Luciano Floridi develops an original ethical framework for dealing with the new challenges posed by Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). ICTs have profoundly changed many aspects of life, including the nature of entertainment, work, communication, education, health care, industrial production and business, social relations, and conflicts. They have had a radical and widespread impact on our moral lives and on contemporary ethical debates. Privacy, ownership, freedom of speech, responsibility, technological determinism, the digital divide, and pornography online are only some of the pressing issues that characterise the ethical discourse in the information society. They are the subject of Information Ethics (IE), the new philosophical area of research that investigates the ethical impact of ICTs on human life and society.

Since the seventies, IE has been a standard topic in many curricula. In recent years, there has been a flourishing of new university courses, international conferences, workshops, professional organizations, specialized periodicals and research centres. However, investigations have so far been largely influenced by professional and technical approaches, addressing mainly legal, social, cultural and technological problems. This book is the first philosophical monograph entirely and exclusively dedicated to it.

Floridi lays down, for the first time, the conceptual foundations for IE. He does so systematically, by pursuing three goals:

a) a metatheoretical goal: it describes what IE is, its problems, approaches and methods;
b) an introductory goal: it helps the reader to gain a better grasp of the complex and multifarious nature of the various concepts and phenomena related to computer ethics;
c) an analytic goal: it answers several key theoretical questions of great philosophical interest, arising from the investigation of the ethical implications of ICTs.

Although entirely independent of The Philosophy of Information (OUP, 2011), Floridi's previous book, The Ethics of Information complements it as new work on the foundations of the philosophy of information.

Luciano Floridi is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire--where he holds the Research Chair in Philosophy of Information and the UNESCO Chair in Information and Computer Ethics--and Fellow of St Cross College, University of Oxford. Among his recognitions, he has been appointed the Gauss Professor by the Academy of Sciences in Gottingen, and is recipient of the APA's Barwise Prize, AISB Fellowship, the IACAP's Covey Award, and the INSEIT's Weizenbaum Award. He is Editor in Chief of Philosophy & Technology and was Chairman of EU Commission's 'Onlife' research group. His most recent books are: The Philosophy of Information (OUP, 2011), Information: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2010), and The Cambridge Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics (CUP, 2010).

PREFACE
1. ETHICS AFTER THE INFORMATION REVOLUTION
2. WHAT IS INFORMATION ETHICS?
3. THE METHOD OF ABSTRACTION
4. INFORMATION ETHICS AS E-NVIRONMENTAL ETHICS
5. INFORMATION ETHICS AND THE FOUNDATIONALIST DEBATE
6. THE INTRINSIC VALUE OF THE INFOSPHERE
7. THE MORALITY OF ARTIFICIAL AGENTS
8. THE CONSTRUCTIONIST VALUES OF HOMO POIETICUS
9. ARTIFICIAL EVIL
10. THE TRAGEDY OF THE GOOD WILL
11. THE INFORMATIONAL NATURE OF SELVES
12. THE ONTOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF INFORMATIONAL PRIVACY
13. DISTRIBUTED MORALITY
14. INFORMATION BUSINESS ETHICS
15. GLOBAL INFORMATION ETHICS
16. A DEFENCE OF INFORMATION ETHICS
EPILOGUE
REFERENCES
INDEX