A Technoethical Study of Ethical Hacking Communication and Management Within a Canadian University

Ethical hacking is an important information security risk management strategy within higher education applied against the growing threat of hacking attacks. Confusion regarding the meaning and ethics of ethical hacking within broader society and which resonates within organizations undermines information security. Confusion within organizations increases unpredictably (equivocality) in the information environment, which raises risk level. Taking a qualitative exploratory case study approach, this chapter pairs technoethical inquiry theory with Karl Weick's sensemaking model to explore the meanings, ethics, uses and practices, and value of ethical hacking in a Canadian university and applies technoethical inquiry decision-making grid (TEI-DMG) as an ethical decision-making model. Findings point to the need to expand the communicative and sociocultural considerations involved in decision making about ethical hacking organizational practices, and to security awareness training to leverage sensemaking opportunities and reduce equivocality in the information environment.

Socio-Ethical Impact of the Emerging Smart Technologies

Today, technology is being integrated in all social environments, at home, school, or work, shaping a new world in which there is a closer interaction between human and machine than ever before. While every new technology brings along the expected “blessings,” there is also the thick end of the stick, namely the potential undesired effects it might cause. Explorative research in smart and enhancing technologies reveals that the current trend is for them to transcend to persuasive technologies, capable of shaping human behavior. In this context, this chapter aims at identifying the social and ethical implications of such technologies, being elaborated after reviewing literature from various research domains. It addresses the implications of today's smart and enhancing technologies on several levels: health repercussions, the social and behavioral changes they generate, and concerns of privacy and security. Also, the chapter emphasizes the need for scientists and researchers to engage not only with the technical considerations, but also with the societal implications mentioned above.

Surgeon, Media, Society, Patient

For many, cosmetic surgery holds the promise that one can reshape his or her body to remove perceived defects and thus have a more perfect body. However, the decision to undergo elective cosmetic surgery is not made in a vacuum, and it is easy to overlook the full range of ethical considerations surrounding cosmetic surgery. Many medical ethicists subscribe to an ethical code that centers mainly on the relationship between the doctor and patient, with a focus on respect for autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, and justice. This chapter builds on this framework by extending the scope of actors to include not only the surgeon and the patient but also the media and the overall society. To illustrate this framework, the author uses the example of actress Heidi Montag, who underwent 10 different plastic surgery procedures in one day. The chapter concludes with a discussion of potential correctives for ethical failures in each of these areas.

Ethical Dimensions of NBIC-Convergence

One of the key trends in the development of technoscience is associated with the NBIC-convergence projects, which create not only unprecedented means for transformation of society and human but also raise the risks that require integrated approaches to ethical assessment and examination. Today, the foundations of the “NBIC-tetrahedron” have ethical projections in the form of nanoethics, bioethics, ICT-ethics, and neuroethics. However, their ability to discuss and resolve complex problems is limited. Technoethics can be considered a relevant way of combining different approaches to the ethical issues of converging technologies and science to discuss and solve not only actual situations but prospects as well.

An Ethical Framework for Interconnected and Self-Organizing Moral Machines

Technology is responsible for major systemic changes within the global financial sector. This sector has already developed into a comprehensive network of mutually connected people and computers. Algorithms play a crucial role within this network. An algorithm is in essence merely a set of instructions developed by one or more people with the intention of having these instructions performed by a machine such as a computer in order to realize an ideal result. As part of a development in which we as human beings have ever higher expectations of algorithms and these algorithms become more autonomous in their actions, we cannot avoid including possibilities in these algorithms that enable ethical or moral considerations. To develop this ethical or moral consideration, we need a kind of ethical framework that can be used for constructing these algorithms. With the development of such a framework we can start to think about what we as human beings consider to be a moral action executed by algorithms that support actions and decisions of interconnected and self-organizing machines. This chapter explores an ethical framework for interconnected and self-organizing moral machines.

Communication in the E-Culture and Media

Online and media cultures have a dominant influence on modern society. This type of culture is characterized by specific forms of expression and ethical and aesthetic features mediated by technology. Virtual communication is one reflection of the phenomena of culture reflected through technology. The chapter identifies the typology of virtual communication using a systems approach as an example of online and media culture. This is based on the analysis of the development of social networks and forms of communication and shows the trends in the dynamics of virtual communication. The new environment, with its distinctive characteristics, indicators, forms, and images, creates new opportunities and new risks for humans and their cultures.

The Societal Hazards of Neuroenhancement Technologies

Using cognitive enhancement technology is becoming increasingly popular. In another paper, the authors argued that using pharmacological cognitive enhancers is detrimental to society, through promoting competitiveness over cooperation, by usurping personal and social identifies and thus changing our narrative and moral character. In this chapter, the authors seek to expand that argument by looking at an emerging technology that is rapidly gaining popularity, that of transcranial stimulation (TS). Here the authors explore TS via two major methods, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial electrical stimulation (TES). In this, the authors seek to demonstrate that artificial cognitive enhancement is detrimental to society. Furthermore, that the argument can be applied beyond the moral dubiousness of using pharmacological cognitive enhancement, but applied to new, emergent technologies as well. In other words, artificial cognitive enhancement regardless of the technology/medium is detrimental to society.

The Case Against Weapons Research

Weapons research seeks to design new or improved weapons and their ancillary structures. This chapter argues that weapons research is both morally wrong and morally unjustified. This “case against weapons research” requires lengthy discussion and the argument given here is a summary of that discussion. The central claim is that the “standard justification” for all forms of weapons acquisition and deployment, which appeals to defense and deterrence, does not stand up for weapons research because the harms caused by the latter projects into the future in unknowable ways. Weapons research produces practical knowledge in the form of designs for the means to harm, and its practitioners cannot know how this knowledge will be used in the future.

Energy Consumers' Perspectives on Smart Meter Data

This chapter employs the framework of contextual integrity related to privacy developed by Nissenbaum as a tool to understand consumer response to implementation of residential smart metering technology. To identify and understand specific changes in information practices brought about by the introduction of smart meters, energy consumers were interviewed, read a description of planned smart grid/meter implementation, and were asked to reflect on changes in the key actors involved, information attributes, and principles of transmission. Areas where new practices emerge with the introduction of residential smart meters were then highlighted as potential problems (privacy violations). Issues identified in this study included concern about unauthorized use and sharing of personal data, data leaks or spoofing via hacking, the blurring distinction between the home and public space, and inferences made from new data types aggregated with other personal data that could be used to unjustly discriminate against individuals or groups.

The Techoethical Ethos of Technic Self-Determination

This chapter addresses concerns that the development and proliferation of human enhancement technologies (HET) will be dehumanizing and a threat to our autonomy and sovereignty as individuals. The chapter argues contrarily that HET constitutes nothing less than one of the most effective foreseeable means of increasing the autonomy and sovereignty of individual members of society. Furthermore, it elaborates the position that the use of HET exemplifies—and indeed even intensifies—our most human capacity and faculty, namely the desire for increased self-determination, which is referred to as the will toward self-determination. Based upon this position, the chapter argues that the use of HET bears fundamental ontological continuity with the human condition in general and with the historically ubiquitous will toward self-determination in particular. HET will not be a dehumanizing force, but will rather serve to increase the very capacity that characterizes us as human more accurately than anything else.