is increasingly exported and adopted by other regimes, fueling the dramatic rise of “digital authoritarianism” globally (Shahbaz 2018).
Fortunately, there remain middle grounds and bright spots. The European Union is expanding individual privacy rights via the new General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR 2016). The EU is likewise developing robust ethical guidelines for an emerging “AI for people” (Floridi et al. 2018). France and Germany are now confronting Google and Facebook with significant fines and anti-trust accusations, respectively (Romm 2019; Spencer 2019). Even the otherwise business-friendly US is moving to fine Facebook some US$5 billion for privacy violations (Kang 2019). Moreover, more and more people are looking beyond “the digital” for a better balance between their online and offline lives – discussed here with the concept of a “post-digital era.” Six years ago, “digital detox” and “mindfulness” were the vocabulary of a few who were dismissed as cranks and Luddites: now these are increasingly central themes among even the most techno-enthusiastic (Roose 2019; Syvertsen and Enli 2019).
These extensive, in some ways epochal, changes have demanded major revisions and updates in every chapter. This has meant “killing my darlings” – many darlings. Dozens and dozens of important references in the literatures, along with several case studies and pedagogical exercises, have been dropped in favor of newer material throughout – beginning with chapter 2 on privacy, as increasingly threatened by many of these more recent developments. The reference list is now c. 30 percent larger than its predecessor, and new topics have been added, such as “death online” in chapter 4 and sexbots in chapter 5, along with discussion of #Gamergate and more recent empirical evidence regarding the harms and benefits of violent and sexually explicit materials in games.
Virtue ethics has become even more central, including its increasing role in design of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and in EU policy development regarding AI. Affiliated developments in “ethical design,” including “slow technology” and the Fairphone as a case study, are added in chapter 4.
Of course, all of this will change – certainly dramatically, perhaps well before this book is printed. At the same time, as the ongoing applicability of these ethical frameworks and the success of this book’s approach attest, in some ways it is also true that plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose – the more things change, the more they remain the same. Hence my cautious optimism and hope that, as a teaching framework and introduction, this edition will continue to assist students, instructors, and general readers in gaining an overview of central ethical issues occasioned by (post-)digital media – and enhance our ethical insights and abilities (most centrally, our capacity for phronēsis) in ways that will help us all come to better ethical grips with these unfolding challenges in our daily lives.
Notes
1 Roughly: the whole complex of our lives as meaning-making and relational beings, thoroughly informed by our co-evolving technologies (Verbeek 2017; cf. Coeckelbergh 2017). 2 To use Karl Jaspers’s concept, our existenz – as centering on experiences of frailty, suffering, and loss, including death ([Jaspers 1932] 1970: 185, cited in Lagerkvist and Anderson 2017: 554f.). We do all we can to avoid confronting these experiences (e.g., by “amusing ourselves to death” [Postman 1985]); but contemporary existential philosophers such as Amanda Lagerkvist show how our digitally mediated experiences of existenz are essential to our fully realizing our freedom to discern and/or create meaning for our existence (Lagerkvist 2018; cf. Vallor 2016b: 247). Cf. Ess (2018a, 2019).
Acknowledgments
As with the previous two editions, there are simply far more people to thank than space allows.
First of all, a thousand thanks and more to my students and colleagues at the Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo, beginning with Department Heads Espen Ytreberg and then Tanja Storsul. They, along with numerous colleagues, administrative staff, and students, made for a very soft landing in Oslo in 2012: and in the subsequent seven years, all of these people cultivated a collegial environment par excellence. I am particularly grateful to Knut Lundby for his support and mentorship, especially in the domains of mediatization and Digital Religion.
Insofar as this book is good for students, this is due precisely to innumerable students over the past four decades of my teaching career. I remain deeply grateful for their contributions, beginning with their forcing me to be as clear as possible about often complex matters. Many have specifically commented on and critiqued early versions of the pedagogical elements of the book. Especially my Master’s students in our Department have been rich discussion partners and sources of insight.
Many wise and insightful colleagues have likewise helped shape and fill this volume. I’m especially grateful to Shannon Vallor, whose extensive work in virtue ethics now stands as primary source and reference. As discussed here, virtue ethics has enjoyed a remarkable renaissance over the past decade or so – so much so as to become central (along with deontology) to EU-level and global efforts by the IEEE to set the ethical standards for the design of AI and the Internet of Things. It is impossible to overstate the significance of this – for all of us. But it has not always been so: from my perspective, no one has done more to articulate, develop, defend, and extend virtue ethics in these ways than Shannon. All of us owe her very great thanks indeed.
Many other colleagues, too numerous to name, have contributed via the conferences where many of these ideas and arguments were first introduced and worked through. These include AoIR (the Association of Internet Researchers), IACAP (the International Association for Computing and Philosophy), ETHICOMP (Ethics and Computing), CEPE (Computer Ethics: Professional Enquiries), and the Robo-philosophy conferences. The some 400+ researchers and scholars who constituted the CaTaC (Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and Communication) conference series (1998–2016) have been centrally helpful for better understanding how our ethical sensibilities interact with culturally variable factors, beginning with our conception of self. For this volume, Soraj Hongladarom’s work (Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok) has been especially significant: our now 20+ years of philosophical and intercultural dialogues continue to be most enjoyable and fruitful. Maja van der Velden (Institute for Informatics, University of Oslo) is likewise due very great thanks indeed for her multiple contributions, several of which are incorporated here.
The list goes on. Rich Ling (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) offered invaluable insight into the profound and multiple impacts of mobile devices, and thereby their ethical dimensions. Mia Consalvo (Concordia University, Montréal, Canada) remains most helpful concerning games and gaming. Susanna Paasonen and Kai Kimppa (University of Turku, Finland) and J. Tuomas Harviainen (University of Tampere, Finland) were especially generous sources of insight and resources regarding pornography. Several AoIR list members provided cross-cultural help on contemporary usages of CDs and DVDs as media: Dan Burk, Danielle Couch, Aram Sinnreich, Deen Freelon, Michael Glassman, Sam Phiri, David Banks, and Jakob Jünger.
I am equally grateful to my Polity editors Ellen MacDonald-Kramer and Mary Savigar, whose encouragement, support, and discipline were essential. Two anonymous reviewers were helpfully critical in turn, for which I am most grateful indeed.
My family continues to play the most important roles. Brother Robert provided most helpful technical insight as well as fundamental corporate perspectives. Sister Dianne Kaufmann remains constantly supportive and encouraging. My wife, the Reverend Conni Ess, wisely and consistently calls me out to the beneficent worlds of art, music, food, and hiking: both I and this book are less nerdy as a result. Our son Joshua has provided vital insight into both arcane technical
