Whitepaper Digital ethics: When digitization guides our society
The newly published whitepaper on digital ethics by Cornelia Diethelm and Peter Sennhauser provides examples and explanations for the new questions on digitality. The debate has long been opened in our society as well.
What a teddy bear might have in common with a sex robot explains the "Whitepaper Digital Ethics. Both are things that people attach subjective attributes to. This means that our behavior toward them says a lot about us, our values and our self-image. But this behavior is not natural. It is based on decency, on customs, in short: on morality. Morality is subject to constant change.
Adjustment of certain values necessary
With every new technology - from the taming of fire to the cloning of Dolly the sheep - society must ask itself what opportunities, what risks, but also what changes in human values accompany its application.
To answer such questions is a task of ethics. This discipline of philosophy is devoted to morality, questioning and analyzing our sense of decency and defining where we should go from here. Until now, ethics was blessed with the luxury of time and limited space: Morality changed slowly and could be well observed and influenced with social discourse. Moreover, it was usually limited to an area of similar culture, language, and legal system.
The freedom of choice of the individual limited
This is changing with digitization. The world is increasingly becoming a single metropolis and life in it is becoming an express ride: Progress is being put into turbo mode by the triumvirate of increasing computing power, exploding data volumes and global networking. Technology is creating new opportunities and breaking through barriers. Many opportunities and risks are opening up. Keeping them apart and weighing them ethically is not always easy; some advantages cost society a few disadvantages. For example, when moral principles such as privacy are
stand in the way, namely defeating cancer through widespread data collection. Or if connected autonomous vehicles could increase traffic efficiency by 30 percent, limiting individual choice.
Digital ethics" must address the questions of:
- Opportunities and side effects of technologies,
- their risks and
- their influence on the human self-image
in a digital world in which everything leaves data traces and can thus be recorded, analyzed and influenced. Digital technology creates such extensive new possibilities that we have to decide which of them we want to use and which we want to consciously do without because they conflict with existing values.
The "Digital Ethics Whitepaper" provides examples and explanations. It was written by Cornelia Diethelm (Seminar leader Digital Ethics & Founder Centre for Digital Responsibility) as well as Peter Sennhauser (Author, bookandnet.com). This is not just about definable opportunities and risks.
This whitepaper is a collaboration of the Institute for Digital Business & the HWZ Academy.
