Well-Being in the Information Society. Fighting Inequalities

Developing versatile modern ICT is an insurmountable challenge to many small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Resources, such as skills, money, time [1] and knowledge [2], are scarce [3]. This makes the selection and decision of any development project a key business issue. The most important questions for SMEs are (i) where to start and (ii) what to change. While there are hundreds of descriptive maturity models for organizational development [4, 5], these offer little support for organizational decision-making. We developed a prescriptive maturity model that maps a subjective snapshot of the maturity of a business, and identifies the most promising objects for next development steps. This Business Transformation Map has three interrelated maturity dimensions: business, technology, and social, that span across past, present and future. We used the model in several test cases, and our results show that the model makes business dimensions visible in a way that makes sense to SMEs. The interviewed SME companies state that depicting company maturity levels in this manner brings clarity to overall business growth options, and it helps transforming this understanding into concrete development steps.</div

Proceedings of the ETHICOMP 2022: Effectiveness of ICT ethics - How do we help solve ethical problems in the field of ICT?

This Ethicomp is again organized in exceptional times. Two previous ones were forced to turn to online conferences because of Covid-pandemic but it was decided that this one would be the physical one or cancelled as the need for real encounters and discussion between people are essential part of doing philosophy. We need possibility to meet people face to face and even part of the presentation were held distance–because of insurmountable problems of arriving by some authors– we manage to have real, physical conference, even the number of participants was smaller than previous conferences.The need of Ethicomp is underlined by the way world nowadays is portrayed for us. The truthfulness and argumentation seem to be replaced by lies, strategic games, hate and disrespect of humanity in personal, societal and even global communication. EThicomp is many times referred as community and therefore it is important that we as community do protect what Ethicomp stands for. We need to seek for goodness and be able to give argumentation what that goodness is. This lead us towards Habermass communicative action and Discourse ethics which encourages open and respectful discourse between people (see eg.Habermass 1984;1987;1996). However, this does not mean that we need to accept everything and everybody. We need to defend truthfulness, equality and demand those from others too. There are situations when some people should be removed from discussions if they neglect the demand for discourse. Because by giving voice for claims that have no respect for argumentation, lacks the respect of human dignity or are not ready for mutual understanding (or at least aiming to see possibility for it) we cannot have meaningful communication. This is visible in communication of all levels today and it should not be accepted, but resisted. It is duty of us all.</p

Proceedings of the Conference on Technology Ethics: Turku, Finland, October, 21, 2020

This article analyses hard-coded domain blocking in open source software, using the GPL3-licensed Mastodon client Tusky as a case example. First, the question of whether such action is censorship is analysed. Second, the licensing compliance of such action is examined using the applicable open-source software and distribution licenses. Domain blocking is found to be censorship in the literal definition of the word, as well as possibly against some the used Google distribution licenses — though some ambiguity remains, which calls for clarifications in the agreement terms. GPL allows for functionalities that limit the use of the software, as long as end-users are free to edit the source code and use a version of the application without such limitations. Such software is still open source, but no longer free (as in freedom). A multi-disciplinary ethical examination of domain blocking will be needed to ascertain whether such censorship is ethical, as all censorship is not necessarily wrong.</p

Hätähuuto internetissä – Internet-sensuurin eettisten argumenttien tarkastelu: Case Cleanfeed Iso-Britannia

Uudet teknologiat mahdollistavat uusia kommunikaatiotapoja, mutta myös uusia tapoja sensuroida kommunikaatiota. Sananvapaus on perinteisesti levännyt vapaan journalismin ja sanomalehtien hartioilla, mutta internet-sivujen, blogikirjoitusten ja sosiaalisen median myötä ajatusten julkaiseminen globaalisti on entistä helpompaa. Ei kuitenkaan ole varmaa, että julkaistut ajatukset tavoittavat yleisönsä. Valtioiden lisääntyvästi harjoittama internet-sensuuri on siirtänyt sananvapauden haavoittuvimman kohdan painokoneista internet-yhteyksiin. Tämän tutkimuksen tarkoitus on tarkastella internet-sensuurin puolesta esitettyjen argumenttien eettisyyttä. Sensuurin puolesta esitetyt argumentit viittaavat yleensä tietyntyyppisen internet-sisällön, kuten pornografian, negatiivisiin vaikutuksiin, mistä syystä analyysissä käytetään Utilitaristista näkökulmaa. Iso Britanniassa käytetyn estolistan puolesta esitetyt argumentit otetaan tutkimuksen kohteeksi. Tämän tutkielman teoria pohjautuu Utilitarismin etiikkaan, sananvapauden filosofiaan ja internet-sensuurijärjestelmien tekniseen toimintaan. John Stuart Millin mukaan ihmisten sananvapautta ei tule rajoittaa, elleivät he estä muiden ihmisten mahdollisuuksia onneen. Tämän ajatuksen nojalla on tarpeellista tarkastella internet-sensuurijärjestelmien teknistä toteutusta, jotta niiden käytön todelliset seuraukset voidaan selvittää. Teknisistä järjestelmistä käytetään usein erilaisia metaforia, mutta metaforat voivat usein yliyksinkertaistaa teknisiä yksityiskohtia tai esittää niitä väärässä valossa, eivätkä tätä syystä riitä analyysin pohjaksi. Tutkielman löydökset näyttävät, että internet-sensuurin hyväksi esitetyt argumentit eivät ole päteviä Utilitaristisen analyysin pohjalta. Tutkitun internet-sensuurijärjestelmän utiliteetti on negatiivinen ja huonompi kuin filtteröimättömän internet-yhteyden utiliteetti. Aikuissisällön aiheuttamaa vaaraa lapsille on liioiteltu, ja lapsuuden suojelemiseksi rakennetuissa järjestelmissä on suuret mahdollisuudet väärinkäytölle ja tahattomille negatiivisille seurauksille. Sananvapaus on yhteiskuntamme perusta. Se on työkalu konfliktien luomiseksi ja selvittämiseksi rakentavalla tavalla yhteisten totuuksien löytämiseksi. Tutkitut argumentit eivät anna erioikeuksia sensuuriin.Siirretty Doriast

Proceedings of the Conference on Technology Ethics Turku, Finland, October, 20-22, 2021

This paper identifies an often overlooked dimension of open source li-censing, that of users being able to run distributed software freely and without dis-crimination, and suggests additions that would further secure freedom 0 to endusers — the freedom for the user to use software however they wish. While, tradi-tionally, open source licenses have left developers free to work with their code inany way they wish, and only secured rights for end-users through code modifica-tions, new licenses rethink this paradigm. Furthermore, modern mobile applicationinfrastructure is more restricted by design, and has changed the landscape of modi-fied versions of applications (simultaneously widening the digital divide), and thusa new analysis is needed on how (and which) freedoms should be secured to ensurethat free software remains free.</p

Well-Being in the Information Society. Fighting Inequalities

The healthcare is an area where ethics has justifiably gained a central position, and this fact has acted as a safeguard for people and society. However, the increasing use of information technology has brought forth new kind of situations that the traditional medical ethics approach has not faced before. There is need for a new approach of eHealth ethics that covers the needs for modern healthcare to ensure that the ethicality will be ensured today and future likewise. We argue that a fruitful approach for this is the synthesis of traditional medical ethics and IS-ethics. In this article we look the four principles of medical ethics together with IS-ethics approaches by Moor and Brey to see what kind of values should be protected and what are the needs for justified use of information technology in healthcare.</p

Proceedings of the Conference on Technology Ethics: Turku, Finland, October, 21, 2020

Data collection from individuals has become an integral part of society and an asset for global business. This business is realised through data economy ecosystems, which currently are orchestrated from the viewpoint of business. There exist initiatives that aim to change the current situation. One critical component that is missing from data economy ecosystems and development is the values of individuals. To achieve an ethically acceptable data economy, we need to investigate the values of individuals whose data is used. Likewise, those values should be contested, as all values that people may have are not ethically acceptable or possible to implement on a societal level. In this paper, we ethically analyse the individual values that were collected via survey from four European countries. The analysis is based on the three main branches of ethics: Consequentialism, Deontology and Virtue Ethics. It seems that values that individuals have concerning fair data economy are ethically justified and thus should be respected and implemented in policies concerning data economy. </p