The need for computer/information ethics is driven by the impact that technology has on society. Although the influence relationship between society and technology is initially society driving technology, the influence can go the other way. With fruitful technologies the mutual influences can become circular, leading to changes that can not be forseen.
Needs drive technology. But technology can only meet those needs when it is ready.
When technology fills a need it usually initially replaces an old way of doing something with a new way that is better in one or more ways.
For some technologies (probably most) the influences end there. But for more fruitful technologies, the technology expands society's conception of what is possible. Then society wants more from its technologies. In the recent history of information technologies, this circular influence between society and technology has happened at an unprecedented pace.
Miniaturization technology allows us to do more with less raw material. For many purposes this is not advantageous. Do you want a car the size of your laptop or cell phone? But we don't mind — even prefer — smaller information storage and computational devices.
Ethical issues regarding information technology can be roughly classified into five categories:
Do we have too much information today? Our brain sometimes works better with less information. For example, what can you do when a web search returns tens of thousands of links and the first few hundred are not what you want.
Some effects of information overload are implicit in recent studies revealing the dangers of texting while driving.
There is a lot of bad information on the web. But also a lot of information is computed, and software doing the computation may be flawed. What are your responsibilities as a software developer?
Two important ethical issues concern information misuse:
Both of these issues raise a very difficult question: what kinds of rights do we have with regard to information?
We have a complex internet with millions of connected computers. There are a number of security issues that arise with regard to this infrastructure. Without a secure infrastructure you cannot control misinformation, prevent breaches of privacy, or even keep the infrastructure operational.
Can the web be addictive? What kind of effect does email and texting have on interpersonal relationships? What kind of effects does computing and automation have on economics and the work force? Does the potential of intelligent machine affect our view of ourselves?