A Critical Professional Ethical Analysis of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)

open access articleNon-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) have quickly become an important part of the blockchain economy, theoretically representing ownership of a digital asset registered on a public blockchain such as Ethereum. While several applications of this technology exist, the key underlying factor in NFTs’ success is in their potential for investment – buying, selling, and trading the digital assets such as artwork or video game items using cryptocurrency. The rise and mid-2022 crash of NFT and associated crypto markets have shown the volatility of the sector, and questions have been raised around the sustainability, environmental impact, and exploitative practices within this space – and whether there are, in fact, any possible socially responsible use cases for NFTs. This paper aims to fill a gap in the literature surrounding NFTs, primarily through a thorough ethical analysis of the technology and its implementation, deployment, and sustainability. To do this, it uses the Association of Computing Machinery's Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct as a framework for analysis and, following this analysis, makes some recommendations for those wishing to investigate and/or implement NFTs in an ethically responsible manner. The key message is that unless there is absolutely no other way to solve a problem other than using NFTs, then they should not be implemented, as there is currently no ethical use case or means of implementation of NFTs

Exploring simulated game worlds: Ethics in the No Man’s Sky Archaeological Survey

No Man’s Sky is an open world space procedural exploration game which allows players to traverse space in space ships, land on and explore planets. A group of archaeogamers (archaeologists interested in video games for varying reasons) decided to treat the game as an archaeological site, and within the No Man’s Sky Archaeological Survey explore, catalogue findings, and analyze objects and constructs within the game from an archaeological perspective. One of the aspects of this activity was to create a Code of Ethics – this paper describes the creation of the Code, the difficulties in implementation of the Code, and offers some recommendations to game developers who wish to encourage similar archaeological exploration within their own games

Issues, Concepts and Methods Relating to the Identification of the Ethics of Emerging ICTs

Ethical issues of information and communication technologies (ICTs) are important because they can have significant effects on human liberty, happiness, their ability to lead a good life. They are also of functional interest because they can determine whether technologies are used and whether their positives potential can unfold

Engaging Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Responsible Innovation

A significant part of responsible innovation is engagement with diverse groups of stakeholders; this remains true for projects investigating responsible innovation practices. This chapter discusses strategies for engaging small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in co-creating visions of and plans for implementing responsible innovation, drawing on the example of engagement with United Kingdom cyber security companies. The key aspect of the engagement was building trust between the responsible innovation researchers and the companies. Trust was built by a movement away from traditional recruitment procedures for research projects, towards proactive engagement with the culture and traditions of the sector – participating in company sponsored talks and conferences, finding ways to communicate effectively, and ensuring a tailored message that fit the expectations and requirements of the sector. This chapter reviews the context in which the recruitment took place, the assumptions made prior to recruitment, the approaches taken, the revisions made to these approaches, and ultimately offers some general recommendations for industry engagement in responsible innovation activities

Ethical benchmarks for industry and commerce: a new landscape for responsible innovation

This paper addresses a 'new landscape' for responsible innovation. It reports on different ethical reference points for industry and commerce. In this context, responsible innovation (and Responsible Research and Innovation, RRI) can be seen as a strand of thinking and doing to be found in several ethically oriented frameworks-including those represented by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and several international standards. Exploration of the new landscape took place within the European Commission funded LIV-IN (Living Innovation) project. This focused on technologies for our lives and our homes in 2030. Published sources, consultations with experts, and workshops with a range of consumers and customers informed the project. Such project activity utilised RRI approaches to explore technological futures for the 'focal' sectors of smart homes and smart living. This was supplemented by a specific dialogue with CSR consultants about the wider potential contribution of RRI (or elements of it) to industry and commerce in the context of other ethically-oriented frameworks

Synthetic cannabinoid availability on darknet drug markets—changes during 2016–2017

open access articleChanges in legislation have affected supply routes of new psychoactive substances such as synthetic cannabinoids with evidence of supply over the darknet. We identified darknet drug markets using an index database and Tor Browser to access markets. We identified SC in product listings using a custom-programmed script. We collected data at bimonthly intervals (August 2016–April 2017). Eleven darknet markets listed SC for sale, the largest number from China, UK, US, Netherlands, and Germany. Formulations available were high purity powder/crystal, smoking preparations and vape preparations. The top five listed compounds from China across the time points were FUB-AMB, ABD-FUBINACA, 5F-NPB-22, MAB-CHMINACA, and NM-2201. 5F-CUMYL-4CN-PINACA was unavailable at early time points but emerged during the study. Cost of high purity formulations from China ranged from 1.3 to 3.1 Euro per gram for quantities ≥1000 g. Europe and North America accounted for 99% smoking preparations predominantly in small packages (<50 g). SC are widely available on the darknet with availability changing over time. High purity formulations are predominantly available from China in quantities up to kilograms with price per gram reducing with increased quantity. Small packages of ready-made smoking mixtures are available from Europe and North America

Case studies on Inclusive Innovation: Engaging hard-to-reach target groups

Der Bericht schildert am Beispiel von zwei Fallstudien Wege, Methoden und Resultate kooperativer Innovationsprozesse (Co-Creation) mit Zielgruppen, für die spezifische Beteiligungsformen in praktischer und inhaltlicher Perspektive notwendig sind. Dabei handelt es sich zum einen um einkommensschwache Familien, zum anderen um blinde und nur eingeschränkt sehfähige Menschen. Der Bericht verdeutlicht die Potentiale für Innovationen durch inklusive Co-Creation, die neue Marktchancen für Unternehmen durch bedürfnisgerecht gestaltete Produkte und Lösungen eröffnet

Ethics of Emerging Information and Communication Technologies - On the implementation of responsible research and innovation

Open Access articleResearch and innovation in emerging technologies can have great benefits but also raise ethical and social concerns. The current discourse on Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is a novel attempt to come to conceptual and practical ways of dealing with such concerns. In order to effectively understand and address possible ethical and social issues, stakeholders need to have an understanding of what such issues might be. This paper explores ethical issues related to the field of emerging information and communication technologies (ICTs). Based on a foresight study of ICT that led to the identification of eleven emerging technologies, we outline the field of ethical and social issues of these technologies. This overview of possible problems can serve as an important sensitising device to these issues. We describe how such awareness can contribute to the successful deployment of responsible practice in research and innovation

Visualising home technologies of the future: a report from Leicester's diverse communities

In a previous ETHICOMP paper (Firth and Flick, 2020), we outlined a proposed method for engaging with those with low digital capital (often associated with low socio-economic status) in order to look at their sociotechnical imaginaries of home technologies of the future. In that paper, we argued that this is important to do because of the dramatic divide between those traditionally involved in developing such technologies, and those who may benefit or be harmed by them. The method proposed an arts-based expressive mechanism that gave “participants to explore and give shape to their ideas and future technologies by collaborating in creating art pieces”. In this paper we report back on the findings of this method: the results from art workshops conducted with Leicester families for the Living Innovation (EU H2020) project along with a reflection of the method involved, particularly given the context of COVID-19