UNESCO has released an important assessment of the nature of knowledge acquisition in our technologically-mediated age. The“Kronberg Declaration on the Future of Knowledge Acquisition and Sharing” (PDF) recognizes that... Knowledge is the key to social and economic development; Creation, acquisition…
Read More Kronberg Declaration: Knowledge acquisition is changing radically
Researchers at Cornell University's Center for Hospitality Research have released a study on consumer reactions to the common practice in the hospitality industry to collect, aggregate, and use customer's personal data. From the abstract: Data-Driven Ethics: Exploring Customer Privacy in…
No, that's not a new slogan for the Thai tourism bureau. Instead, it's the sad reality that Google is again aiding and abetting foreign governments' desires to censor speech and limit access to knowledge. Although freedom of speech was guaranteed…
Unfortunately, Google's shareholders have rejected the anti-censorship proposal that aimed to ensure that the important human value of access to knowledge would be adhered to by the company who pledges to "do no evil." To say I'm not surprised is…
Read More Google Shareholders Reject Anti-Censorship Proposal
I missed this when it was first released back in March: UNESCO has published a survey on ethical implications of emerging technologies, "Ethical Implications of Emerging Technologies": The ethical, legal and societal implications of ICTs are one of the three…
New York City Comptroller William Thompson, Jr. has issued a petition on behalf of the New York City Pension Funds (which owns $276.2 million in Google stock) urging Google to take steps to counteract internet censorship in foreign countries with…
Read More Google Shareholders to Vote on Anti-censorship Resolution
Boing Boing has two good posts detailing how Google has been cooperating with Mumbai and Brazilian authorities to help censor content and track down offenders on their Orkut social networking service. In the Mumbai case: The Indian Express and other…
Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped has published an unofficial Google Censorship FAQ where he answers over 35 questions related to Google's censorship activities. Highlights include: What does Google censor? It depends on the country. In Germany, Google censors certain Nazi…
Noëmi Manders-Huits (Delft University of Technology) and I have been accepted to present our paper “Values and pragmatic action: The challenges of engagement with technical design communities” at CEPE 2007: Seventh International Conference of Computer Ethics: Philosophical Enquiry, hosted by…
Read More CEPE 2007: Seventh International Computer Ethics Conference
An important press release came out this week regarding a coalition of Internet companies, IT providers, human rights organizations, and academics joining forces to address human rights violations enabled by technologies and practices by some of the member organizations, such…
Read More Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Others to Address Human Rights Violations
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