Digital Media Ethics by Charles Ess
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Facebook, privacy, video games (I’m writing an assignment of VGs and morality! ^^J), pornography, piracy, copyright, definitions of identity… all parts of the greater discussion on digital media ethics, options, moral frameworks (and consequently ways of tackling them) and institutional approaches showing more or less malevolent understanding of the current cyber-landscape’s true nature. There’s not much else out there on the matter and even if there was, Digital Media Ethics would still probably take the cake as the most comprehensive book on the matter out now.
One of the good things I got from it was how it really helped me understand the differences between the frameworks that exist to tackle ethical problems. Chances are each one of us, seldom with us being conscious about it, has a combination of degrees of the following:
Utilitarianism → For the greater good (ethics quantified)
Deontology → But you promised! (positive and negative human rights)
Feminist ethics → Ethics of care and emotion (stop DUALISM cartel! Logic of both/and )
Virtue ethics → Practicing excellence as a human (can’t you use your time any better?)
Confucian ethics → We are our relationships (I’m a different onion layer with everyone)
Meta-ethical frameworks:
Ethical relativism → Oh, you know, this tribe… (Hitler = Mother Teresa)
Ethical absolutism → I hold the end-all be-all truth! (Dogmatism much?)
Ethical pluralism → There must be a single truth out there… (…but all we can see are multiple interpretations of it!)
My explanations derive from Charles Ess’s very clear and easy-to-understand writing.
Another reason I like this book, perhaps the most important, is because he was the teacher for the Digital Media Ethics course I took in Aarhus University as an exchange student last autumn. It was a pleasure to take this course but now I have to have my respective assignment ready within less than two weeks. Wish me inspiration and hard work.
