity of individuals to sustain relationships with others who share common interests. The author has found that the majority of MySpace users have many personal details in their profiles, have large numbers of friends who regularly make comments. It is unclear what the ramifications of such online networks will be for individuals or society at large. It is unclear whether the impacts will be positive, negative or neutral. It is unclear whether the impact will be greater for the more vulnerable or gullible members of society. A second ICT application is discussed in The Ethics of Video Games: Mayhem, Death and the Training of the Next Generation (Gotterbarn 2009). The author suggests that many games have been designed such that players are encouraged and trained to follow M. C. Calzarossa (*) : I. De Lotto University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy e-mail: mcc@unipv.it