Here the string stands in for a more complex proposition such as “buy groceries before you come home. ” The string itself is not the information, it merely symbolizes the information and therefore this symbol must be correctly interpreted for it to be useful. Which raises the question, what is information itself? Unfortunately there is not a completely satisfying and philosophically rigorous definition available, though there are at least two very good starting points.
For those troubled by the ontological questions regarding information, we might want to simply focus on the symbols and define information as any meaningfully ordered set of symbols. This move can be very useful and mathematicians and engineers prefer to focus on this aspect of information, which is called “syntax” and leave the meaningfulness of information or its “semantics” for others to figure out. Claude E.
Shannon working at Bell Labs produced a landmark mathematical theory of communication (1948), where he took his experiences in cryptography and telephone technologies and worked out a mathematical formulation describing how syntactical information can be turned into a signal that is transmitted in such a way as to mitigate noise or other extraneous signals which can then be decoded by the desired receiver of the message (Shannon 1948; Shannon and Weaver 1949).
The concepts described by Shannon, along with additional important innovations made by others who are too many to list, explain the way that information echnology works, but we still have the deeper issue to resolve if we want to thoroughly trace the impact of information technologies on moral values. The second starting point is a bit more deeply philosophical in nature. Here we begin with the claim that information either constitutes or is closely correlated with what constitutes our existence and the existence of everything around us. This means that information plays an ontological role in the manner in which the universe operates.
The Essay on Analyse different types of business information and their sources
Verbal communication is communicating a message verbally to whoever is receiving the message. An advantage of verbal communication is the opportunity for immediate feedback to make sure the message was understood. Another advantage is the opportunity to utilize nonverbal cues (tone, body language, inflection). These can apply to Barclays because it’s important for Barclays to receive immediate ...
A standpoint such as this would place information at the center of concern for philosophy and this idea has given rise to the new fields of Information Philosophy and Information Ethics. Philosophy of Information will not be addressed in detail here but the interested reader can begin with Floridi (2010b, 2011b) for an introduction. Some of the most important aspects of Information Ethics will be outlined in more detail below. Every action we take leaves a trail of information that could be recorded and stored for future use.
For instance, you might use the simple technology of keeping a detailed diary listing all the things you did and thought during the day. But today you could augment that with even more detail gathered with advanced information technologies some examples include; all of your economic transactions, a GPS generated plot of where you traveled, a list of all the web addresses you visited and the details of each search you initiated online, a listing of all your vital signs such as blood pressure and heart rate, all of your dietary intakes for the day, and many other examples can be imagined.
As you go through this thought experiment you begin to see the complex trail of data that you generate each and every day and how that same data might be collected and stored though the use of information technologies. Here we can begin to see how information technology can impact moral values. As this data gathering becomes more automated and ever-present, we must ask who is in control of this data, what is to be done with it, and who will insure its accuracy.
The Essay on Information Technology 2
Information technology pertains to electronic tools that facilitate several processes that are commonly employed in an institution, including the collection, storage, retrieval and transfer of information from one site to another. It should be understood that information technology increases the speed in data handling not only within one institution, but also within a network that may be composed ...
For instance, which bits of information should be made public, which held private, and which should be allowed to become the property of third parties like corporations? Questions of the production, access and control of information will be at the heart of moral challenges surrounding the use of information technology. One might argue that this situation is no different from the moral issues revolving around the production, access and control of any basic necessity of life. But there is one major ifference, if one party controls the access of some natural resource, then that by necessity excludes others from using it. This is not necessarily so with digital information, it is non-exclusory, meaning we can all at least theoretically possess the same digital information because copying it from one digital source to another does not require eliminating the previous copy. Since there is no physical obstacle to the spread of all information, then there remain only appeals to morality, or economic justice, which might prevent distributing certain forms of information.
Therefore, understanding the role of moral values in information technology is indispensable to the design and use of these technologies (Johnson 1985; Moor 1985; Nissenbaum 1998; Spinello 2001).
It should be noted that this entry will not directly address the phenomenological approach to the ethics of information technology since there is a detailed entry on this subject available (see entry on Phenomenological Approaches to Ethics and Information Technology).
