The Tree of Knowledge: The Normative Structure of Information

Abstract

This chapter explains that a normative evaluation of digital information on the internet necessitates an evaluative media model that is universal and global in character and application. This chapter will show that information has a dual normative structure that commits all disseminators of information to both epistemic norms (those that relate to knowledge) and ethical norms (those that relate to moral behavior) that are in principle universal and thus global in application. Based on this dual normative characterization of information, the chapter will seek to demonstrate that information and, specifically, digital information on the internet, as a process and product of communication, has an inherent normative structure. As such the inherent normative structure of information, commits its producers, disseminators, communicators, and users, everyone in fact that disseminates information, to certain mandatory epistemological and ethical commitments. Moreover, the negligent or purposeful abuse of information in violation of those commitments is also a violation of universal rights to freedom and wellbeing to which all agents are entitled by virtue of being informational agents. The chapter refers to the above argument as the Dual Obligation Information Theory (DOIT).