The Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics

The Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics is not a handbook, but a voluminous twenty- seven piece anthology, which is devoted mostly to the intersection between information ethics and computer ethics, rather than to their union. Indeed, infor - mation ethics is (re)defined strangely here, in a way quite different from that envisioned by the field's principal founder and guiding light, Robert Hauptman. This is confirmed, first, by the Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication data which has only one subject: Electronic Data Processing-Moral and ethical aspects, and, second, by the single most frequently occurring reference here being the journal Ethics and Information Technology.That having been noted, everything in the ethics of information and communications technology is covered here-and comprehensively. But this may be too much of a good thing, depending on the purpose of the enterprise: This reviewer's eyes blurred repeatedly at the barrage of names, acronyms, references, points, and counterpoints in essays which are almost all way too long to be digested easily in a single sitting. Moreover, familiarity with the issues involved-despite long definitional preludes before any ethical analysis starts-is presupposed. These factors make it hard for me to see how this book could be usefully adopted in the classroom. Additionally, at a U.S. retail sticker price of $140 (Books in Print), while not unusual for a hardcover book of this length, something over which the editors had no control, Wiley declined to send this journal a review copy. Because of time and space considerations, I will give detailed remarks on just nine of these essays, chosen by their title (which, if the old adage is right, is much the same as randomly). These include three of the more general and six of the more topical essays.First, the more general essays.Luciano Floridi on Information Ethics. Floridi introduces a tripartite explanatory model, treating information as a resource, a target, or a product of human and machine action, only to conclude correctly that the model is inadequate because it eliminates the complexity of interactions among these three intertwining roles of information. For example, when one lies to protect his privacy, one produces information to protect information as a resource and this may change others' information targets.He then veers to a discussion of entropy1 and ecology in the infosphere and "information objects," words taken from science and computing that, as I see it, contribute little to understanding the ethical issues. Floridi himself says that his discussion might be considered too philosophical in the worst sense; he may be right on that score, but I would characterize the final part of the discussion as scientistic2 in a way that good, precise analytic philosophy is not. If precision, logical analysis, and rigor aid in the understanding, well and good; if they obscure issues, the charge of scientism becomes palpable. The same is true of models and analogies, more generally. Whatever else it might be, the fourth "law" of IE-the flourishing of informational entities as of the whole infosphere ought to be promoted by preserving, cultivating, and enriching their properties-does little to add clarity to any moral issues.What can be said, though, is that there is no problem with Floridi's approach that he does not himself anticipate, which makes for an interesting inner tension in the piece. Moreover, Floridi's treatment of Greek and English literature in the context of information ethics is delightful, and he has read very widely and published just as widely in the field. (There are over three pages of references, more than one page of which refers to his own work.)Jeroen van den Hoven on Moral Methodology and Information Technology. The author covers the usual ground in discussing moral methodology in the applied ethics context quite competently and explains what makes computer ethics distinctive. …