Information Societies, Ethical Enquiries

Abstract

The special issue collects a selection of papers presented during the Computer Ethics: Philosophical Enquiries (CEPE) 2013 conference. This is a series of conferences organized by the International Association for Ethics and Information Technology (INSEIT) (http://inseit.net/), a professional organization formed in 2001 and which gathers experts in information and computer ethics prompting interdisciplinary research and discussions on ethical problems related to design and deployment of information and communication technologies (ICTs). During the past two decades, CEPE conferences have been a focal point for the research concerning crucial topics (Buchanan 1999, 2011), such as privacy (Hildebrandt, Mireille 2008), online trust (Taddeo 2010; Taddeo and Floridi 2011), online identity (Ess 2012), value-sensitive design (Friedman and Peter H. Kahn, Alan Borning 2006), cyber-warfare (Floridi and Taddeo 2014; Taddeo, Mariarosaria 2014), along with education and professional ethics (Buchanan and D. Ocholla 2011). In this special issue, we present the reader with six articles dwelling upon ethical problems characterizing contemporary information societies: The Democratic Governance of Information Societies: A Critique to the Theory of Stakeholders, Semantic Web Regulatory Models: Why Ethics Matter, The Realignment of the Sources of the Law and their Meaning in an Information Society, Levels of Trust in the Context of Machine Ethics, Developing Automated Deceptions and the Impact on Trust, and Moral Deskilling and Upskilling in a New Machine Age: Reflections on the Ambiguous Future of Character. In addition, this issue also includes a commentary describing the Online Manifesto Initiative; more on this presently. Media, academic articles, policy debates, and everyday discussions increasingly focus on the informational, technology-driven turn—the information revolution—that characterizes this historical moment, in which widely disseminated and radical changes simultaneously affect both individuals and societies. Over the past two decades, these Philos. Technol. (2015) 28:5–10 DOI 10.1007/s13347-015-0193-z