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Classification

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DDC

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Footnote

Rez. in: JASIST 58(2007) no.2, S.302 (L.A. Ennis):"This is an important and timely anthology of articles "on the normative issues surrounding information control" (p. 11). Using an interdisciplinary approach, Moore's work takes a broad look at the relatively new field of information ethics. Covering a variety of disciplines including applied ethics, intellectual property, privacy, free speech, and more, the book provides information professionals of all kinds with a valuable and thought-provoking resource. Information Ethics is divided into five parts and twenty chapters or articles. At the end of each of the five parts, the editor has included a few "discussion cases," which allows the users to apply what they just read to potential real life examples. Part I, "An Ethical Framework for Analysis," provides readers with an introduction to reasoning and ethics. This complex and philosophical section of the book contains five articles and four discussion cases. All five of the articles are really thought provoking and challenging writings on morality. For instance, in the first article, "Introduction to Moral Reasoning," Tom Regan examines how not to answer a moral question. For example, he thinks using what the majority believes as a means of determining what is and is not moral is flawed. "The Metaphysics of Morals" by Immanuel Kant looks at the reasons behind actions. According to Kant, to be moral one has to do the right thing for the right reasons. By including materials that force the reader to think more broadly and deeply about what is right and wrong, Moore has provided an important foundation and backdrop for the rest of the book. Part II, "Intellectual Property: Moral and Legal Concerns," contains five articles and three discussion cases for tackling issues like ownership, patents, copyright, and biopiracy. This section takes a probing look at intellectual and intangible property from a variety of viewpoints. For instance, in "Intellectual Property is Still Property," Judge Frank Easterbrook argues that intellectual property is no different than physical property and should not be treated any differently by law. Tom Palmer's article, "Are Patents and Copyrights Morally Justified," however, uses historical examples to show how intellectual and physical properties differ.
Part III, "Privacy and Information Control," has four articles and three discussion cases beginning with an 1890 article from the Harvard Law Review, "The Right to Privacy," written by Samuel A Warren and Louis D. Brandeis. Moore then includes an article debating whether people own their genes, an article on caller I.D., and an article on computer surveillance. While all four articles pose some very interesting questions, Margaret Everett's article "The Social Life of Genes: Privacy, Property, and the New Genetics" is incredible. She does a great job of demonstrating how advances in genetics have led to increased concerns over ownership and privacy of genetic codes. For instance, if someone's genetic code predisposes them to a deadly disease, should insurance companies have access to that information? Part IV, "Freedom of Speech and Information Control," has three articles and two discussion cases that examine speech and photography issues. Moore begins this section with Kent Greenawalt's "Rationales for Freedom of Speech," which looks at a number of arguments favoring free speech. Then the notion of free speech is carried over into the digital world in "Digital Speech and Democratic Culture: A Theory of Freedom of Expression for the Information Society" by Jack M. Balkin. At 59 pages, this is the work's longest article and demonstrates how complex the digital environment has made freedom of speech issues. Finally, Part V, "Governmental and Societal Control of Information," contains three articles and three discussion cases which provide an excellent view into the conflict between security and privacy. For instance, the first article, "Carnivore, the FBI's E-mail Surveillance System: Devouring Criminals, Not Privacy" by Griffin S. Durham, examines the FBI's e-mail surveillance program called Carnivore. Durham does an excellent job of demonstrating that Carnivore is a necessary and legitimate system used in limited circumstances and with a court order. Librarians will find the final article in the book, National Security at What Price? A Look into Civil Liberty Concerns in the Information Age under the USA Patriot Act by Jacob R. Lilly, of particular interest. In this article, Lilly uses historical examples of events that sacrificed civil liberties for national security such as the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II and the McCarthyism of the Cold War era to examine the PATRIOT Act.
The book also includes an index, a selected bibliography, and endnotes for each article. More information on the authors of the articles would have been useful, however. One of the best features of Information Ethics is the discussion cases at the end of each chapter. For instance, in the discussion cases, Moore asks questions like: Would you allow one person to die to save nine? Should a scientist be allowed to experiment on people without their knowledge if there is no harm? Should marriages between people carrying a certain gene be outlawed? These discussion cases really add to the value of the readings. The only suggestion would be to have put them at the beginning of each section so the reader could have the questions floating in their heads as they read the material. Information Ethics is a well thought out and organized collection of articles. Moore has done an excellent job of finding articles to provide a fair and balanced look at a variety of complicated and far-reaching topics. Further, the work has breadth and depth. Moore is careful to include enough historical articles, like the 1890 Warren article, to give balance and perspective to new and modern topics like E-mail surveillance, biopiracy, and genetics. This provides a reader with just enough philosophy and history theory to work with the material. The articles are written by a variety of authors from differing fields so they range in length, tone, and style, creating a rich tapestry of ideas and arguments. However, this is not a quick or easy read. The subject matter is complex and one should plan to spend time with the book. The book is well worth the effort though. Overall, this is a highly recommended work for all libraries especially academic ones."

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Footnote

Rez. in: JASIST. 56(2003) no.12, S.1360 (C.Tomer): "Humanizing Information Technology is a collection of essays that represent what are presumably Julian Warner's best efforts to understand the perpetually nascent discipline of information science and its relationship to information technology. It is clearly a formidable task. Warner succeeds occasionally in this endeavor; more often, he fails. Yet, it would be wrong to mark Humanizing Information Technology as a book not worth reading. On the contrary, though much fault was found and this review is far from positive, it was nevertheless a book well-worth reading. That Humanizing Information Technology succeeds at all is in some ways remarkable, because Warner's prose tends to be dense and graceless, and understanding his commentaries often relies an close readings of a wide array of sources, some of them familiar, many of them less so. The inaccessibility of Warner's prose is unfortunate; there is not a single idea in Humanizing Information Technology so complicated that it could not have been stated in a clear, straightforward manner. The failure to establish a clear, sufficiently füll context for the more obscure sources is an even more serious problem. Perhaps the most conspicuous example of this problem stems from the frequent examination of the concept of the "information society" and the related notion of information as an autonomous variable, each of them ideas drawn largely from Frank Webster's 1995 book, Theories of the Information Society. Several of Warner's essays contain passages in Humanizing Information Technology whose meaning and value are largely dependent an a familiarity with Webster's work. Yet, Warner never refers to Theories of the Information Society in more than cursory terms and never provides a context füll enough to understand the particular points of reference. Suffice it to say, Humanizing Information Technology is not a book for readers who lack patience or a thorough grounding in modern intellectual history. Warner's philosophical analyses, which frequently exhibit the meter, substance, and purpose of a carefully crafted comprehensive examination, are a large part of what is wrong with Humanizing Information Technology. Warner's successes come when he turns his attention away from Marxist scholasticism and toward historical events and trends. "Information Society or Cash Nexus?" the essay in which Warner compares the role of the United States as a "copyright haven" for most of the 19th century to modern China's similar status, is successful because it relies less an abstruse analysis and more an a sharply drawn comparison of the growth of two economies and parallel developments in the treatment of intellectual property. The essay establishes an illuminating context and cites historical precedents in the American experience suggesting that China's official positions toward intellectual property and related international conventions are likely to evolve and grow more mature as its economy expands and becomes more sophisticated. Similarly, the essay entitled "In the Catalogue Ye Go for Men" is effective because Warner comes dangerously close to pragmatism when he focuses an the possibility that aligning cataloging practice with the "paths and tracks" of discourse and its analysis may be the means by which to build more information systems that furnish a more direct basis for intellectual exploration.
Like Daniel Bell, the author of The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973), who used aspects of Marx's thinking as the basis for his social forecasting models, Warner uses Marxist thought as a tool for social and historical analysis. Unlike Bell, Warner's approach to Marx tends to be doctrinaire. As a result, "An Information View of History" and "Origins of the Human Brain," two of the essays in which Warner sets out to establish the connections between information science and information technology, are less successful. Warner argues, "the classic source for an understanding of technology as a human construction is Marx," and that "a Marxian perspective an information technology could be of high marginal Utility," noting additionally that with the exception of Norbert Wiener and John Desmond Bernal, "there has only been a limited penetration of Marxism into information science" (p. 9). But Warner's efforts to persuade the reader that these views are cogent never go beyond academic protocol. Nor does his support for the assertion that the second half of the 19th century was the critical period for innovation and diffusion of modern information technologies. The closing essay, "Whither Information Science?" is particularly disappointing, in part, because the preface and opening chapters of the book promised more than was delivered at the end. Warner asserts that the theoretical framework supporting information science is negligible, and that the discipline is limited even further by the fact that many of its members do not recognize or understand the effects of such a limitation. However cogent the charges may be, none of this is news. But the essay fails most notably because Warner does not have any new directions to offer, save that information scientists should pay closer artention to what is going an in allied disciplines. Moreover, he does not seem to understand that at its heart the "information revolution" is not about the machines, but about the growing legions of men and women who can and do write programming code to exert control over and find new uses for these devices. Nor does he seem to understand that information science, in the grip of what he terms a "quasi-global crisis," suffers grievously because it is a community situated not at the center but rather an the periphery of this revolution."

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Abstract

Does contemporary Internet technology strengthen civic engagement and democratic practice? The recent surge in online community participation has become a cultural phenomenon enmeshed in ongoing debates about the health of American civil society. But observations about online communities often concentrate on ascertaining the true nature of community and democracy, typically rehearsing familiar communitarian and liberal perspectives. This book seeks to understand the technology on its own terms, focusing on how the technological and organizational configurations of online communities frame our contemporary beliefs and assumptions about community and the individual. It analyzes key structural features of thirty award-winning online community websites to show that while the values of individual autonomy, egalitarianism, and freedom of speech dominate the discursive content of these communities, the practical realities of online life are clearly marked by exclusivity and the demands of commercialization and corporate surveillance. Promises of social empowerment are framed within consumer and therapeutic frameworks that undermine their democratic efficacy. As a result, online communities fail to revolutionize the civic landscape because they create cultures of membership that epitomize the commodification of community and public life altogether.

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Abstract

According to Paul Levinson, it would be improper to portray information technology as the cause of change in our world. However, Levinson clarifies that its role in enabling change can hardly be overestimated. He also points out--through riveting examples--that inventions have unintended consequences and uses. Why is it, for example, that the move from polytheism to monotheism failed when attempted by the pharaoh Ikhnaton, yet took solid root among the Hebrews who were taken out of Egypt by Moses only about 150 years later? Levinson argues that communication technology played a key role: The awkward Egyptian hieroglyphics failed to carry the ideology as well as the Hebrew alphabetic system. From there, Levinson examines the early social changes that became possible because of what the author calls "the first digital medium"--the alphabet. He considers how the Reformation, economic and political movements, and the scientific revolution were largely enabled by the printing press. He then discusses the influence of photographic communications and electronic technology such as the telegraph, the telephone, and broadcasting. Levinson devotes the second half of the book to our present digital revolution, from word processing to the Internet and beyond. One of his key points is that new technology doesn't necessarily displace the old so much as it expands it. Therefore, he doesn't see any end to using paper anytime soon. However, he sees great need for changes in the way we view creative rights. He proposes what he calls an"electronic watermark" for intellectual property--a universal patent number that will be embedded in intellectual property and will notify users in any medium of the property's creators. Levinson puts forth his ideas in a manner that is both formal and engaging. He has a knack for making his reader feel intelligent and respected--and never more so than when he looks at issues of ethics and a speculative future.

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Abstract

In this book, Ronald Day offers a critical history of the modern tradition of documentation. Focusing on the documentary index (understood as a mode of social positioning), and drawing on the work of the French documentalist Suzanne Briet, Day explores the understanding and uses of indexicality. He examines the transition as indexes went from being explicit professional structures that mediated users and documents to being implicit infrastructural devices used in everyday information and communication acts. Doing so, he also traces three epistemic eras in the representation of individuals and groups, first in the forms of documents, then information, then data. Day investigates five cases from the modern tradition of documentation. He considers the socio-technical instrumentalism of Paul Otlet, "the father of European documentation" (contrasting it to the hermeneutic perspective of Martin Heidegger); the shift from documentation to information science and the accompanying transformation of persons and texts into users and information; social media's use of algorithms, further subsuming persons and texts; attempts to build android robots -- to embody human agency within an information system that resembles a human being; and social "big data" as a technique of neoliberal governance that employs indexing and analytics for purposes of surveillance. Finally, Day considers the status of critique and judgment at a time when people and their rights of judgment are increasingly mediated, displaced, and replaced by modern documentary techniques.

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Footnote

Rez. in: Publishers Weekly. May 2007: "In a high-minded twist on the Internet-has-changed-everything book, Weinberger (Small Pieces Loosely Joined) joins the ranks of social thinkers striving to construct new theories around the success of Google and Wikipedia. Organization or, rather, lack of it, is the key: the author insists that "we have to get rid of the idea that there's a best way of organizing the world." Building on his earlier works' discussions of the Internet-driven shift in power to users and consumers, Weinberger notes that "our homespun ways of maintaining order are going to break-they're already breaking-in the digital world." Today's avalanche of fresh information, Weinberger writes, requires relinquishing control of how we organize pretty much everything; he envisions an ever-changing array of "useful, powerful and beautiful ways to make sense of our world." Perhaps carried away by his thesis, the author gets into extended riffs on topics like the history of classification and the Dewey Decimal System. At the point where readers may want to turn his musings into strategies for living or doing business, he serves up intriguing but not exactly helpful epigrams about "the third order of order" and "useful miscellaneousness." But the book's call to embrace complexity will influence thinking about "the newly miscellanized world.""