Digital ethics is the application of ethics to digital systems and networks.
The discipline of ethics has two main components:
- A descriptive dimension in which we use ethics to understand the ethical relationships that can be studied and observed. This aspect has to navigate the thorny landscape of competing ethical understandings and the different contexts those ethical understandings are a part of
- An aspirational dimension in which we use philosophy to determine how things ought to be, not just how they are. This is fundamentally concerned with what kinds of social rules and norms we should have rather than if we already have them.
Depending on how we approach a given topic, we need to have a comprehensive understanding of both.
Our podcast DigEthix returns for season 3 with updates on the podcast and an overview of digital ethics and its context in our turbulent world, asking the following of listeners:
- What’s your biggest concern with technology today?
- What area of technology most excites you?
- If everything were to work out, what kind of future of technology would you actually want?
