Information Technology, Methods and Ethics: Locating the domain of ethics in e-social science

1. Information Technology, Methods and Ethics: Locating the domain of ethics in e-social science Lucas Introna, Lancaster University

2. Agenda • E-Social Science • The problem of ethics in technological mediation (e-research) • Agency and ethics in heterogeneous assemblages • What does this mean for ethics in e-science?

3. E-Social Science • E-Social Science - ICT infrastructure to: • Collect data – internet research (forums, logs, blogs), crawling (webometrics), virtual interviews, virtual witnessing • Encode data - databases, transcripts, images, speech files, video • Share data – secure network access to quantitative and qualitative data sets • Analyse data – modelling, simulation, metadata (semantic web), automatic tagging • Collaborate - collaborative environments, workflow systems (probably main focus) • E-Social Science has the potential to racially alter our research domain as well as our research practice • Also transform many traditional research ethics issues

4. The problem of ethics in technological mediation (e-research) • Traditional solution to deal with the problem of ethics in technologically mediated agency - means/ends (fact/value) distinction Means (fact) Ends (value) Hammer Driving in a nail / break down E-mail Collaborate / harass Gun Hit a target / kill Technical Social (means) (needs / wants / ends) Objective Subjective Rational Political [affordance] [intentionality]

5. The problem with means/ends... • Technologies and moralities happen to be indissolubly mingled because, in both cases, the question of the relation of ends and means is profoundly problematized (Latour - 2002, 248) • Between the gesture of switching on my computer and what I write on the screen, I can either ignore the nuclear industry which enables me to work this morning, or find myself immersed in the uncertain destiny of that same industry which forces me to take account of the burial in deep silos of the waste from its stations that the French do not support. Such is the impressive scope of the concertina movement that characterizes technology: either I have the most secure, the most silent access to a course of action (to the extent that I no longer include in my description the nuclear industry reduced to the rank, not of means, but of nothing), or else I find myself in the maze which the whole of France blindly traverses shouting: ‘but how can we get rid of it?!’ A few seconds ago, I was in possession of resources that were so standard that they accounted for nothing; now, I find myself in ends so final that no one knows any longer how the common history will end. (Latour - 2002, 254 – 255)

6. Agency and ethics in heterogeneous assemblages • All mediation (what I refer to as ‘coding’) is about extending agency (translating it into a new domain) • All encoding (digital or otherwise) is always a matter of translation(not transportation) • Every extension (translation) comes at a cost • Ihde - amplification and reduction • Latour- blackboxing /encapsulation • Latour – delegation (imperfect) • Every translation is also constitutive / performative

7. Latour on blackboxing.. • Blackboxing / encapsulation “If, for pedagogical reasons, we would reverse the movement of the film of which this hammer is but the end product, we would deploy an increasing assemblage of ancient times and dispersed spaces: the intensity, the dimension, the surprise of the connections, invisible today, which would thus have become visible, and, by contrast, would give us an exact measure of what this hammer accomplishes today.” (p.249).

8. Every translation is performative... • The medium is the message (McLuhan) • “Humans and non-humans are engaged in a history that should render their separation impossible”... “Purposeful action and intentionality may not be properties of objects, but they are also not properties of humans either. They are properties of institutions [collectives of humans and non-humans], apparatuses, or what Foucault called dispositifs” (Latour 1999, p.192).

9. Agency and Ethics in Heterogeneous E-Social Science Networks Ethical Reflection and Archaeology (disclosure) Assemblage Ethics in E-Science Research Meth, Ethical Codes Value Sensitive Design, (Coding Ethics) Ethical Responsibility Human Non-Human