Jacques Berleur* and Diane Whitehouse**, Editors
*Institut d'Informatique, Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix, Rue Grandgagnage, 21, B-5000 Namur, Belgium
Phone: +32 81 72 4976, Fax: +32 81 72 4967
Email: jberleur@info.fundp.ac.be** PhD Programme London Business School, Regent's Park, London NW1 4SA, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 171 262 5050 X3646, Fax: +44 171 724 7875
Email: dwhitehouse@lbs.lon.ac.uk
Preface (Long version) of An ethical global information society: Culture and democracy revisited,
Edited by Jacques Berleur and Diane Whitehouse
ISBN: 0-412-82960-6
Publication date: October 1997
Published by Chapman & Hall on behalf of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP)
THE
'GLOBAL VILLAGE' OF BABEL?
THE
CONFERENCE AND ITS THEMES
ETHICS
GLOBAL
INFORMATION SOCIETY
CULTURAL
CHALLENGES
DEMOCRATIC
CHALLENGES
THE
CONCEPT OF THE AGORA
SAND,
SILVER, AND GOLD PLATES
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
REFERENCES
THE 'GLOBAL VILLAGE' OF BABEL?
Babyl™n (Greek), Bâbél (Hebrew) is a very old city in southern Mesopotamia where the Israelites were deported in 586 BC. To the Israelites, Babylon was undoubtedly the city opposed to God as well as a permanent reminder of its deprivation. The city of the 'door-of-Gods' (Bab-ilani), as the Babylonians called their city, became 'the place to confuse, to muddle' (bâlal). Why? What happened?
The biblical text about the myth of Babel is very short: it consists of nine verses (Genesis 11, 1-9). The brief narrative tells how the earliest humans spoke a single language, but an event occurred that explains the subsequent variety of languages spoken among the earth's peoples. Human history takes a decisive turn from a common thread to many strands.
Noah's descendants wandered into Babylonia, where they perfected the techniques for monumental brick architecture. They built a well-known ziggurat, the Tower of Babel, whose top was said to reach the heavens. Building the tower is interpreted as an act of arrogance and an attempt to gain fame while, at the same time, constructing the city is perceived as an endeavour to preserve the unity of humankind. But civilization can become an end in itself; it results in self-defeat. God descends to Babylon to confuse human speech and to scatter the people all over the earth (Laymon, 1971; Metzger and Coogan, 1993).
The Old Testament explanation of the construction and destruction of the Tower of Babel is written using some very homogeneous lexical categories: construction (building up, city, make, tower, bricks, stones, bitumen as mortar), language (language, name, word, speak, speak to oneself, hear, call), totality (whole, all, one people, all over, all the world, all the earth), uniformity (same language, same words, one name), and so on. Ideas expressed in opposition to each other are also evident: men on earth, Yahweh in heaven, bottom versus top.
When we look carefully at the text, we can also discern semantic categories full of significance. At the beginning of the text, we find expressions or reflexive verbs which evoke a kind of rolling-up into oneself: 'the whole world spoke the same language', 'they came upon a valley and settled themselves there', 'they said to one another', 'let us mould bricks', 'let us build ourselves a city and a tower', 'let us make a name for ourselves'. At the end of the text, all the reflexive verbs disappear: 'let us there confuse their language', 'one will not understand what another says', 'that is why it is called Babel', and 'he scattered them all over the earth'.
This analysis reveals at least two semantic oppositions: rolling-up on oneself versus dispersal, and self-nomination versus denomination. The project of building a unique world, a city and a tower that will celebrate its architects, is broken down by another's intervention. The messages of separation and dispersal are the author's way of expressing that the history of mankind cannot be conceived without us receiving a name or being situated by others, and where respect for differences and diversity is the only way to escape being identical. We could also call these opposites 'the self versus the other'. This idea of separation is deeply rooted in the thinking of the Old Testament: we also find it clearly expressed in the very beginning of the Bible, the first chapter of Genesis, the myth of creation (Beauchamp, 1969).
Other semantic categories can be found like 'totality versus lack of', where the project of 'totality' is contrasted with 'the prohibited'. To quote the act of divine intervention:
‘If now, while they are one people, all speaking the same language, they have started to do this, nothing will later stop them from doing whatever they presume to do. Let us go down and there confuse their language' (Genesis, 11, 6-7).
What the myth of Babel tells us is that rather than uniformity, uniqueness, settlement, fixation, self-nomination, totality, singularity, and desire for power, real freedom for human beings lies in differentiation, plurality, dispersal, movement, denomination, pluralism, and prohibition. The first grouping of concepts leads human beings - and that was certainly the experience of the Israelites in their deportation - to destruction or to lack of identity in a foreign land.
Each and every society may be tempted to reduce everything to unity and to impose itself in a totalitarian way, abolishing any differences. Official discourse is built as absolute knowledge. Words are identified with reality. Truth becomes a tower constructed of evidence which imposes itself on the world. Similarly, the builders of the Tower of Babel are described as saying: 'Let us dominate the earth and control it, and let our name be known by all and remain for ever' (Genesis 11, 4). It is this kind of world that leads to a regime of identity, repetition, and anonymity; it is a sad, enclosed world, surrounded by solitude. And this world also leads to its own self-destruction.
This one-dimensional world, this chase for a foolish identity, is prohibited by God, who dismantles it, who confuses the languages, by dispersing and separating the people. God speaks in order to subvert the human desire to be everything. Where there is space, we may be born (come to birth), since there is communication, exchange, and mutual recognition between subjects and nations. Because there are differences and diversity, we are enriched by the speech of others, without losing our own identity. 'Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confuse the language of all the earth' (Genesis 11, 9).
The myth of Babel is all about language, knowledge, communication - culture; building places with materials - economics; and power over or respect for others, domination, control or mutual recognition - democracy. Unity lies ahead of us, but it is not granted: it comes as a result of hard work through respect for other cultures and democracies, and through reconciling diversity.
Recent literature as well as discussions in newsgroups on the global information society remind us that nations, with their particular languages, history, ways of ruling, and cultures are looking for a new place in our time. Most probably, Europe and Europeans could make a contribution to this debate and play a role in the discussion because of their past experiences (Semaines sociales de France, 1997). Would it not be worthwhile reading the philosophical literature on the reconciliation of diversity and respect for different cultures and democracies, for example, Immanuel Kant's Perpetual peace and his idea of 'Weltrepublik' (worldwide republic) (Kant, 1983; Ladriére, 1962; Berleur, 1974)?
Building a global village should at least take into account the wisdom of the myth of Babel! In introducing these ideas, we advocate diversity and difference.
Working Group (WG) 9.2 (Social Accountability) of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), with the support of WG9.5 (Social Implications of Digital Media and Virtual Worlds) organized a working conference in Corfu on May 8-10, 1997. Practitioners and researchers of like minds were invited to join in creating a statement about the future of culture and democracy in an ethical global information society.
The conference was a working conference. This means that papers were intended to present insights and outline issues from which participants would derive various alternatives, solutions, and actions. The conference outcome - a set of recommendations targeting decision-makers, computer scientists and professionals, consumers, and users' associations - is included in the final chapter of this book.
While most of the contributions are papers, students in particular were encouraged to submit essays involving their perceptions and visions of an ethical global information society. The purpose was to create a dialogue about the new visions perceived by younger researchers in relation to democracy and culture in a globalized world. The best essayists received support to attend the conference and their papers are included in this volume.
The conference submissions allowed us to structure the three days into sessions devoted to the main themes: ethics, the global information society, cultural challenges, democratic challenges, and the ancient Greek agora. This framework persists in the arrangement of the papers in this book.
Several contributors whose work is presented here reflect on professional ethics within the range of occupations involved in creating and designing information and communications technology (ICT). But many other papers implicitly include the treatment of ethical questions. The role of ICT professionals and their professional associations - particularly the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) - is one which emerges in a number of papers. Perhaps the culmination of these is the charter proposed in this volume by the Australian Computer Society.
ICT professionals need to raise ethical questions at all levels of society - the individual, organizational, regional, national, and international - not simply within their own professional associations. Some authors go further than this, and make proposals for specific legislation relating to ICT while others call for the international harmonization - wherever possible - of any such legislation.
Given the variety of the origins of the conference participants and contributors (among the countries represented were Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Mexico, the Netherlands, Thailand, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, and the United States), it is not surprising that the contributions often emphasize a shift away from a predominantly Anglo-Saxon or North American definition of ethics. They also focus on economic, cultural, and democratic considerations viewed from diverse perspectives around the globe.
Contributors critique the impetus of the global information society, and several question its relevance to their community or society. But no single definition of global information society is used. Among the aspects of a world which is becoming increasingly electronically interconnected, the contributors consider the global village, the new global order, the information society, the information highway or highways, virtual reality, virtual space, and the virtual society. Hence, papers focus not just on the Internet but on other forms of information and communications technology; they examine a range of applications as well as different ways of working and organizing. Clearly, however, the Internet and its effects, its strengths and its weaknesses, are of considerable importance throughout.
While many papers centre our attention on the policy level (probably because so many countries have over the past several years stated so publicly their aspirations to use emerging technologies for their economic development), a large number also explore different societal levels, illustrating both developments in people's everyday lives and in a number of organizational settings. The way we work, conduct commerce, and deal with capital and property are all explored. Covered too are the cultures of large companies, nonprofit organizations, and community and educational networks and their use of information technology.
So many nations have hopes for the global information society, and many have concentrated on the role of commercial partners in this development. The conference participants, in contrast, show more concern for the public availability, affordability, equality or equity, and accessibility of these electronic communications. The authors are concerned with remedying the disparities that exist throughout the world. Certainly, there are still relatively few individuals who are actually able to access the Internet. What kind of democracy will be the result?
The discussions explore the means by which information technology can be made most easily available to all sectors of the populations, including those people least likely to have access. Such a debate is tinged not simply with questions of finance but also by issues related to education, socialization, and the bias of stereotyping. Several articles outline the possibilities offered by electronic services to specific groups of people such as the elderly, or persons with a disability, or both. But even the cohorts of people so favoured by economists should not necessarily be lumped together - there is huge differentiation among people according to their individual needs; indeed, everyone is unique.
A firm commitment is made in many papers and in many of the discussions (see the final paper) to the role of the state in ensuring access. Roles are developed not just for governments but for local governments, and community and citizens' groups.
There is concern too about content. Among the many other aspects of its use, information and communications technology may be involved in changing our sexuality (Turkle, 1996). Adult materials and entertainment on the net and its use by younger people and by children are issues that emerge in a number of papers, though these concerns are expressed with the wide variety of opinion that often arises on this subject (Berger, et al., 1993; Linz and Malamuth, 1993). Diversity of opinion often occurs on such important subjects of debate. Forums for discussion and debate - open spaces like the ancient Greek agora or perhaps, viewed from a certain perspective, today's electronic media - can facilitate such openness.
Because of Working Group 9.2's commitment to the concept of creating spaces for discussion and, because of the particular aptness of the conference location - Corfu - the agora is one of several metaphors that has been applied to the Internet and to the information highway throughout these papers. Other metaphors, some related to ecology and sustainability, some to bookstores and publishing, others to the role of the eighteenth century French café, also emerge. Throughout, the role of language and of rhetoric in building concepts such as the global information society is explored thoroughly and assessed critically.
The book therefore opens with a paper by Berleur, in his role as chairman of the working group and of the conference, that sets out these concerns. This introductory paper examines the texts of the various government papers which seek to outline the construction of a possible information society in Europe. It draws our awareness to the dominance of market forces in this process of construction and to the relative lack of attention - in government documents - to the ethical and social issues with which this conference and book is concerned. It is hoped that some advance in analysis has been made that brings the discussion forward from Corfu 1994 to Corfu 1997.
Ethics is an overriding issue that influences all other questions on the new landscape of the global information society. A civilized community needs to have a set of criteria for its progress and development (Berleur et al., 1990). Hence, we position this topic as the first main section of this book.
Here, various questions are considered from a number of cultural perspectives, enlarging the debate about the universality or the relative particularity of ethics. Ethical concepts can and do differ in various parts of the globe. But this diversity does not inhibit the creation of possible sets of guidelines - charters - that could be used as frameworks for discussions among ICT professionals, lawmakers, and policy-makers. A number of the ethical, social, institutional, and legal dilemmas currently under debate result because technological possibilities run ahead of the legal and regulatory frameworks (Hammond, 1995).
There are common fears, especially in terms of use of the Internet, that particular cultural norms, values, and customs originating in very specific geographic areas will come to dominate assumptions about behaviour in network communications. Some recent legislation attempting to define responsible behaviour on the net has been shown to be inadequately and hastily prepared (as is the case with the Communications Decency Act in the United States). Other countries appear to be moving instinctively to formulate relevant legislation (the European Community generally, and Germany specifically). Yet other analyses indicate that some countries' current legislation covers all aspects of potential illegal behaviour on the net or require few if any alterations (Akdeniz, 1996; Gringas, 1997). There are implications too for self-regulation on the part of a variety of service providers, choices involving labelling and certification of network content, issues related to transborder data flow, and for parallels to be drawn with the certifying and monitoring of other forms of communication (telephone, television, publishing).
Is a charter for citizens likely to provide a solution to the emerging ethical issues in the global information society? We may consider the proposal which France has put forward to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 1996). There is also a proposal in this book outlining a set of principles intended as guidelines for lawmakers and decision-makers in government and industry (by Cameron and Geiselhart). This charter can be used both as a framework for possible future legislation and as a benchmark for citizens in assessing their own rights and responsibilities. Its format has been chosen precisely because of the difficulties apparent in diverse cultures of establishing a single, universal ethical regime. Among the principal issues of ethical concern outlined are cybercrime, equity of access, rights to privacy, freedom from surveillance, freedom of expression and opinion, democracy, diversity of culture and ideology, equitable distribution of benefits, and ownership of data.
The round table on ethics during the conference also tried to identify the major ethical issues in relation to the Internet.
Eriksson seeks to stimulate discussion on ethics in the global information society by raising a number of questions. Is a rethink of ethics needed to respond to the expanding use of information technology? Is a single set of ethics possible in view of the diversity of use of information technology around the globe? Her paper outlines developments in science, technology, and particularly information technology, and the ethical issues raised by the latter. These include matters affecting democracy, the distribution of power, privacy, crime, workplace issues, intellectual property rights, and information ownership, and those aspects creating new cultural challenges such as the addictiveness of artificial intelligence, expert systems, and virtual reality. She asks questions about the accountability that human beings, and more specifically ICT professionals, hold in relation to the systems, tools, and equipment they create.
Eriksson suggests that ethical analyses are dominated by a north American framework; she encourages undertaking research in different cultural contexts around the world, a proposal which finds sympathy with papers elsewhere in this volume authored by Agrafiotis, Gomez, Methakundavudhi, Mart’nez Contreras and colleagues, and others.
The longer of Eriksson's two proposed lists of ethical concerns relates to democracy. The participants' own preoccupations expressed in the sand, silver, and gold plates (see the final chapter of this book) were also with democracy. Yet, the irony is that many of the papers presented at the conference focus instead on cultural challenges.
The ethics of a very specific technology, the Internet, and its use is debated by Kizza. His view of the Internet is neither rosy nor romantic, rather it perceives problems in so-called paradise. Apart from a number of technological issues, Kizza also raises questions about information overload, crime, garbage, hate mail, misuse of anonymity, poor taste and tasteless entertainment, and the imbalance in Internet resources between the wealthy and the poor. Kizza draws attention to the widely varying responses that countries as different as China, Singapore, and the United States are taking to their citizens' use of the Internet.
In Methakundavudhi's work, we have an example of a research project on ethics that has taken place in a non-North American, non-European cultural setting. Methakundavudhi, a Thai scholar, has conducted an attitude survey in the Bangkok metropolis on people's ethical awareness of computers and information technology. She compares her results to both the code of ethics and professional conduct of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and to Thai culture. The research examines the attitudes of three different groups: computer professionals, users, and young people. Interestingly, most respondents concurred with the statements in the ACM code. Those cases where there were differences of opinion relate to concepts of confidentiality and privacy (these opinions align generally with Thai attitudes on privacy) but also involve, tangentially, information technology use in the medical profession. These suggested differences pose a stimulating challenge to countries with professional associations seeking to initiate codes of ethics and codes of conduct (Berleur and d'Udekem-Gevers, 1996). They also draw attention to the importance of extending research work into the domain of privacy (see the papers by Fischer-Huebner and Rosenberg in this volume).
The effects of technological change on the global economic structure are creating profound transformations in the ways nations and companies organize production, employ labour, invest capital, and develop new products and processes (Muroyama and Stever, 1988): in turn, these decisions have enormous impacts for the ordinary human beings of this world whether they are located in the first or the third worlds. It is largely this latter perspective - examining the lives of ordinary human beings - which is taken in this selection of papers.
So far, only a small percentage of the world's population is online, and the majority of that number are from affluent countries and have professional backgrounds. In the world's poorest countries, the networking of personal communications looks a remote possibility since even portable radios now lie unused or abandoned through lack of access to batteries (Hammond, 1995; Shields, 1996).
We can all note the immense disparities that are current among regions and countries not only in the first world but also in the third world. Generally the information technology revolution has concentrated production capacities and wealth in the industrialized countries, principally the United States, Japan, and several European countries. Inequality around the globe is likely to grow, and our authors anticipate further homogenization among cultures, altering them in substantial ways that diminish their everyday relevance.
Globalization is happening, seemingly inexorably. A little like a child's kaleidoscope, with every shake of the tube, old ethical, cultural, and democratic patterns merge into new ones that are seemingly unplanned and unpredictable. The trend is both a fact and a process, both technological and human. It has multiple facets: globalization of finance and capital, markets and strategies, technology, research and development, knowledge, ways of living and cultures, perception and conscience, and so on (Group of Lisbon, 1996). Globalization results from the countless, separate actions of innumerable players (Lodge, 1995). There is no single discipline or group of experts that seems competent to explain the forces of globalization. ICT professionals are as involved as any. A call is made here for professionals in the field of ICT to create processes and institutions of reflection and discussion that focus on these momentous developments. There are roles for the members of professional associations like IFIP.
Why continue to increase efficiency? Why continue to increase complexity? Why continue to move online? Will individuals still have homes in the future? Can current and future society be anything more than a mere cocktail party? Can we move beyond a society that simply zaps, surfs or chatters?
Is globalization the 'end of history' (Fukuyama, 1992) or the 'end of geography'? (Virilio, 1997)
Mart’nez Contreras and colleagues start by analyzing the new global order, the global information society, and the global village. They concentrate on the sustainability debate arguing that, while it is becoming a more important element of political discourse in Latin America for example, concerted positive action has yet to be taken. While much contemporary culture has its origins in the wealth of Greek civilization, even the beauty of the Parthenon was constructed at the expense of the deforestation of an entire mountain. While the global information society brings benefits, it also has its costs.
Every society has its institutions for reflection and this, Dahlbom hopes, will be equally true of the emerging global information society. In going towards a global and informatized future, Dahlbom proposes a system of archaeology - or ethnography - of the future; indeed, an archaeology of the possible. In his proposal to spend time in regular seminars reflecting on what the future means for us all, various questions can be raised. Dahlbom particularly encourages ICT specialists to become aware of our responsibilities in designing and shaping information technologies and to help in waking all our societies from their somnambulism about technology.
Geiselhart too has questions for ICT professionals. As we move towards the millennium, will democracy survive? The fundamental question she poses is how do we support a process of defining, articulating, and implementing meaningful, ethical, global change? Not only might we explore the application of a universal charter of democratic rights in cyberspace, we could also explore the connection of virtual networks by public, private and nonprofit sectors. We also need to be aware of such provoking domains as privacy, data ownership, and universal access. Geiselhart finally suggests we might also maintain a healthy dose of scepticism about possible developments in the global information society.
Information is changing how we work. Among the complex changes occurring, Bishop outlines the shift from manufacturing industry to the manipulation of information and of symbols; the disruption in recent assumptions about time and space; the shift towards working at a distance, asynchronously, in the home or in transit; and working flexibly throughout a single lifetime at different careers. She focuses on the shift from industrial to Internet time, and from factory to virtual office. Can corporations worldwide operate with human resource policies that are based on neither commitment nor loyalty? And will such a model of work founder for want of the affective and social communities that the workplace has, at least in the recent past, provided?
Information technology also changes the way we conduct commerce. More and more forms of global digital commerce are under development: illustrations include Mondex, Ecash, digital credit cards, and digital coupons. These examples are included in Brunnstein and Schier's analysis of the Internet as a fundamentally insecure technology. Hence, while these four digital payment systems offer the public new financial mechanisms, they also introduce considerable possibilities for misuse. Nor do the institutions for the so-called third party management of encryption keys relating to financial Internet services appear to be entirely satisfactory. The authors call for a growth in consumer awareness and, in this early and formative period of Internet expansion, they appeal for a Ralph Cyber-Nader (or Naders) to fight to protect users' rights.
Information technology can also alter how we deal with capital and property. In contrast to some of the previous papers, Jordan and Burn take an essentially positive view of the role that information technology can play, especially for developing countries. They outline the potential for off balance sheet assets, information assets such as electronic land title systems (which formalize the value of the land on which traditional occupants live). Their examples stem from initiatives taking place not only in Canada and the United Kingdom, but also in Thailand. The authors focus on the proactive contribution that ICT professionals, operating through professional associations like the Association for Computing Machinery and IFIP, can make to the expansion of the global economy.
As the world homogenizes in certain aspects of its culture, a convergence in consumer desires seems to occur. Here are examples from the world of film and entertainment: in 1991, the most popular motion picture in Japan was Terminator 2 - it brought in five times as much income as its nearest Japanese rival; similarly, Tokyo's Disneyland is the most popular of all the Disney parks and attracts over 16 million visitors a year (Shimbun, 1994; Lodge, 1995). In the years to come, will global electronic communications follow the same path as film, television, and radio or is there some chance of maintaining cultural differentiation? Will mass culture, an Internet culture, eradicate individual differences and create a completely pre-packaged culture? Certainly, it appears likely that there will eventually be a complete merger of many forms of communication, including computers, telecommunications, video, and television.
For instance, while experimentation on television technology first began in the late nineteenth century, most developments have taken place in a seventy-year period since 1926. Television ownership has grown from being limited to a social elite to a high 90+% of households in many industrialized countries. Increasingly too, families in developing countries struggle to buy a television before they buy any other domestic appliance, after saving many, many months' or years' worth of salaries. But in either case, viewers often receive little more than light entertainment and titillation which is frequently the recipient of biting criticism. (Though, from a historical perspective (Johns, 1982), historians, philosophers, and cultural analysts have not always appreciated the precise meanings of the cultural artifacts of previous generations.)
Technologies are socially embedded, and traditional pilot projects show, for example with interactive television services, that audience habits are slow to develop and tend to mirror those of older technologies. The use of computer-related technologies is located in very specific social settings (Shroeder, 1997, p.105). While the information society can stimulate new forms of cultural identity, it can also rekindle and intensify old cultural relations (Held, 1995). So, it is the very same technologies that create the global village as raise awareness of cultural differentiation. It is these cultural differences that may make large, though as yet indeterminate, impact on economic life in the developing global information infrastructure (Fukuyama, 1995).
Among the cultural challenges explored specifically in this section, the authors write of the use of language, whether spoken or written, and how it shapes the way we think. Societies, communities, and individuals are encouraged to question the rhetoric and metaphors handed down to them by policy-makers and politicians. A normative, educational approach offers one means of questioning and counterbalancing such prevailing forces (although other educational institutions may be wholly supportive of their society's commitment to the advances of the global information society).
Several of the cultural challenges covered by our conference participants relate also to the domain of organizations and employment: information technology and its use in different organizational cultures and different cultural forms of systems design and development.
Organizations may be involved with information and communication technology in many different ways. Culturally, it is almost impossible to generalize what use will be made of ICT, and certainly not by employing the model of large business organizations that almost consistently emerges from contemporary business and management literature.
Other authors concentrate on the cultures of not-for-profit organizations, smaller groups and, indeed, communication between individuals.
The role of language in the way cultures think and reason with regard to technology is examined in detail by Beardon. He examines how the names of new technologies develop. Using the descriptions of artificial and virtual as examples, Beardon explores how a process of linguistic development occurs. Human beings use ordinary words to describe technology, but then new senses of those words develop. Names can have a currency outside the technical domain where they were created. Giving a technology a name implies some ideological content. The constituent words of virtual reality, for example, are redolent with meaning. Language is an important arena in which culture and technology come to terms with each other: it influences the parameters where our thoughts about the future can be constrained.
Agrafiotis asks to what extent the language and concepts handed down by theorists, philosophers, and politicians should shape the way we think about information technology in any given culture, in his case, Greek society. He concentrates on the term information society: is it a purely rhetorical term or does it have particular relevance for Greece? How has the term been used, and even manipulated? If the information society is to have a particular relevance for the Hellenic world, Agrafiotis argues, then a systematic, well-conceived, and appropriate plan needs to be developed. No doubt others living in other cultures may also feel similarly.
Projects can be born out of a political vision and a sense of democratic commitment. Arnaud describes a distance learning project that has emerged from the sense of a need for local democracy - the European Multimedia Experimental Towns with a Social-pull Approach (METASA) project. Through knowledge-exchange networks, the project aims to develop a harmonious, computerized citizenship connected to other citizens throughout the world. Education about and use of information and communication technologies may have important contributions to make to the lives of people, both users and usees (for a fuller explanation of this term, see the final chapter of this volume). This is but one socially-related project that focuses on the needs of the vulnerable and disadvantaged.
Information and communication technologies can enable increased social citizenship, culture, democracy, and equality of access, for example, for people with disabilities. Inherent in the argument put forward by Busby and Whitehouse is a committed sense of self-advocacy on the part of individuals with a disability. But technologies that are useful to people who have some form of disability are also useful to society as a whole. To create this change in perception, positive images of disabled people need to be used, for example, in the media and in marketing, a shift that is already occurring principally in north America and, to an extent, in Europe. The attitudes of computer scientists, systems designers, and developers also need to be influenced. The authors particularly argue that professional organizations, such as IFIP, have an important role to play here.
There are relatively few studies of how information technology applications align with organizational culture. A typology of organizational cultures is presented by Jarvinen consisting of adhocracies, clans, hierarchies, and markets. He also analyzes the harmony of any match between information technology applications in an organization and that organization's particular cultural type. The challenge for organizational management and for systems analysts and designers, in making decisions such as the purchase of new equipment or the formalization of contracts, is to determine how close a match - if, indeed, some may say at all - is required between organizational cultures and information technology.
Based on an empirical study of how technical support people work in a nonprofit research and consulting institute, Christiansen unfolds a metaphor for a sustainable way of making use of information technology. Examples from her study show how technical support personnel work as gardeners in the sense developed by Nardi (1993). Sustainability: cultivating the soil, nursing the plants, harvesting the fruits, and composting the remains operates in all aspects of the individuals' work. The gardening framework offers a foundation for further discussion and more research.
Comparatively little research has been undertaken on how non-governmental organizations are addressing the information society. Gomez's study explores the attitudes of representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) when using computer-mediated communication and on forming virtual communities, largely through the services of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) network in Latin America. Increased communication among NGOs appears to be the result. Groups sharing interests are drawn together and the bonds of the NGO community both nationally and internationally are strengthened, though not without some awareness of less fortunate colleagues who may be missing out on these facilities for electronic communication. These could, however, be the first steps towards the transnationalization of participation in civil society, a differentiated cosmopolitanism made possible by computer-mediated communication among NGOs worldwide.
There exists a powerful vision of culture and communication as an increasing mass of people come together online and share an increasing part of their lives with others around the globe. Here, we deal with small groups and with individuals. Hauben draws especially from the history of the development of the Usenet, a US-based community network, and its growth among a group of graduate students in the 1970s to a contemporary exposure to various cultures (Hauben and Hauben, 1997). According to the author, people are 'bringing their own cultures into the global culture and spreading this new culture around the world'.
A number of interesting and constructive uses of electronic community networks are covered in some detail in papers throughout this volume, among them, the Association for Progressive Communication (APC) network, the European city projects including METASA: besides the chapters of Gomez and Hauben, see also Arnaud, Laopodis, Van Lieshout and colleagues, and d'Udekem-Gevers, for example.
How can a particular set of institutions, in this case universities and higher education institutions, contribute to the development of an information society within their country? Kaikova and colleagues draw on their experience in Ukraine and, in collaboration with a number of Scandinavian partners, to show how educational partnerships and transEuropean projects can assist in building a global information society. The challenge is to determine what are the best practices from which Ukraine wants to draw and which are most appropriate for the country's own development and culture.
The new information and communication technologies, like many other technologies, have a certain potential for enabling integration and cohesion. But this shift does not necessarily imply as a result societies that are more equal or more democratic. While the governments, public authorities, and even the market, may all potentially act as guarantors of democratic values, it is also the role of ICT professionals and the public at large to keep abreast of challenges to democracy and to fight for human and civil rights.
Cyberspace is not an uncontested terrain; far from it (Shields, 1996). Libertarianism was one of the earliest, most frequently heard, voices describing its aspirations for the Internet. Many views in the early 1980s, even still in the early 1990s, were idealistic and utopian. A perspective of freedom promoted by electronic communications was common. But there are many other stakeholders in contemporary society influencing the development of electronic communications, perhaps the most powerful being market forces.
The freedom provided by electronic communications is one that has been frequently expressed; but it can, in contrast, be viewed as a vast, seductive harvesting machine that delivers bodies, culture, and labour to a virtual irreality that is blind to a sense of geographic place and community (Kroker and Weinstein, 1994). Virtuality may not so much change capitalism and liberalism, as continue to support them (Frissen, 1997).
Among the principle challenges to democracy raised by this collection of papers are opportunities for access to information technology, particularly electronic networks, and the character of present and future content - how dominated it is becoming by commercialism. These too were among the debates taken up vociferously throughout the conference (see the final chapter of this book).
It is likely that among those most affected by lack of access to electronic communications will be individuals on a low income including such groups as women, the elderly, early retirees, and the unemployed as well as people with reduced mobility, with a physical impairment, who have learning difficulties or who are illiterate. This poses a number of questions in relation to both public sector and corporate provision of services.
Among the many social groups whose access to electronic networks may be most limited, as much by economic circumstances as by the prejudices of policy-makers, designers, and manufacturers are elderly people and people with a disability - two groups whose circumstances are explored in this section in some detail. Finally, privacy and the extent to which it may be eroded by technological and legislative advances, is a prime cause of concern.
Firstly, how possible is it to steer the information society in any given direction? One answer may be to use a socio-cybernetics framework to analyze changes in contemporary society whenever they involve information and communication technologies. Among current trends are decentralization, regulation and liberalization, economic and cultural globalization, and postmodernism. Such a system - the system of the information society - is, however, not essentially purposive; it is determined by blind, mechanical imperatives; and dissonances can occur. There will be intended results, but many consequences will be unintended. In his paper, Birrer concludes that two very basic tasks in this shift towards a global information society are to eliminate those rhetorical hiding places that shield biased decisions from external criticism and to search for those democratic mechanisms through which any countervailing influences can be mobilized and effected. Among Birrer's recommendations for democracy in the global information society are accessibility, accountability, awareness, monitoring change, participation, and problem diagnosis.
Secondly, d'Udekem-Gevers explores a comprehensive set of European documents which outline their proposals for an information society. She assesses possible threats to democratic values implicit in the documents, in terms of both access to electronic communications and the content of those communications.
Owing to the level of commercial and market involvement and the relative weakness of any social intervention, she concludes that rather than encouraging equality there will be increasingly unequal access among many different social groups. Notable geographical disparities also exist within nations and between developed and developing nations. Content, too, is likely to be poor.
Privacy is one area in particular where commentators on the social implications of the information society concur that there are increasing challenges. The technological assault on personal privacy accelerates on many fronts.
Four main approaches have been proposed for protecting personal privacy: government legislation, self-regulation, security, and education. Rosenberg outlines the political agendas implicit in three specific choices of privacy protection: those made by Canada, the European Community, and the United States. Privacy initiatives, he argues, cannot be left either to users alone or to the companies that serve them. Are sophisticated public relations campaigns on the part of private sector companies likely to persuade us that, in fact, all is well and secure? Other options need to be articulated, Rosenberg argues, and takes a position in support of government legislation which he defends over initiatives involving voluntarism or self-regulation.
Fischer-HŸbner makes a similar plea for the need for legislation on privacy regulation and an international harmonization of such approaches. But she does not underestimate the difficulties of such an initiative: she points out the considerable differences in culture, history, and politics among countries and regions that result in substantial variations in privacy needs and interests. Among the examples of proposed or instituted legislation that are explored in her paper (besides, like Rosenberg, those of Canada, the European Community, and the United States) are Denmark, Japan, and Singapore. In addition, specific privacy-enhancing technologies are available and are examined by the author. However, Fischer-HŸbner believes that certain minimum requirements are needed to ensure adequate design and use of the information infrastructure, a number of which involve widespread participation by the public.
But the public is diverse and heterogeneous. Social science researchers are wary of lumping together specific categories of individuals such as elderly people and disabled people, however (as Abascal points out) technologists and scientists do so frequently. These two groups of people may become increasingly marginalized and vulnerable in a global information society as a result of other people's perceptions; it is possible that their inclusion in a fully democratic society may be at stake.
There is a wide variety among elderly people. Van Lieshout and his colleagues outline recent Dutch research endeavours which portray considerable differences among elderly people. This contrasts with the common stereotypes and biased perceptions on the part of others about what older generations want from information and communication technologies.
Older people have diverse levels of competence, aspirations, and potential vis-ˆ-vis information technologies. The environment in which they live offers them some opportunities while restricting them in other ways. In fact, researchers have determined a number of ways in which older generations can communicate with information and communication technologies, using them to participate in their local and national communities. But relatively few examples were found - although SeniorWeb and Senior Net among them - of the so-called silver generations organizing themselves according to their own needs.
Van Lieshout and colleagues' article presents a picture of some of the biases that contribute to the social exclusion of elderly people. Are these prejudices to remain self-fulfilling prophecies? After all, 'We all know what it is to be young, because we have all been young. But who of us has been old?'
Abascal similarly describes engineers and computer scientists designing equipment based on a deficient evaluation of users' needs: making assumptions about what elderly people or disabled individuals wish for or need. He explores the diffusion of telematics applications under research or development that are intended for use by either elderly or disabled people: telealarms, telecare, teleinformation, teleleisure, teleshopping, telework, teleteaching, and different forms of interpersonal communication services. But what are the motivations underlying such enterprises? Abascal suggests it is the very availability of the equipment, and it is using the elderly or the disability 'flag' to obtain funding for more general purpose projects.
To break out of this vicious circle, Abascal advocates a more reflective attitude on the part of ICT professionals, aimed at questioning the premises of technological progress while borrowing a model from the ecological movement that enables compensation to be paid to those who have been the victims of contaminating industries. He proposes a series of five constructive analytical steps to be taken by ICT professionals whenever telematics services for either elderly or disabled citizens are proposed.
The ancient Greek agora was an open space that served as a meeting place for Greek citizens to conduct their various activities: religious, judicial, political, social and commercial.
Traditionally, WG9.2's conferences have used a story about Greek decision-making related to Thales of Miletus to frame their own deliberations on important themes and emerging ideas (Yngstršm, et al., 1985). At most of the group's conferences, a system of workshops illuminates emerging suggestions and culminates in a session known as the agora at which the most prominent proposals are debated (see the book's recommendations).
Several of the papers presented at the conference focus attention on the Internet as a form of agora, a public space where citizens may meet to engage in the politics of formal and informal decision-making. Four of the papers in this section explore either implicitly or explicitly the metaphorical relationship between decision-making using the Internet and the agora; a fifth contributes to providing a larger framework of how such metaphors may be interpreted.
There is general scepticism about the terminology commonly used in government and private sector promotion of the information society and particularly the information highway. Interesting, however, a number of the papers in this volume, however tangentially, perhaps even unconsciously, have adopted some of the terminology implicit in the use of the metaphor of an information highway. One author talks of the Oklahoma land rush, another discusses citizens becoming accustomed to using an electronic steering wheel, and yet another paper refers to disabled individuals being free to choose their own mode of automobile transportation/information technology. The rhetorical, aspirational language we hear around us may begin seductively to mould and shape our thoughts and expressions.
Finally, it was one of the conference participants who pointed out that only free men and citizens were allowed to be active in the agora: women were seldom seen there and certainly did not participate in its activities (Keuls, 1993), as did neither slaves, foreigners, or men accused of crimes. None of those authors who used the concept of the agora actively drew attention to the relative lack of democratic involvement of the mass of the people in ancient Greece. Greek democracy in this sense was a brief, historical period that had little direct influence on the practice of modern democratic states.
Damiris and Wild liken the Internet to the agora. While the Internet can offer its users a form of participatory democracy, it resembles perhaps even more a virtual community, a virtual space. The authors argue that the only way the Internet can further democratic ideals is by tying itself more closely to the world (ideas that are somewhat similar to those of Doheny-Farina, 1996). Damiris and Wild suggest that the Internet's current design does not support a firm, embodied concept of ethics: they aim to inspire readers to work on an Internet that does. (Other authors elsewhere in this volume - for example, Gomez, Hauben, and d'Udekem-Gevers have expressed opinions about the role of the Internet and of the information highway in enabling users to develop and express a sense of community.)
So, the Internet can be an agora, a forum for free speech and for the proliferation of opinions. Theotokis and Gyftodimos propose in addition that the Internet can be like a pre-revolution French café, a setting for lively and controversial debate to which all participants may contribute. Either version of the Internet, agora or French café, offers its users opportunities to express the culture of the humanities: local arts, music, or minority interests. Either role has significant importance in the large-scale proliferation of opinions and resolutions relating to diverse historical, ethical and linguistic debates.
Can a means be proposed for regulating democracy on the Internet? Vogiatzis and Retalis use a three-part model akin to the political framework which is the underpinning of contemporary democracy. They put forward the formation of three bodies: an executive body, a legislative body, and a judiciary body. Each is composed of netizens who monitor, regulate, and control the use of the Internet. The authors believe firmly in self-regulation of the Internet by its users. However, they recognize that this is likely to become increasingly difficult in light of attempts at interventionist legislation explored by various governments around the globe including Germany and China. Vogiatzis and Retalis believe it is Internet citizens themselves who need to be more active in seeking a solution to this perceived threats to democracy.
Laopodis, on the other hand, presents a view of local decision-making run as a pilot project by the European Union's DG XIII Innovation Programme. The project is called DEMOS, democratic evaluation of multiple options in society. It is based on the concept of ancient Greek democracy operating for the benefit of citizens. DEMOS is an interactive system that integrates publicly available information and provides connection between local and regional governments, citizens' groups, and the public. DEMOS seeks to compensate for a perceived decline in interest on the part of citizens in participating in local decision-making. The DEMOS project continues with further research involving a consortium of citizen's groups, local government, ICT companies, and universities.
Rasmussen and Krarup explore a slightly different metaphor, that of the information highway as used in various United States and European official documents. They outline a series of different means of exploring metaphors, particularly those relating to the information highway. They conclude that most views of the information society and of its uses are remarkably limited. Several of the governmental proposals examined are either atheoretical or positivistic in their orientation. Few, if any, of the eight possible world views with which it is feasible to view the information society, emerge in any contemporary documentation. (This is a similar view to those expressed in the two papers by Berleur and by d'Udekem-Gevers elsewhere in this volume; Rosenberg and Fischer-Huebner also explore documents describing plans for the information highway.) The authors' own perspective on information systems, and especially on systems design, is an emancipatory one.
One element of the conference to which all the papers were a contribution was to outline the very latest in academic and intellectual thinking on culture, democracy, and ethics in a global information society. Yet another consideration was, in bringing together a group of academics, practitioners, and policy-makers from a wide variety of countries and cultures, to engage in an active reflection of the state-of-the-art. The intention was to formulate a set of recommendations on the status of the global information society that could be forwarded to decision-makers and might influence them.
This formulation of ideas has its origins in the work of IFIP Working Group 9.2 since the early 1980s (Yngstršm et al., 1985). The final chapter of this volume therefore describes how, like a band of ancient Greek philosophers, the conference participants wrote on sand, silver, and gold plates, working together in a creative and interactive process, to express a combined set of proposals and recommendations.
The result is outlined in the gold plate which ended the conference. It contains a message which we sincerely hope will be taken on board by policy-makers but will also be taken forward by the conference participants and by all readers of this book who sympathize with its message.
note
For a lengthier appreciation of the papers, the content of the gold plate, and for more information about the activities of IFIP Working Group 9.2 (Computers and Social Accountability), please visit our web site and click on 'Conferences' at URL: http://www.info.fundp.ac.be/~jbl/IFIP/cadresIFIP.html
In organizing this conference, we would like to acknowledge the sponsorship of the following groups and institutions: IFIP-WG9.2, IFIP-WG9.5, the Greek Computer Society, the Municipality of Corfu Development Company (ANEDK), the Hellenic Evaluation and Technology Assessment Society, the University of Ioannina, the Ionian University, and the Corfu Initiative. Our main supporters were the European Commission, Information Society Project Office (ISPO), the Information Technologies Programme (DG III.F), and Intrasoft S.A. Other helpful contributors were Forthnet (Corfu) and Omega Generation (Bologna, Italy).
We would especially like to thank the organizing committee for its hard work in putting the conference together so impressively: Vassilios Laopodis, Marie Gevers, Christine Leitner, Lone Malmborg, and Christopher Zielinski alongside host country representatives, Sokratis Katsikas, Philippos Drakontaeidis, Dimitris Fotiadis, Vassilis Chryssikopoulos, Anna Karnezi, and Antonis Giallelis.
An especial thanks finally to Colin Beardon, Geoff Busby, Jan Holvast, Leif Bloch Rasmussen, and Marc van Lieshout for their help in reading, reviewing, and selecting papers and in choosing the format of the conference of which this book is the result.
Insitut d'Informatique - 04/30/98