Digitization as an ethical challenge
The changes brought about by digitization can be compared with the ones that took place in Europe in Modernity with a peak in the industrial revolution in the 19th century. These changes concerned European self understanding particularly with regard to the idea that not god but the human being was the center of reality. To be human means not to be god's creature but an autonomous being who understands himself it was mostly himself and not herself as a subject facing objects in the so called outside world. This subject/object dichotomy as developed by, for instance, Rene Descartes was the basis of the triumphal progress of modern science and technology. Modernity brought also up the paradox of decentering the human subject with regard to the universe (Copernican revolution) natural evolution (Darwin) and even to our own consciousness (Freud) while at the same time providing the basis for the conquest and exploitation of nature as well as for the domination of other nations politically, economically and culturally. European Modernity, now spread over the world, is Janus faced: It has brought positive changes in human life while at the same time these changes were and are concomitant with colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, slavery, fascism, world wars and climate change. The selfunderstanding of humans as autonomous beings implied a change in the moral ideas and ideals based on metaphysical and theological presuppositions inherited from Antiquity and Middle Ages as well as the reasons and procedures for their political legitimization. How is morality without religion possible? How can political power be justified if there is no king by the grace of god? What are the rules of legitimization and the limits of human action if there are no dogmatic prescriptions? Based on which procedures and by which institutions are legal rules to be justified, evaluated and implemented? Digitization has breathtakingly evolved in the last twenty years implies no less a change in our self understanding. But who is meant when we speak about 'our' self understanding? We are subjects embedded in a global network of networked objects. Being human means beingin the networked world, most but not all of the time. The modern subject object dichotomy as well as the dualism of autonomy versus heteronomy has changed. Networked things are not the same as the objects in the outside world imagined by Modernity, nor humans can be conceived of as purely as autonomous beings, something that was already questioned by the modern scientific and technological discoveries themselves. What makes the digital era unique is probably that although digitization is a project of Modernity it does not rely on the subject object dichotomy in its original absolute form alone. Digitization changes the anthropological self understanding of encapsulated worldless subjects facing objects in the so called outside world. Digital ethics undertakes a critical reflection about ourselves in a world shaped by digital technology. It was developed since the 1940s by pioneers like Norbert Wiener (1894 1964) and Joseph Weizenbaum (1923 2008) It was first called computer ethics and dealt mainly with professional issues of computer scientists although Wiener and Rafael Capurro rafael@capurro.de
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