3 Matching Annotations
  1. Apr 2020
    1. The discussion of privacy, intellectual property rights and freedom of information has shown that a good case can be made for the descriptive culture-relativity of these values. These values are central in information ethics, as it has been developed in the West. Moreover, it was argued that the uncovered cultural differences in the appraisal of these values can be placed in the context of a dichotomy between two fundamentally different kinds of value systems that exist in different societies: rights-centered and virtue-centered systems of value. Information ethics, as it has developed in the West, has a strong emphasis on rights, and little attention is paid to the kinds of moral concerns that may exist in virtue-centered systems of morality. In sum, it seems that the values that are of central concern in Western information ethics are not the values that are central in many nonwestern systems of morality. The conclusion therefore seems warranted that descriptive moral relativism is true for information ethics.

      This conclusion proves the point that I made in my alternate annotation. We are obviously able to see so many differences propagated by cultural relevancy phenomenon. In fact, each case study outlines this very thing. There are countless examples down to even when a person becomes an autonomous human entity. So why must we resort to categorizing in such a primitive other-ing way? I think that there could have been many stronger conclusions to this piece and I am disappointed to see the author resort to the insufficient cop out method of binary categorization.

  2. Feb 2020
    1. First the most famous example of an indisputably (or so you would think) fake news story that has had real-world consequences.

      This type of online activity has been around since the beginning. Well maybe not the complete beginning but you understand... The anonymity and falsehoods are not only currently allowed but also sort of asked for by design. That is to say that there will always be con men and there will always be platforms for them to work within. This is just the modern equivalent of forging a check. Regardless, that is not to say that it does not make an impact. It does! But it currently only does so due to our lack of strong digital literacy. We need to teach that now more than ever but I think that in a way we already are. Younger kids these days have a great grasp on what may be real or fake and have even made a sort of entertainment game out of it with online story telling and ARGs. We just need to continue to strengthen our understanding of evolved digital literacy as a form of prevention and truth seeking.

    1. ata now stream from daily life: from phones and credit cards and televisions and computers; from the infrastructure of cities; from sensor-equipped buildings, trains, buses, planes, bridges, and factories. The data flow so fast that the total accumulation of the past two years—a zettabyte—dwarfs the prior record of human civilization.

      The sheer magnitude of data accumulated is both astoundingly impressive and also extremely terrifying. As the article states, this is more detailed a record than any other that we have gathered in human history. This means that the development of ethics surrounding this topic needs to be a rational and quickly evolving field of practice. The ethical ideals of the online sphere are already too slow to keep up with where technology is so I have a very hard time being persuaded that they will ever catch up. And even so, the current social and political climate is enough to make you wish that the lawless abandon of the internet would stay just that in order to avoid underhanded capitalistic privatizations.