Ethics of New Technologies

Abstract

Information processing has been done through telling stories, drawing on cave walls, writing on parchment, printing books, talking on telephones, sending messages via telegraphs, broadcasting on radio and television, processing data in computers, and now by instantaneous network dissemination. Since the mid-1990’s, personal computers have been the instrument of choice for sending and receiving information, and for processing much of it. The technology is the latest in a long series, but social issues involved have not really changed. Issues of content (is it true? obscene?), ownership (whose picture/text/idea? whose parchment/telephone system/computer?), and impact (anti-government, anti-social, harmful to children) appear today just as they did hundreds or thousands of years ago.