From computer ethics and the ethics of AI towards an ethics of digital ecosystems

Ethical, social and human rights aspects of computing technologies have been discussed since the inception of these technologies. In the 1980s, this led to the development of a discourse often referred to as computer ethics. More recently, since the middle of the 2010s, a highly visible discourse on the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI) has developed. This paper discusses the relationship between these two discourses and compares their scopes, the topics and issues they cover, their theoretical basis and reference disciplines, the solutions and mitigations options they propose and their societal impact. The paper argues that an understanding of the similarities and differences of the discourses can benefit the respective discourses individually. More importantly, by reviewing them, one can draw conclusions about relevant features of the next discourse, the one we can reasonably expect to follow after the ethics of AI. The paper suggests that instead of focusing on a technical artefact such as computers or AI, one should focus on the fact that ethical and related issues arise in the context of socio-technical systems. Drawing on the metaphor of ecosystems which is widely applied to digital technologies, it suggests preparing for a discussion of the ethics of digital ecosystems. Such a discussion can build on and benefit from a more detailed understanding of its predecessors in computer ethics and the ethics of AI.

One map to rule them all? Google Maps as digital technical object

Since its launch in 2005, Google Maps has been at the forefront of redefining how mapping and positionality function in the context of a globalizing digital economy. It has become a key socio-technical ‘artefact’ helping to reconfigure the nexus between technology and spatial experience in the 21st century. In this essay, I will trace Google’s evolving strategy in the mapping space. I will argue that the evolution of Google Maps exemplifies way in which a contemporary digital platform ‘succeeds’ by becoming embedded as a foundational resource for a variety of other uses and services. At one level, this can be understood in terms of what Gillespie has conceptualized as the ‘politics of platforms’, contributing to the emergence of what has recently been dubbed ‘platform capitalism’. At a deeper level, I will argue that Google Maps exemplifies the complex dynamics of what Simondon calls ‘technical objects’ that always exist in relation to both an evolving technical system, and the other systems constituting a more or less integrated social milieu.

The continuity of craft masculinities: from letterpress to offset-lithography

This chapter considers the effect that an autonomous technical artefact – the printing press – had on the workers in charge of them, the press-machinists. It establishes how the printing press possesses material and social agency in the continuity and transformation of craft masculinity. This issue is examined in the context of the technological shift from letterpress printing to high-speed offset-lithography, which took place chiefly in the 1970s. While the compositors’ experience of technological change has received some attention in labour history and sociology, the trade of press-machining has been almost entirely ignored. Charting the printing industry’s transition from letterpress to offset-lithography opens a new window of understanding into the relevance and influence of large-scale technical machinery on the shop floor. This is related back to the reinforcement of craft masculinities in declining industrial contexts. This allows us to see how particular practices and identities are sometimes maintained and reinvigorated when a conservative institution is threatened with change.

Organizing the Production of Variscite Personal Ornaments in Later Prehistoric Iberia: The Mines of Aliste and the Production Sites of Quiruelas de Vidriales (Zamora, Spain)

Green objects of personal adornment were quite common among Neolithic and Copper Age groups in Western Europe, and variscite was one of the minerals that was most often used for such a purpose. This article presents the results of a series of archaeological campaigns designed to study the mines of Aliste and the ornament production loci of Quiruelas de Vidriales (both in the province of Zamora, Spain). We discovered that initially, during the fourth millennium cal BC, variscite from Aliste was seldom used and the ornaments’ production was dispersed, but that there was a significant shift during the third millennium cal BC: ornament production intensified and became concentrated in the production sites of Quiruelas. We relate this transformation to the socioeconomic processes that developed in the Iberian Peninsula and the growth of supra-regional socio-technical artefact exchange networks.

A Scalable Approach to Harvest Modern Weblogs

Blogs are one of the most prominent means of communication on the web. Their content, interconnections and influence constitute a unique socio-technical artefact of our times which needs to be preserved. The BlogForever project has established best practices and developed an innovative system to harvest, preserve, manage and reuse blog content. This paper presents the latest developments of the blog crawler which is a key component of the BlogForever platform. More precisely, our work concentrates on techniques to automatically extract content such as articles, authors, dates and comments from blog posts. To achieve this goal, we introduce a simple yet robust and scalable algorithm to generate extraction rules based on string matching using the blog's web feed in conjunction with blog hypertext. Furthermore, we present a system architecture which is characterised by efficiency, modularity, scalability and interoperability with third-party systems. Finally, we conduct thorough evaluations of the performance and accuracy of our system.

Game Construction Activity in Higher Education

This activity theoretical discussion is based on experiences from teaching and learning in higher education (i.e. university students' activities in game construction). Learning by creating a new technical artefact is taken for granted. In higher education, the produced artefacts are the firsthand proof of students' work success. Sometimes, and prominently in game technology construction, such artefacts are further used and developed outside school. Digital games with an origin in higher education reach a level of maturity and technology utilization that goes beyond many student projects. The authors argue that successful making of artefacts is characterized by repeated and contextualized feedback, found as an intriguing interplay between activity systems in which the students participate. A driving force for students' efforts and achievements is found in a contradiction between school grade markings and becoming a professional producer of games.

How Culture May Influence Ontology Co-Design

This article addresses the issue of cultural influence in ontology design and reuse. The main assumption is that an ontology is not only a socio-technical artefact but also a cultural artefact. It contains embedded assumptions, core values, points of view, beliefs, thought patterns, etc. Based on results already found in several design fields the authors formulate some preliminary hypotheses about the possible relationships existing between culture and features of design process and produced ontology. A critical and qualitative analysis of six collaborative design systems has been performed to test some of the hypotheses, confirming some of the findings. The authors argue that a “culture aware” attitude may be of great importance for supporting the processes of cross cultural collaborative ontology design and the internalization and localization of these kinds of artefacts.