11 - Computer ethics and applied contexts

Summary

Introduction

Computer ethics changes the ethical landscape. Various issues that appear in different applied ethics fields now appear as part of computer ethics, for example monitoring and surveillance as part of business ethics, and the privacy of medical records as part of medical ethics. The purpose of technology, we will argue in the next section, is to improve life, so it is legitimate to question whether a particular technology, in this case information and communication technology (ICT), achieves this in a variety of contexts.

Technology

Just what constitutes technology is not so easy to say. Sometimes, any human constructs, including social or political organizations, are considered part of technology. This is compatible with Ferré's account when he calls technology the ‘practical implementation of intelligence’ (Ferré 1995, p. 26). In this chapter, however, technology will be used in a narrower sense and taken as the total set of tools, or artefacts, that we use in our daily lives, including computers, the Internet, radios, cars, scissors and so on (see Dusek 2006, pp. 31–36 and Briggle et al. 2005 for other accounts of technology).

The purpose of the technologies that we develop is, at least ideally, to improve life in some way. According to this teleological view of technology, artefacts or tools have a purpose. Thus, Ortega Y Gasset (1961) defines technology as ‘the improvement brought about on nature by man for the satisfaction of his necessities’.