Journal of Information Ethics 

About: Journal of Information Ethics is an academic journal. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Information ethics & The Internet. It has an ISSN identifier of 1061-9321. Over the lifetime, 361 publications have been published receiving 3791 citations.

The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It

Abstract: The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It Jonathan Zittrain. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. 342 pages. $30.00.Jonathan Zittrain's book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It, discusses the tension between generativity, the "capacity to produce unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from a broad and varied audience" and the security problems inherent in today's personal computers and Internet system (70). This generativity, Zittrain argues, is the greatest strength of personal computers and the Internet and had led to great innovations, including creative software, peer-to-peer networking, blogs and content sites such as Wikipedia, and even the Internet itself. Yet this same generativity has also spawned security, legal, and social problems that may lead to the demise of personal computers and the Internet as they exist today (101). If we do not find solutions for these problems, Zittrain warns, we will be faced with government or corporate control of personal computers and the Internet, similar to current controls of cellular telephones and cable converter boxes, which will effectively shut down the innovations that personal computers and the Internet currently enable (245). Personal computers, according to Zittrain, will become nothing but appliances programmed by the manufacturer, capable only of limited tasks, and stripped of the tools and capabilities necessary for innovation.The first part of the book traces the history of personal computers, mainframes, proprietary servers, and the Internet. This section highlights how differences in technology and administration fostered generativity in personal computers and on the Internet and prohibited innovation on the mainframes and proprietary networks. Yet the innovations made possible by the generative nature of the Internet and personal computers also created its vulnerabilities: viruses, worms, malware, and spyware. Despite his obvious support of generativity, Zittrain admits that the current situation is "not sustainable" (43), but warns that the obvious solutions-such as limited functionality, governmental controls, and censorship-completely undermine the creativity made possible by personal computers and the Internet. The sec- ond part of the book defines generativity and explores its benefits and detriments. Here, Zittrain proposes that information technology functions best when generative, while admitting that we cannot ignore the problems caused by generativity (64), and warns equally of the dangers of controlled appliances: censorships, surveillance, forced legal compliance, and unannounced changes in machine functions. Chapter 6 in this section considers Wikikpedia as a self-regulating generative system that functions imperfectly but well. Part Three proposes technological, legal, and social solutions to the problems discussed earlier in the book.The Future of the Internet intertwines its analysis of current personal computer/Internet problems with current and historical examples from business, law, culture (Internet and otherwise), and technology. These examples, often worthwhile and interesting in and of themselves, underpin Zittrain's analysis rationally and support his conclusions. The examples show that the kind of sledgehammer solutions that Zittrain predicts are not merely possibilities or potentialities, but already have been and are being employed by various companies and governments. Perhaps best of all, Zittrain's use of these historical and current examples avoids the sensationalism often seen in other works that predict governmental and corporate control of options, behavior, and creativity. …

Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think

Abstract: Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think Viktor Mayer-Schonberger and Kenneth Neil Cukier. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. 256 pp. $27"Big data" is currently a buzzword in all the sciences, despite the fact that this concept is elusive, and few people have a clear understanding of what it is. A professor from the Oxford Internet Institute, Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, and the data editor of The Economist, Kenneth Cukier, attempt to clarify this in Big Data. They discuss the importance of data-driven approaches, preserving unused data, the value of messy data, the unlimited potential for analyzing data that is usually discarded and considered unimportant, and risks and pitfalls associated with datafication. A significant portion of the book provides information about the utility of big data applications in our everyday life and work. Google flu trends, Amazon book recommendation system, price prediction systems, and many other applications are already affecting our thinking and decision making. Not everyone realizes, however, that these systems and applications are supported by big data. All these topics assembled together provide a valuable introduction to this evolving concept. The book has been translated into six languages, which indicates its popular demand.Big Data is written in the form of 150 case studies from healthcare, other industrial sectors, education, and governments. Geographically, the majority of cases are about the U.S.; a few are about Europe. Most of the cases are fairly recent but a few go back to the advent of computers, or even earlier when researchers did not have powerful tools for data processing. Some cases are described in great detail; others are mentioned briefly. Case studies are used to illustrate the main ideas of big data such as volume, messiness, value, implications, risks, control, and so on. As such, the case studies are incomplete in their descriptions; they often lack rigorous quantitative comparisons or measures. For instance, the authors neither mention profits nor losses of companies from big data nor returns on investments.Much to one's surprise, the authors do not define big data; rather they delegate this task to the reader, who can derive the definition for big data from the examples given in the book. Accordingly, big data is typically characterized by large volume: prices of airline tickets, texts of millions of textbooks, or user clicks on the Internet are some of the examples. But what volume is considered large or small remains unclear. Is it always measured in terabytes or petabytes? Can it be smaller? Another intrinsic feature of big data is messiness which may refer simply to errors in data, misalignments of data retrieved from different sources, inconsistencies of formatting, or data transformations. For traditional analysts, messiness is undesirable. They apply various techniques to minimize error rates before they announce the results. For big data analysts, messiness, on the contrary, is a virtue that can be taken advantage of. The authors explain that big data analysts find additional uses for data with errors. Google, for example, uses queries with errors to improve its spellchecker.Big data does not always describe the phenomena directly. Instead, data might represent real world objects or phenomena through proxies. If a phenomenon takes place together with proxy A, proxy A may predict what will happen with the phenomenon. Using A as a proxy helps analysts capture what is probably happening with the phenomenon. Proxies are very important for phenomena that cannot be measured or observed directly. The chapter on correlations describes how Target corporation successfully identified certain patterns in its customers' behaviors that serve as proxies for detecting pregnancies at early stages. Proxies help Target analysts identify pregnancies long before consumers start making decisions about purchases for babies. …

The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age

Abstract: The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age Daniel J. Solove. New York: New York University Press, 2006. 290 pp. $29.95.Daniel J. Solove, like most contemporary writers on privacy, offers a sky-is-falling perspective on privacy in the modern paperless, transactional age. Due in part to the rise of so-called "digital dossiers" and perhaps, in the opinion of the reviewer, due in part to apathy, Solove observes recent developments as a new paradigm of the privacy problematic. The goal is "to rethink longstanding notions of privacy to grapple with the consequences of living in an information age" (p. 2). Much of what is covered here is not new. As Solove comments in his introduction: "There are hundreds of companies that are constructing gigantic databases of psychological profiles, amassing data about an individual's race, gender, income, hobbies, and purchases" (p. 2). Although the combination of private and public information "has long been viewed as problematic" (p. 6), Solove never adequately explains why or moves beyond the obvious: Marketing, credit, and related research companies have been engaging in such practices for years; in fairness to Solove, perhaps the difference is capacity to collect, to share, to compile, etc. This is the power of "aggregation" which contributes to the inability to assign adequate value to personal information. Though Solove does not make the connection, this may be a key to understanding the power of apathy or more kindly the unawareness that immobilizes individual responses to personal privacy protection. What is new is that "beyond articulating a new understanding of contemporary privacy problems" Solove attempts "to demonstrate the ways that the problems can be solved" (p. 6). After observing traditional conceptualizations such as big brother (Orwellian, pp. 29-35), secrecy and invasion (though he uses the idea of invasion to describe both), Solove claims to use a new Kafkaesque metaphor of irresponsible bureaucracy (pp. 36-41).On the way to this metaphor, Chapter 2 recounts the rise of public and private sector databases and the new uses of the web as a point and source of data collection. Chapter 3 reviews various metaphors and views the ultimate harm as one affecting human dignity through misjudgments, diminished capacity to participate, and unfairness (perhaps unevenness is more descriptive) in the collection of information. Chapter 4 reviews the inadequacy of the private (traditional tort and more recent statutory sector by sector approaches) and public law of privacy in the United States. …

The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All- Administrative University and Why It Matters

Abstract: The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All- Administrative University and Why It MattersBenjamin Ginsberg. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 248 pp. $29.95This is a horrifying book: I cannot recall ever being so upset so quickly, even by overviews of or commentaries on the economic, political, or militaristic debacles that have haunted the world during the past century. Because I have dedicated my professional life to academia, before I began to read, I alerted myself to be vigilantly objective, but I was roiling with anger after a mere paragraph or two. Not that I was unaware of the situation. My mother, my father, and I have just under 200 years invested in formal education: learning, instructing, and even a bit of administering. From the time that I was old enough to understand matters, all I ever heard at the end of each day was a recitation of what had occurred in my parents' schools. The problems usually, though not always, stemmed from inept or demagogic administrators who caused a great deal of ongoing harm. I never met the early tyrants, but now 60 years later, I still recall their names. Eventually my father moved on to college teaching, but matters here were even worse. My own experiences as a professor at two major universities confirm much that Benjamin Ginsberg offers in this extremely important study, although I was lucky to work closely with three deans who were extremely efficacious and kind, at least to me. I never had any trouble or problems with administrators. I prospered. However, as the chair of the grievance committee at an institution with 750 full- time faculty members, I was aware that other bodies rolled- right offthe campus (although, ironically, this was not always an administrator's fault).Despite my knowledge, I was immediately enlightened: Ginsberg, a professor at Johns Hopkins, has brought together a panoply of miseries inflicted on the professoriate and by extension on students as well as on higher education generally. Though all academics are aware of most of the points he makes, it may never have occurred to them (or to me) that what is being done is based on a hidden agenda, one that is extremely detrimental to the faculty. In the recent past, professors had a great deal of power and used it to teach and make discoveries in their fields, thus forwarding the two primary goals of an academic institution: instruction and research. Slowly but inexorably, administration has increased its own size (adding deans, associate deans, assistant deans; provosts and their subordinates; and so on, interminably but superfluously) and its power, delimiting and deflecting faculty influence in the decision- making process; whereas in the past, it would have been difficult or impossible to build a new arena, pay a football coach five million dollars a year, or alter the curriculum without full faculty cooperation, today the faculty may be the last to learn that some major alteration has been instituted. Ginsberg calls this "rampant administrative blight." Throughout this study, he adduces frequent apposite examples, some in great detail, to prove his points. So, for example, the lack of faculty influence at Boston University is demonstrated by the fact that a high percentage of professors "loathed and feared the dictatorial President John Silber," but they were unable to divest themselves of their leader.One of the major negative alterations in higher education has been the substitution of adjuncts (part- timers) for tenured or tenure track faculty. In 1976, 31 percent were adjuncts; by 2005, this had increased to 48 percent; during the same period, however, part- time administrators had decreased from four to three percent. Ginsberg cites the egregious case of the University of Maryland's main campus where one will find 29 vice- presidents and assistants of various stripes and denominations. Many earn more than $200,000 a year. As this university retrenched (a contractual arrangement that generally allows for the dismissal of tenured professors), the administrators' salaries soared. …