Jared Bielby announced in these days that „Information Cultures in the Digital Age: A Festschrift in Honor of Rafael Capurro“ is complete „and set to be published by Springer in July 2016“ (Information via ICIE mailing list). „Matt Kelly and I have had the privilege of working with some of the most forward thinking scholars of the field during our time as editors for this very important volume on information culture and practice.“ (Information via ICIE mailing list) The Co-chair of the International Center for Information Ethics declared: „For several decades Rafael Capurro has been at the forefront of defining the relationship between information and modernity through both phenomenological and ethical formulations. In exploring both of these themes Capurro has re-vivified the transcultural and intercultural expressions of how we bring an understanding of information to bear on scientific knowledge production and intermediation. Capurro has long stressed the need to look deeply into how we contextualize the information problems that scientific society creates for us and to re-incorporate a pragmatic dimension into our response that provides a balance to the cognitive turn in information science.“ (Information via ICIE mailing list) With contributions from 35 scholars from 15 countries, the book „focuses on the culture and philosophy of information, information ethics, the relationship of information to message, the historic and semiotic understanding of information, the relationship of information to power and the future of information education“ (Information via ICIE mailing list).
Der Artikel „Die Industrie 4.0 aus ethischer Sicht“ erscheint am 23. Juli 2015 in der Zeitschrift HMD Praxis der Wirtschaftsinformatik, als „Online-First“-Artikel auf SpringerLink. Die deutsche Zusammenfassung: „Der vorliegende Beitrag arbeitet die wesentlichen Merkmale der Industrie 4.0 heraus und setzt sie ins Verhältnis zur Ethik. Es interessieren vor allem Bereichsethiken wie Informations-, Technik- und Wirtschaftsethik. Am Rande wird auf die Maschinenethik eingegangen, im Zusammenhang mit der sozialen Robotik. Es zeigt sich, dass die Industrie 4.0 neben ihren Chancen, die u. a. ökonomische und technische Aspekte betreffen, auch Risiken beinhaltet, denen rechtzeitig in Wort und Tat begegnet werden muss.“ Das englische Abstract: „This article highlights the essential features of the industry 4.0 and puts them in relation to ethics. Of special interest are the fields of applied ethics such as information, technology and business ethics. Machine ethics is mentioned in passing in connection with social robotics. It is evident that the industry 4.0 in addition to opportunities, affecting among other things economic and technical aspects, includes also risks which must be addressed in word and deed in a timely manner.“ Weitere Informationen über link.springer.com/article/10.1365/s40702-015-0163-z.
Abb.: Ihr Verhalten kann Einfluss auf die Produktion haben
Die 2nd European TA Conference, die zweite internationale Tagung zur Technologiefolgenabschätzung, findet vom 25. bis zum 27. Februar 2015 in Berlin statt. Der Call for Papers wurde in diesen Tagen veröffentlicht. Die Session „Mobilizing TA for Responsible Innovation – Philosophies, Ethics and Stakeholders“ wird von Harro van Lente, Tsjalling Swierstra und Pierre Benoit Joly von der Maastricht University organisiert. Im Call heißt es: „The notion of ‚responsible innovation‘ has become fashionable amongst policy makers and knowledge institutes. In the new Horizon 2020 calls of the European Union ‚responsible research and innovation‘ (RRI) figures prominently as a condition and an aim in itself. Arguably, the rise of RRI will show considerable overlap with the aims, philosophies and practices of TA. The overlap, though, will not be perfect and this raises questions about both RRI and TA.“ Weitere Informationen sind über berlinconference.pacitaproject.eu/ verfügbar.
Am 15. März 2013 trägt Oliver Bendel bei der European TA Conference in Prag zum Thema „Towards a Machine Ethics“ vor. Das Abstract, das im Frühjahr im Tagungsband veröffentlicht wird, hebt mit den Worten an: „There is an increasing use of autonomous machines such as agents, chatbots, algorithmic trading computers, robots of different stripes and unmanned ground or air vehicles. They populate the modern world like legendary figures and artificial creatures in Greek mythology – with the main difference being that they are real in the narrow sense of the word. Some are only partially autonomous (acting under human command) while others are completely autonomous within their area of action. A genuinely autonomous machine should be able to act in a moral way, able to make decisions that are good for humans, animals and the environment. But what does it mean for machines to behave morally? Should they learn moral rules? Should they evaluate the consequences of their acts? Or should they become a virtuous character, following Aristotle? How is it possible to implement the classical normative models of ethics and is there a need for new ones?“ Der erste, zweite und dritte Abschnitt des Beitrags wird knapp zusammengefasst; dann wird auf den vierten eingegangen: „Fourthly, the paper tries to answer the question if and how it is possible to implement the classical normative models of ethics and which models should be preferred. Seven important normative approaches are described and estimated relating to their suitability for machine processing. Then the focus shifts to duty-based ethics, ethics of responsibility and virtue ethics that seem to be serious candidates. With a short technical analysis it can be shown that they fit to machine processing, apart from some limitations. The most promising approach may be the combination of the selected normative models. It is not only similar in the ’normal‘ human ethics, but also an opportunity to balance out weaknesses of the autonomous machines and to allow them alternatives. In addition, other methods like orientation on reference persons and social media evaluation could be used.“ Am Ende werden Wichtigkeit und Schwierigkeit des jungen Forschungsgebiets der Maschinenethik gleichermaßen betont und persönliche und allgemeine Einschätzungen gegeben.
