Post 2: Networking

This chapter begins with a quick summary of all the uses of the Internet, and then it quickly goes on to describe the many moral issues that rise up when so many people are connected to each other.

First, the book looks at email and spam. Spam is a huge problem on the Internet. In 2003, 40% of all email traffic was unsolicited spam. This begs the question: is Spam moral? and, do governments or ISPs have the right to block spammers? The book then evaluates spam with the four workable ethical theories: Kantianism (spam is wrong), Act Utilitarianism (spam is wrong), Rule Utilitarianism (spam is wrong), and Social Contract (spam is wrong) (I sense a pattern here). It gets a little more complicated when you talk about blocking spam though. Personally, I think people should be more responsible with their email addresses, and deal with spam themselves, instead of the government or ISPs.

Secondly, the book looks at content control on the Internet. Is it moral (or possible) for governments to control what is put on the Web? I personally don't think it is possible. So, morality doesn't really come into question about something that is impossible anyway.

Thirdly, the book quickly skims through the issues of phishing, online predators, and internet addictions. All of these issues show how complicated the morality of anything can be, especially something dealing with so many people.

-Pieces

Post 1, Chapter 2: Schools of Ethical Thought

This, the second chapter of Ethics for the Information Age, is an explanation of several popular schools of ethical thought, including Subjective Relativism, Cultural Relativism, Divine Command Theory, Kantianism, Act Utilitarianism, Rule Utilitarianism and Social Contract Theory. For each of the schools of thought, the chapter goes through several arguments for and against, and for the latter schools, gives some examples of how they are used.

The chapter goes on to define an acceptable theory as one that "make it possible for a person to present a persuasive, logical argument to a diverse audience of skeptical, yet open-minded people." Because of this definition of an acceptable theory, Subjective Relativism, Cultural Relativism and Divine Command Theory are rejected. Only the latter four are considered "workable".