Sarah Spiekermann

• Univ. Prof. Dr.
• Chair at Vienna University of Economics and Business

This article presents the complex landscape of philosophical and anthropological thought on our human future, partially referred to as "posthumanism". Building on a categorization of posthuman narratives presented by Tamar Sharon (2014) that discerns liberal, dystopic and radical posthuman narratives, a survey instrument was built and statistically...

The book offers a well-founded and practice-orientated perspective on the importance of corporate digital responsibility (CDR) in the digital age. Readers will gain valuable insights into how companies can put people and the common good at the centre of their digital transformation. The volume documents the results of the CDR Conference 2023, organ...

The digital transformation of the economy is accelerating companies’ engagement in information technology (IT) innovation. To anticipate which technologies will become relevant over time and integrate them in their innovation plans, companies often rely on product roadmaps as strategic tools. However, ethical issues resulting from ubiquitous IT use...

Dieser Artikel beschreibt neun Menschenbilder, die in der IT-Industrie prominent sind. Zunächst werden die beiden Menschenbilder vorgestellt, die explizit in der Literatur der Informatik und der Ingenieurswissenschaften genannt sind, insbesondere das des Nutzers und das des Stellvertreters, auf die hin die Systeme entwickelt und optimiert werden. D...

Calls for an ethically aligned technology design have led companies to publish lists of value principles that their engineers should adhere to. However, it is questionable whether such lists can grasp a technology’s wide-ranging ethical implications. The bottom-up elicitation of values from the specific technology context avoids problems that prede...

Digital ethics is being discussed worldwide as a necessity to create more reliable IT systems. This discussion, fueled by the fear of uncontrollable artificial intelligence (AI) has moved many institutions and scientists to demand a value-based system engineering. This article presents how organizations can build responsible and ethically founded s...

This September 2021 IEEE 7000 TM , the world's first standardized model process for addressing ethical concerns during system design is published. It shows organizations how to do value-based engineering by identifying context-sensitive, philosophically grounded ethical value requirements for their systems and thereby change not only their business...

In recent years, there has been a steady increase in awareness of the need to design technology more ethically. The crashes of two Boeing 737 MAX airplanes [1] as well as the Volkswagen scandal [2] have contributed to the questioning of ethical practices in classic engineering departments. Several studies revealed the potential bias and manipul...

In late 2019 about a dozen BISE chairs from the German-speaking community met around ICIS to discuss the ethical challenges arising from the current construction, deployment, and marketing of Information Systems (IS). It turned out that many were and are concerned about the negative implications of IS while at the same time being convinced that dig...

Health data bear great promises for a healthier and happier life, but they also make us vulnerable. Making use of millions or billions of data points, Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are now creating new benefits. For sure, harvesting Big Data can have great potentials for the health system, too. It can support accurate diagn...

Health data bear great promises for a healthier and happier life, but they also make us vulnerable. Making use of millions or billions of data points, Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are now creating new benefits. For sure, harvesting Big Data can have great potentials for the health system, too. It can support accurate diagn...

IEEE 7000™ is a long-awaited standard promising organizations the “ethical specs” [1] that seem to be overdue in engineering roadmaps. One hundred and fifty-four experts were, at some point, involved in IEEE 7000, 34 being Workgroup (WG) members. Seventy-seven experts balloted for its publication in 2021 (93% acceptance rate). In this article, I...

Zusammenfassung Digitale Ethik wird derzeit weltweit als eine Notwendigkeit diskutiert, um verlässlichere IT-Systeme zu schaffen. Diese Diskussion, geschürt durch die Angst vor einer unkontrollierbaren generellen Künstlichen Intelligenz (KI) und angeheizt von ethischen Dilemmata bestehender Systeme, hat viele Institutionen und Wissenschaftler dazu...

This article reviews the academic literature (1996–2016) that emerged under value sensitive design (VSD). It investigates those VSD projects that employed the tripartite methodology, examining the use of VSD methodological elements, and illustrating common practices and identifying shortcomings. The article provides advice for VSD researchers on ho...

Dieser Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit der Frage, worin sich die menschliche Intelligenz von der künstlichen Intelligenz unterscheidet und ob es zulässig sein sollte, die KI als "menschenähnlich" zu bezeichnen. Anhand von fünf Thesen wird gezeigt, dass ein in der Sprache weit verbreiteter Vergleich von menschlicher und künstlicher Intelligenz problema...

The new information and communication technology providers collect increasing amounts of personal data, a lot of which is user generated. Unless use policies are privacy-friendly, this leaves users vulnerable to privacy risks such as exposure through public data visibility or intrusive commercialisation of their data through secondary data use. Due...

Organizations struggle to comply with legal requirements as well as customers calls for better data protection. On the implementation level, incorporation of privacy protections in products and services depends on the commitment of the engineers who design them. We interviewed six senior engineers, who work for globally leading IT corporations and...

The new information and communication technology providers collect increasing amounts of personal data, a lot of which is user generated. Unless use policies are privacy-friendly, this leaves users vulnerable to privacy risks such as exposure through public data visibility or intrusive commercialisation of their data through secondary data use. Due...

Purpose: In 2009, US coupons set a new record of 367 billion coupons distributed. Yet, while coupon distribution is on the rise, redemption rates remain below 1 percent. This paper aims to show how recognizing context variables, such as proximity, weather, part of town and financial incentives interplay to determine a coupon campaigns success. Desi...

We present the results of a study designed to measure the impact of interruptive advertising on consumers willingness to pay for products bearing the advertiser's brand. Subjects participating in a controlled experiment were exposed to ads that diverted their attention from a computer game they were testing. We found that ads significantly lowered...

In online crowdsourcing labour markets, employers decide which job-seekers to hire based on their reputation profiles. If reputation systems neglect the aspect of time when displaying reputation profiles, though, employers risk taking false decisions, deeming an obsolete reputation to be still relevant. As a consequence, job-seekers might be unwarr...

From the early days of the information economy, personal data has been its most valuable asset. Despite data protection laws and an acknowledged right to privacy, trading personal information has become a business equated with "trading oil". Most of this business is done without the knowledge and active informed consent of the people. But as data b...

This article gives a methodological overview of Value-based Engineering for ethics by design. It discusses key challenges and measures involved in eliciting, conceptualizing, prioritizing and respecting values in system design. Thereby it draws from software engineering, value sensitive design, design thinking and participatory design as well as fr...

Künstliche Intelligenz (KI) beherrscht längst unser Leben, ohne dass es vielen bewusst ist. Smartphones, die mit uns sprechen, Armbanduhren, die unsere Gesundheitsdaten aufzeichnen, Arbeitsabläufe, die sich automatisch organisieren, Autos, Flugzeuge und Drohnen, die sich selbst steuern, Verkehrs- und Energiesysteme mit autonomer Logistik oder Robot...

Users disclose ever-increasing amounts of personal data on Social Network Service platforms (SNS). Unless SNSs' policies are privacy friendly, this leaves them vulnerable to privacy risks because they ignore the privacy policies. Designers and regulators have pushed for shorter, simpler and more prominent privacy policies, however the evidence that...

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are generally assumed to save time and energy, yet user fatigue due to ICT use is assumed to be on the rise. The question about the effects of ICT use on human energy has sparked increased research interest in recent years. however, the course is complicated by the fact that the conceptualization of...

Information systems (IS) play an increasing role for individual well-being [3], for the environment [4], and for society at large [5]. Considering sustainability in IS development is therefore becoming paramount. However, companies today associate sustainability with extra cost and burden on their operations. As a result, many view sustainability m...

Organizations struggle to comply with legal requirements as well as customers’calls for betterdata protection. On the implementation level, incorporation of privacy protections in productsand services depends on the commitment of the engineers who design them. We interviewed sixsenior engineers, who work for globally leading IT corporations and res...

Machine ethics is a key challenge in times when digital systems play an increasing role in people's lives. At the core of machine ethics is the handling of personal data and the security of machine operations. Yet, privacy and security engineering are a challenge in today's business world where personal data markets, corporate deadlines, and a lack...

The wide distribution of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has affected our lives in the working environment as well as in private and social contexts and has done so not only in a positive, but also threatening way. Researchers and scholars have therefore called for a sustainable and value-based design of technologies. However, in...

The IEEE P7000 Working Group aims to establish a process model for addressing ethical concerns during system design. In this article, the groups vice-chair critically reviews the IoT vision with regard to human values such as freedom, dignity, and privacy, and argues that we need to ramp up requirements engineering to prevent a dystopian IoT future...

Although drones are receiving a lot of attention from industry and academia alike, the protection of citizen privacy is still an open issue. To this end, we demonstrate how basic principles of information privacy could be integrated with existing infrastructure to build up a framework for privacy-aware unmanned aerial system (UAS) dispatch consider...

Data analysis is becoming a popular tool to gain marketing insights from heterogeneous and often unstructured sensor data. Online stores make use of click stream analysis to understand customer intentions. Meanwhile, retail companies transition to locating technologies like RFID to gain better control and visibility of the inventory in a store. To...

A spectre is haunting Europe and the rest of our planet-the spectre of Transhumanism. Its priests and familiars inhabit some of our most prominent research laboratories, universities, major corporations and political institutions. Its books decorate our major bookstores and airport shops. Its products and totemic objects are already available on ou...

This article is of an unusual format. It is the first part of a longer essay entitled “I Mother of Robots”. I am writing from the perspective of a mother who is about to give birth to her robot “mind children” and who is thinking about how to raise them for the good. I am reflecting on how humanity could historically and philosophically develop a t...

INTRODUCTION The relationship between European privacy regulators and predominantly American technology businesses can seem increasingly fraught A string of adverse (and sometimes counter intuitive) privacy findings against digital businesses – including the ‘Right to be Forgotten’, and bans on biometricpowered photo tag suggestions – have left som...

In online crowdsourcing labour markets, employers decide which job-seekers to hire based on their reputation profiles. If reputation systems neglect the aspect of time when displaying reputation profiles, though, employers risk taking false decisions, deeming an obsolete reputation to be still relevant. As a consequence, job-seekers might be unwarr...

A privacy pattern catalog provides guidance with respect to data protection requirements, to both technical and non-technical personnel that are involved in the development of software that processes personally identifiable information. This paper describes a privacy pattern catalog that was compiled with the help of the structured-case methodology...

Analysts, investors and entrepreneurs have recognized the value of personal data for Internet economics. Personal data is viewed as ‘the oil’ of the digital economy. Yet, ordinary people are barely aware of this. Marketers collect personal data at minimal cost in exchange for free services. But will this be possible in the long term, especially in...

The collection, analysis and utilization of digital information based on our clicks, swipes, likes, purchases, movements, behaviors and interests are now part of everyday life. But, while individuals become increasingly transparent, companies take control of the recorded data. Wolfie Christl and Sarah Spiekermann show in their book how today’s netw...

Explaining how ubiquitous computing is rapidly changing our private and professional lives, Ethical IT Innovation: A Value-Based System Design Approach stands at the intersection of computer science, philosophy, and management and integrates theories and frameworks from all three domains. The book explores the latest thinking on computer ethics, in...

Personal data is increasingly conceived as a tradable asset. Markets for personal information are emerging and new ways of valuating individuals’ data are being proposed. At the same time, legal obligations over protection of personal data and individuals’ concerns over its privacy persist. This article outlines some of the economic, technical, soc...

Personal data is increasingly conceived as a tradable asset. Markets for personal information are emerging and new ways of valuating individuals’ data are being proposed. At the same time, legal obligations over protection of personal data and individuals’ concerns over its privacy persist. This article outlines some of the economic, technical, soc...

Zunehmende wirtschaftliche Vernetzung und Lobbyismus fordern die Sicherstellung von informierter Zustimmung, Transparenz und Verantwortlichkeit in der privatwirtschaftlichen Verwendung personenbezogener Daten heraus. Unser neues Modell verbindet durch das Zusammenspiel regulatorischer und technischer Datenschutzkonzepte mehr Sicherheit und Selbstbe...

From the early days of the information economy, personal data has been its most valuable asset. Despite data protection laws and an acknowledged right to privacy, trading personal information has become a business equated with “trading oil”. Most of this business is done without the knowledge and active informed consent of the people. But as data b...

In this paper, we describe two experiments that show the powerful influence of interface complexity and entropy on online information-sharing behaviour. One hundred and thirty-four participants were asked to do a creativity test and answer six open questions against three different screen backgrounds of increasing complexity. Our data show that, as...

For companies that develop and operate IT applications that process the personal data of customers and employees, a major problem is protecting these data and preventing privacy breaches. Failure to adequately address this problem can result in considerable damage to the company’s reputation and finances, as well as negative effects for customers o...

Unlimited retention of personal information on the web may harm individuals: employers can find youthful indiscretions on social media, and incorrectly low credit scores may haunt individuals for a lifetime. Currently, Europe revives the "right to erasure" as a first step towards a forgetting web. Early technologies implementing oblivion suffer fro...

CLSR welcomes occasional comment pieces on issues of current importance in the law and technology field. The current debate on the Commission’s proposal for a new data protection framework includes a plethora of very specific issues. As important as these may be, it should not be overlooked that the very principles of data protection are at stake a...

Das Institut für BWL und Wirtschaftsinformatik unter der Leitung von Univ. Prof. Dr. Sarah Spiekermann möchte durch Einsatz eines breiten Methodenspektrums eine „nachhaltige“ Techniklandschaft mitgestalten. Der inhaltliche Schwerpunkt liegt dabei auf Fragen zum Erhalt von Privatsphäre und Kontrolle in allgegenwärtigen elektronischen und insbesonder...

Analysts, investors and entrepreneurs have for long recognized the value of comprehensive user profiles. While there is a market for trading such personal information among companies, the users, who are actually the providers of such information, are not asked to the negotiations table. To date, there is little information on how users value their...

From the early days of the information economy, personal data has been its most valuable asset. Despite data protection laws, companies trade personal information and often intrude on the privacy of individuals. As a result, consumers become more and more irritated and concerned. They feel out of control and lose trust in electronic environments. T...

Heralded by regulators, Privacy by Design holds the promise to solve the digital world's privacy problems. But there are immense challenges, including management commitment and step-by-step methods to integrate privacy into systems.

In the age of Web 2.0 users contribute to platforms success by providing personal information by actively uploading information (e.g., messages, preferences, biographies) and also by leaving traces of their online behaviour as can be derived from their clicks, navigation paths, etc. While there is a market for trading such information among compani...

A major problem for companies that develop and operate IT applications that process personal data of customers and employees is to ensure the protection of this data and to prevent privacy breaches. Failure to adequately address this problem can result in considerable reputational and financial damages for the company as well as for affected data s...

We present the results of a study designed to measure the impact of interruptive advertising on consumers' willingness to pay for products bearing the advertiser's brand. Subjects participating in a controlled experiment were exposed to ads that diverted their attention from a computer game they were testing. We measured subjects' willingness to pa...

The history of the RFID PIA.

Profile-driven personalization based on socio-demographics is currently regarded as the most convenient base for successful personalized advertising. However, signs point to the dormant power of context recognition: Advertising systems that can adapt to the situational context of a consumer will rapidly gain importance. While technologies that can...

In retail, demographics are currently regarded as the most convenient base for successful personalized marketing. However, signs point to the dormant power of context recognition. While technologies that can sense the environment are advanced, questions such as what to sense and how to adapt context are largely unanswered. In this paper, we analyze...

Purpose In 2009, US coupons set a new record of 367 billion coupons distributed. Yet, while coupon distribution is on the rise, redemption rates remain below 1 percent. This paper aims to show how recognizing context variables, such as proximity, weather, part of town and financial incentives interplay to determine a coupon campaign's success. Des...

This article aims to argue that, as we move into an era of ubiquitous computing, where the traditional Internet evolves to embrace an Internet of Things, it may be beneficial to embed an “Idea of Man” into its systems design. The “Idea of Man” is a holistic philosophical concept that considers what Man is, what Man should be, and how Man lives with...

Vor nicht allzu langer Zeit stellte mir ein Philosoph die ihm selbstverständlich erscheinende Frage, welches Menschenbild eigentlich der Technikgestaltung zugrunde läge. Als Wirtschaftsinformatikerin überraschte mich die Frage, denn zumindest in der Softwareentwicklung war ich über diese Fragestellung explizit noch nie gestoßen. Ich reflektierte, o...

On Online Social Networks such as Facebook, massive self-disclosure by users has attracted the attention of industry players and policymakers worldwide. Despite the impressive scope of this phenomenon, very little is understood about what motivates users to disclose personal information. Integrating focus group results into a theoretical privacy ca...

Driven by privacy-related fears, users of Online Social Networks may start to reduce their network activities. This trend can have a negative impact on network sustainability and its business value. Nevertheless, very little is understood about the privacy-related concerns of users and the impact of those concerns on identity performance. To close...

Presently the creation of innovative products is a central challenge of many organizations. In order to reach this goal it is important that employees contribute with their knowledge. It is the task of Knowledge Management to handle knowledge as a key resource of businesses. In order to realize an agile acting it is essential that workers apply the...

This is a literature survey of computational location privacy, meaning computation-based privacy mechanisms that treat location data as geometric information. This definition includes privacy-preserving algorithms like anonymity and obfuscation as well ...

This article investigates the conflicting area of user benefits arising through item level radio frequency identification (RFID) tagging and a desire for privacy. It distinguishes between three approaches feasible to address consumer privacy concerns. One is to kill RFID tags at store exits. The second is to lock tags and have user unlock them if t...

Some of the significant factors associated with RFID technology, that is used to automatically and remotely identify objects, are presented. Security and privacy research community are making significant efforts to develop privacy enhancing technologies (PETs) to prevent unauthorized access to RFID tags. The objective of their efforts is to develop...

Internet auctions have become very important for B-2-C E-Commerce. With 56 million active users, eBay alone generates a 34 billion in turnover per annum [Ebay05, 2]. Typically, forward auctions with an ascending- bid mechanism are employed in B-2-C or C-2-C environments. Sellers initiate auctions and buyers compete for the products offered which ca...

skillMap serves the demands of 3rd generation KM for unstructured and human-centred approaches and is based on the Web 2.0 – concept. It combines a social network with a semantic network of skills. A visualization of the combined graphs serves as user-interface. After describing the technical implementation of the skillMap, we argue that the skillM...

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a technology that allows for automatic and remote identification of objects and is currently discussed as one of the most important technical enablers of Pervasive Computing, boosting economic processes and home computing applications. However, as far as privacy is concerned RFID is still in its 'kindershoes...