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Norbert Wiener’s Vision: The Impact of
“the Automatic Age” on Our Moral Lives
Terrell Ward Bynum
Southern Connecticut State University
Foreseeing the Information Age
During the Second World War, while working to design a new kind of antiaircraft cannon, mathema-tician Norbert Wiener
and several of his colleagues developed a new branch of applied science — the science of information feedback systems —
which Wiener named “cybernetics”. With impressive foresight, Wiener realized that this new science, when combined with
the electronic digital computers that were being developed to support the war effort, had enormous social and ethical
implications. Soon after the Second World War, therefore, Wiener began to write and lecture about the social and ethical
challenges of the coming “automatic age”, which he also called “the second industrial revolution”. As early as 1948, in his
book Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, Wiener published the following
comments:
It has long been clear to me that the modern ultra-rapid computing machine was in principle an
ideal central nervous system to an apparatus for automatic control; and that its input and output
need not be in the form of numbers or diagrams but might very well be, respectively, the
readings of artificial sense organs, such as photoelectric cells or thermometers, and the
performance of motors or solenoids. . . . Long before Nagasaki and the public awareness of the
atomic bomb, it had occurred to me that we were here in the presence of another social
potentiality of unheard-of importance for good and for evil. (Wiener, 1948, p.36)
Perhaps I may clarify the historical background of the present situation if I say that the first
industrial revolution, the revolution of the “dark satanic mills,” was the devaluation of the
human arm by the competition of machinery. . . . The modern industrial revolution [i.e., the
computer revolution] is similarly bound to devalue the human brain. . . . The answer, of course,
is to have a society based on human values other than buying and selling. To arrive at this
society, we need a good deal of planning and a good deal of struggle. . . . (Wiener, 1948, pp.
37-38, bracketed words added)
In his writings on the social and ethical impact of the coming “automatic age”, Wiener examined ways in which information
and communication technology could affect — both positively and negatively — fundamental human values, such as life and
health, work and wealth, knowledge and ability, creativity and happiness, democracy and freedom, peace and security.
Wiener’s groundbreaking research on the ethical implications of “the modern ultra-rapid computing machine” and
related technologies established him as a seminal figure in the applied ethics field that, today, is variously called “computer
ethics”, “information ethics”, or “ICT ethics” (information and communication technology ethics). “Information ethics” is
perhaps the most appropriate name for Wiener’s field of ethical research, because it concerned all means of storing,
transmitting and processing information, including, for example, perception, memory, printing, phonographs, telephones,
telegraph, radio, television, computers, and so on. (Henceforth, in the present essay, the term “information ethics”
1
will be
used to refer to the applied ethics field that Wiener founded.)
The central importance of information in a human life, from Wiener’s point of view, is revealed in the following
quotation from his book The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society
2
:
Information is a name for the content of what is exchanged with the outer world as we adjust to it,
and make our adjustment felt upon it. The process of receiving and of using information is the
process of our adjusting to the contingencies of the outer environment, and of our living
effectively within that environment. The needs and the complexity of modern life make greater
demands on this process of information than ever before. . . . To live effectively is to live with
1
For several contemporary works on information ethics, see the recent writings of Luciano Floridi listed in the References
below.
2
First published in 1950 by Houghton Mifflin. In 1954, Doubleday Anchor published a significantly revised version. In the
present essay, all quotations from The Human Use of Human Beings are from the 1954 version.
2
adequate information. Thus, communication and control belong to the essence of man’s inner life,
even as they belong to his life in society. (Wiener, 1954, pp. 17-18)
An Aristotelian Foundation for Information Ethics
In creating the field of information ethics, Wiener laid down a foundation that is very Aristotelian.
3
Although there is no
evidence that he explicitly based himself upon Aristotle, the similarities are striking between Aristotle’s accounts of animal
behavior and human action on the one hand, and Wiener’s explanations of animal behavior, human action, and machine
agency on the other hand. Both Aristotle and Wiener described animals, including humans, as information processing beings
that take in information from the outside world through their sense organs, process and store that information in ways
dependent upon the specific structure of their bodies, and adjust their behavior to take account of past experiences and new
information. And like Aristotle before him, Wiener saw an intimate relationship between the information processing nature
of human beings and the purpose of a human life. For Wiener as for Aristotle, the overall purpose of a human life is to
flourish as a creating, adapting, perceiving, learning, thinking, reasoning being empowered by sophisticated internal
information processing. (Aristotle called it “theoretical and practical reasoning”.)
The ability of human beings to flourish in this way, according to Wiener, is dependent upon human physiology. To
emphasize this point, Wiener often compared the bodies of humans with those of other animals like insects:
I wish to show that the human individual, capable of vast learning and study, which may occupy
about half of his life, is physically equipped, as the ant is not, for this capacity. Variety and
possibility are inherent in the human sensorium — and indeed are the key to man’s most noble
flights — because variety and possibility belong to the very structure of the human organism.
(Wiener, 1954, pp. 51-52)
Cybernetics takes the view that the structure of the machine or of the organism is an index of the
performance that may be expected from it. The fact that the mechanical rigidity of the insect is
such as to limit its intelligence while the mechanical fluidity of the human being provides for his
almost indefinite intellectual expansion is highly relevant to the point of view of this book.
(Wiener, 1954, p. 57, italics in the original)
Entropy and Purpose in a Human Life
Like Aristotle, Wiener used the science of his day to help understand human nature and to derive an account of purpose in a
human life. Of course, the science in Aristotle’s time was his own biology and physics,
4
while that of Wiener included late
19
th
and early 20
th
century sciences like thermodynamics, statistical mechanics and Darwinian biology. Of special interest to
Wiener was the second law of thermodynamics and the associated concept of entropy because these are closely related to
information. As Wiener explained:
Messages are themselves a form of pattern and organization. Indeed it is possible to treat sets of
messages as having an entropy like sets of states of the external world. Just as entropy is a
measure of disorganization, the information carried by a set of messages is a measure of
organization. In fact, it is possible to interpret the information carried by a message as essentially
the negative of its entropy. . . . That is, the more probable the message, the less information it
gives. (Wiener, 1954, p. 21)
The negative relationship between information and entropy presented Wiener with a challenge that Aristotle did not face,
because Aristotle’s biology and physics were fully consistent with his assumption of purpose and value in a human life. For
Wiener, however, entropy appeared to be the “enemy” of information, organization and purpose. Thus, because of increasing
entropy,
it is highly probable that the whole universe around us will die the heat death,
in which the world shall be reduced to one vast temperature equilibrium in which nothing really
new ever happens. There will be nothing left but a drab uniformity. . . . (Wiener, 1954, p. 31)
3
For a detailed comparison of Aristotle and Wiener on animal behavior and human action, see Bynum, 2000.
4
An extensive discussion of the relationship between Aristotle’s science his account of human action and purpose can be
found in Bynum, 1986.
3
How can there be purpose and value in a human life, if entropy is constantly increasing and thereby destroying anything of
value?
Wiener’s answer was that our tiny corner of the universe is an enclave of decreasing entropy brought about by living
things and machines. The universe as a whole may be running down, but on earth (and possibly in other little corners of the
universe) entropy is decreasing because of living things and machines. The final “heat-death” of the world is millions,
perhaps billions, of years in the future; and humans have every reason to believe that their values and purposes will be
important for a very long time to come:
In a very real sense we are shipwrecked passengers on a doomed planet. Yet even in a shipwreck,
human decencies and human values do not necessarily vanish. . . . [Thus] the theory of entropy,
and the considerations of the ultimate heat death of the universe, need not have such profoundly
depressing moral consequences as they seem to have at first glance. (Wiener, 1954, pp. 40-41)
From Human Purpose to Principles of Justice
Having established the continuing importance of human purpose and human values, Wiener was in position to derive an
account of ethics and justice from his definition of human flourishing. To live a good life, as Wiener saw it, is to realize “the
great human values which man possesses” through creative and flexible adaptation to the environment, made possible by
sophisticated learning, reasoning and thinking. This is human information processing at its best — “the key to man’s most
noble flights”. Of course, one person’s achievements will differ from those of others, because humans have different levels of
talent and potential. It is possible, therefore, to lead a good human life in a variety of ways — as a statesman, scholar,
scientist, musician, artist, tradesman, farmer, and so on.
To enable human beings to reach their full potential and to live a good life, according to Wiener, society must uphold
three “great principles of justice” and minimize the state’s interference in human freedom. To highlight Wiener’s “great
principles of justice”, let us refer to them as “The Principle of Freedom”, “The Principle of Equality” and “The Principle of
Benevolence”. (Wiener himself did not assign names to them.) Using Wiener’s own statement of these ethical principles
produces the following set of definitions: (Wiener, 1954, pp. 105-106):
The Principle of Freedom – Justice requires “the liberty of each human being to develop in his freedom the full
measure of the human possibilities embodied in him”.
The Principle of Equality – Justice requires “the equality by which what is just for A and B remains just when the
positions of A and B are interchanged”.
The Principle of Benevolence – Justice requires “a good will between man and man that knows no limits short of
those of humanity itself”.
Like Aristotle before him, Wiener viewed humans as fundamentally social beings that can reach their full potential only by
active participation in a community. Society, therefore, is indispensable for a good human life. Society, however, also can be
oppressive and despotic in ways that limit or even stifle individual freedom; so Wiener added a fourth principle, which could
appropriately be called “The Principle of Minimum Infringement of Freedom” (Wiener himself did not give it a name.):
The Principle of Minimum Infringement of Freedom — “What compulsion the very existence of the community and
the state may demand must be exercised in such a way as to produce no unnecessary infringement of freedom”.
(Wiener, 1954, p.106)
Given Wiener’s account of the purpose of a human life — to realize one’s full human potential in variety and
possibility of action — it is not surprising that the Principle of Freedom is first on his list. [His desire to minimize society’s
interference in personal freedom seems very similar to the “libertarian” attitude of later Internet “hackers” (in the positive
sense of that term) who passionately argued for maximum freedom on “the electronic frontier” of cyberspace. (See, for
example, Barlow, 1991.)] And since, for Wiener, the purpose of a human life is the same for everyone, the Principle of
Equality follows nicely from his account of human nature. The third principle of justice expresses Wiener’s belief that human
freedom is best served when people sympathetically and helpfully look out for the wellbeing of all.
Wiener’s Information Ethics Methodologies
4
Given his account of human flourishing and his principles of justice, Wiener was keen to ask questions about “what we do
and how we should react to the new world that confronts us.” (Wiener, 1954, p. 12). He employed several methods or
strategies for analyzing, understanding, and dealing with social and ethical issues in the coming information age. His book
The Human Use of Human Beings (especially the 1954 Doubleday Anchor Second Edition Revised) is the richest source of
examples, though many passages in that book are disappointingly sketchy — even if inspiring and suggestive. Often,
Wiener’s discussions are casual and incomplete in exactly the places where we want him to be rigorous and thorough. For
these reasons, we must examine what he does as well as what he says in order to understand his methodology. Wiener used at
least three strategies for dealing with topics in information ethics. These include:
1. Exploring or envisioning the impacts of information technology upon fundamental
human values with an eye toward advancing and defending those values.
2. Identifying ethical problems generated by information technology, and then
suggesting ways to resolve those problems.
3. Proactively seeking ways to use information technology to create a better world.
Let us consider each of these strategies, one at a time, examining some examples from Wiener’s writings, and then briefly
discussing ways in which later thinkers employed similar methods.
Exploring the Impact of Information Technology on Human Values — It is already clear from what has been said
above that Wiener regularly discussed ways to defend human values from damaging uses of information technology, as well
as ways to advance human values with beneficial uses of such technology. He had much to say, for example, about the
impacts of information technology on human happiness and survival. Thus, in Chapter X of The Human Use of Human
Beings, he warned about grave harm to human security that could result if game -playing computers are used to set military
strategy. And in Chapter III, he examined the central role of information feedback mechanisms in learning, both in humans
and in machines.
In that same book, Wiener described communications within a society as “the cement which binds its fabric together”
(p. 27), and he noted the crucial importance of open communications in a democracy, where “blocks to communication
among individuals and classes are not too great” and freedom is thereby strengthened. He pointed out that, in fascist and
despotic societies, communication among individuals and groups is severely restricted and censored, and freedom is thereby
diminished. He also expressed worries about the communication infrastructure of America in the 1950s, because growing
costs and complexities of communication technology were weakening the democracy-enhancing benefits of such technology.
A number of later scholars have discussed the impact of information technology on democracy, including for example
Deborah Johnson in her article “Is the Global Information Infrastructure a Democratic Technology?” (Johnson, 1997).
During the five decades after Wiener founded information ethics, a variety of other thinkers have used the strategy of
examining the effects of information technology on human values. For example, in 1991 a major scholarly conference, the
National Conference on Computing and Human Values,
5
was explicitly organized around this approach. In a keynote address
to the attendees of that conference, the following challenge was given:
Too often, new technology develops with little attention to its impact upon human values. . . . Let us
do better! In particular, let us do what we can in this era of “the computer revolution” to see that
computer technology advances human values. True enough, we could argue endlessly over the
meanings of terms like “privacy”, “health”, “security”, “fairness” or “ownership”. Philosophers do it
all the time — and ought to. But people understand such values well enough to desire and even to
treasure them. We do not need absolute clarity or unattainable unanimity before we do anything to
advance them. (Bynum, 1991, p. 1)
The fruitfulness of the “human-values approach” to information ethics can be seen in several recent developments, including
the emergence of a new field of research called "value-sensitive computer design". (Example articles include Friedman and
Nissenbaum, 1996; Friedman, 1997; Johnson, 1997; and Introna and Nissenbaum, 2000.) The most sophisticated and
carefully developed version of this approach, to date, is presented in Philip Brey’s important article “Disclosive Computer
Ethics” (Brey, 2000).
5
Sponsored by the Research Center on Computing & Society at Southern Connecticut State University and funded by grants
from the National Science Foundation of the USA.
5
Resolving Ethical Problems Generated by Information Technology — The second strategy or methodology that
Wiener used for information ethics was to identify or envision ethical problems that information technology has generated or
is likely to generate in the future, and then suggest ways to eliminate or minimize those problems. The clearest and most fully
worked out example is Wiener’s analysis of the ethical implications of computerized factories. (See especially Chapter IX of
The Human Use of Human Beings.) In the early 1950s, Wiener predicted that the world would soon see the creation of “the
automatic factory”, with an “ultra-rapid computing machine” functioning like a “brain” to control the production processes
and monitor the quality of the factory’s output. The computer would be hooked up to “artificial sense organs”, like
thermometers and gauges, enabling it to keep track of environmental conditions in the factory, as well as the progress of
production runs. There would also be hardware “effectors” which would “act on the outer world”, functioning like the arms,
legs and tools that human workers would have used on the assembly line. In the “automatic factory”, therefore, computer-
driven hardware would replace the muscles and sense organs of human blue-collar workers; while the reasoning and
calculating components of the computer would replace “low-level judgments” and actions of white-collar employees such as
accountants, clerical workers, and factory librarians. The end result, said Wiener, might be unscrupulous factory owners
getting very rich at the expense of laid-off workers and society in general.
To forestall such disastrous consequences, Wiener suggested that union leaders, business managers, and public policy
makers should plan ahead and develop ways to deal with these problems before they happen. Thus, in circumstances like this,
said Wiener, “instead of decreasing the responsibility of planners and organizers, we shall greatly increase them, for we shall
make it possible for them to do things which they would not have thought of doing before.” (Wiener, 1959, p. 39) As a
socially active thinker, Wiener himself met with union leaders, business managers and public policy makers to discuss new
rules and laws that should be put in place to minimize possible harm from automatic factories.
A number of later scholars in information ethics have developed methodologies that are similar to this. For example, in
the mid 1970s Walter Maner discovered, in his Medical Ethics classes at Old Dominion University, that ethical problems are
often exacerbated of significantly altered when computers get involved. In response to this realization, Maner created a new
university course, which he called “Computer Ethics”. Students in that course were to identify ethical problems “created,
aggravated, or transformed by computer technology” and then ethically analyze those problems with an eye to resolving or
eliminating them. (See Maner, 1980 and Pecorino & Maner, 1985.)
The most influential and carefully developed methodology that is similar to Wiener’s second strategy is that of James
Moor in his classic article “What Is Computer Ethics?” (Moor, 1985). According to Moor, computer technology is so flexible
and so “logically malleable” that it functions almost like a “universal tool”. Because of this, computer technology enables us
to do things which were never done before, and we then are faced with “policy vacuums” — Should we do the many new
things that computer technology makes possible? To answer this question, said Moor, we must formulate “new policies for
the ethical use of computer technology”.
Today, the field of computer ethics is replete with cases that illustrate the usefulness of Moor’s “policy vacuum”
approach. The Internet, for example, makes it very easy for college students to “construct” their term papers with plagiarized
materials downloaded from the World Wide Web. As a result, teachers, librarians, and school administrators must now
scramble to fill many “policy vacuums” with new rules and practices to minimize plagiarism. Another example is “hard core”
pornography that lurks just a click away on the family computer. Parents and law enforcement officials are faced with the
challenge to quickly develop policies to protect children from “hard-core porn”, even in the “sanctuary” of their own homes
and playrooms.
Creating a Better World with Information Technology — Wiener’s third information ethics methodology was to
proactively use information technology to create a better world. He regularly noted in his writings that such technology can
be used for good as well as for evil; and his Principle of Benevolence implies that people should advance the interests of
others as well as themselves.
Wiener took his own advice and participated in a variety of projects to develop prostheses and other devices to solve
medical problems. Some of his projects included, for example, machines to help patients overcome tremors, an “artificial
lung” controlled by the patient’s own central nervous system, and a “hearing glove” to enable persons who are deaf to “hear”
spoken words by converting sounds into tactile sensations. In his discussion of such prostheses, Wiener raised some
important ethical and philosophical questions:
Render unto man the things which are man’s and unto the computer the things which are the
computer’s. This would seem the intelligent policy to adopt when we employ men and computers
together in common undertakings. . . . What we now need is an independent study of systems
involving both human and mechanical elements. (Wiener, 1964, p. 75)
6
Thus there is a new engineering of prostheses possible, and it will involve the construction of
systems of a mixed nature, involving both human and mechanical parts. However, this type of
engineering need not be confined to the replacement of parts that we have lost. There is a prosthesis
of parts which we do not have and which we never have had. (Wiener, 1964, p. 76)
Wiener pointed out that the propeller of a ship functions much like prostheses for humans, that are similar to “artificial
flukes” on the tail of a dolphin. And what is the automatic pilot of an airplane but a “nervous system” for a man/machine that
can fly? Beings that consist of human and mechanical parts working together can be powerful agents capable of doing much
good in the world — but also much evil, as well. These concerns about man/machine combinations, which Wiener raised in
the 1950s and early 1960s, are similar in many ways to contemporary worries about “cybogs” and “cyborgs”.
Wiener and the Internet
Norbert Wiener died in 1964, five years before the US government launched the ARPANET, — a military computer network
that would evolve into the Internet by the mid-1970s. Wiener, therefore, did not live to see even the earliest stages of the
Internet, not to mention today’s globally extended World Wide Web. In spite of this, it is clear from his writings that he
anticipated many of the ethical issues and philosophical questions associated with the Internet; and if he were to return to
earth today, he would not be surprised to find it here. Indeed, by the mid-1950s, Wiener already assumed that
communications technologies had effectively created a global information network:
The invention of the telephone, the telegraph, and other similar means of communication have
shown that this capacity [i.e., the ability to carry on conversations between individuals] is not
intrinsically restricted to the immediate presence of the individual, for we have many means to
carry this tool of communication to the ends of the earth. (Wiener, 1954, p.91, bracketed words
added for clarification)
But Wiener envisioned a much more sophisticated network in the future — one which would include machines
communicating with humans and with each other:
It is the thesis of this book that society can only be understood through a study of the messages
and the communication facilities which belong to it; and that in the future development of these
messages and communication facilities, messages between man and machines, between machines
and man, and between machine and machine, are destined to play an ever-increasing part.
(Wiener, 1954, p. 16)
Wiener also noted that the ability to send and receive messages over networks empowers a person to act at a distance and, in
a sense, “be everywhere”:
Where a man’s word goes, and where his power of perception goes, to that point his control and in
a sense his physical existence is extended. To see and to give commands to the whole world is
almost the same as being everywhere. . . . Even now the transportation of messages serves to
forward an extension of man’s senses and his capabilities of action from one end of the world to
another. (Wiener, 1954, pp. 97-98)
To illustrate this point, Wiener described an imaginary case in which an architect in Europe supervises the construction of a
building in the United States without ever leaving Europe by sending and receiving plans, photos and instructions over
telephone lines using an early version of the FAX machine.
Wiener’s vision of “the automatic age”, then, included the possibility of a communications network with humans and
machines interacting — a network that bestows the power of action “from one end of the world to another” — a network that
enables one to “be everywhere”. Given this vision of the future, plus Wiener’s view that communications constitute the
“cement” which binds society together, it is an easy step to speculate about the possibility of a future world community or a
world government. Indeed, even without a powerful global network like the Internet to pique his imagination, Wiener made
comments like this:
With the airplane and the radio the word of the rulers extends to the ends of the earth, and very
many of the factors which previously precluded a World State have been abrogated. It is even
possible to maintain that modern communication, which forces us to adjudicate the international
claims of different broadcasting systems and different airplane nets, has made the World State
inevitable. (Wiener, 1954, p. 92)
7
Information ethics scholars who came after Wiener also speculated about world government; and others have explored
less comprehensive global consequences like the possible emergence of a “global ethics”. For example, in her article, “The
Computer Revolution and the Problem of Global Ethics”, Krystyna Gorniak-Kocikowska (Gorniak, 1996) predicted that the
computer revolution will lead to the emergence of a new world-wide ethics that will supercede “local” ethical theories, like
Europe’s Benthamite and Kantian systems and ethical systems in other regions of the world; and Charles Ess, in his “Cultures
in Collision: Philosophical Lessons from Computer-Mediated Communication” (Ess, 2002) envisions a “genuinely global
ethics”, which nevertheless respects and encourages a rich diversity of cultures and values.
Ethics and Non-Human Agents
Wiener’s predictions about the coming “automatic age” included his view that there will be many machines with “brains of
brass and thews of iron” — machines that will learn and reason and make decisions on their own. Such predictions were very
controversial at the time, and many people simply did not believe him. Wiener offered examples of decision-making
machines that already existed, including (1) a checkers-playing machine that quickly learned from its “experiences” and then
regularly defeated the man who made it, (2) a chess-playing machine that could play chess at the level of an amateur, and (3)
a war-games machine used by the US government to teach military planning and tactics. Such machines, he explained, can
learn in two different senses:
1. They can record information from their past activities, and then use this
information to adjust their future activities.
2. They can save information about how successfully their programming
guided their behavior, then use this information to re-program themselves
to alter their future behavior.
Wiener believed that it was at least theoretically possible for machines to someday duplicate the intellectual abilities of
a human being:
Theoretically, if we could build a machine whose mechanical structure duplicated human
physiology, then we could have a machine whose intellectual capacities would duplicate those of
human beings. (Wiener, 1954, p. 57)
Wiener was skeptical, however, that we would ever succeed in building such a machine, because he thought the
requisite parts of a mechanical brain would be too numerous and too big to duplicate the functions of billions of
neurons in a human being. Though he was skeptical of this possibility, he was unwilling to completely rule it
out. (See Wiener, 1954, p. 159 and Wiener, 1959, pp. 36-41.) He did rule out, however, the idea that a human
should ever trust machines to make critical decisions in place of human beings:
[A person should] not leap in where angels fear to tread, unless he is prepared to accept the
punishment of the fallen angels. Neither will he calmly transfer to the machine made in his own
image the responsibility for his choice of good and evil, without continuing to accept a full
responsibility for that choice. (Wiener, 1954, p. 184)
For decision-making machines, we seem to need something like a code of ethics than can be programmed into them:
Any machine constructed for the purpose of making decisions, if it does not possess the power of
learning, will be completely literal-minded. Woe to us if we let it decide our conduct, unless we
have previously examined the laws of its action, and know fully that its conduct will be carried out
on principles acceptable to us! (Wiener, 1954, p. 185)
But if our machine can learn, it might alter the code of ethics that we placed into it when we built it:
On the other hand, the machine . . . which can learn and can make decisions on the basis of its
learning, will in no way be obliged to make such decisions as we should have made, or will be
acceptable to us. For the man who is not aware of this, to throw the problem of his responsibility
on the machine, whether it can learn or not, is to cast his responsibility to the winds, and to find it
coming back seated on the whirlwind. (Wiener, 1954, p. 185)
8
In recent years, decades after Wiener first raised such troubling issues, information ethics scholars have been hard at work
trying to cope with them. [See, for example, Eichmann’s seminal article, “Ethical Web Agents” (Eichmann, 1994) and Floridi
& Sanders, “On the Morality of Artificial Agents” (Floridi & Sanders, 2001b).]
Concluding Remarks: Wiener’s Legacy
Norbert Wiener was a great scientist who helped to create “the information age”. In addition, he was also one of those very
rare scientists who could see the social and ethical importance of his own great achievements and those of his fellow
scientists. The philosophical foundation that Wiener laid for the field of information ethics is deep and profound, and it
remains a valuable resource for research and for practical action.
References
Barlow, J.P. (1991, March). “Coming into The Country”, Communications of the ACM, 34.3, 19-21.
Brey, P. (2000). “Disclosive Computer Ethics”. Computers and Society. 30.4, 10-16.
Bynum, T.W. (1986) Aristotle’s Theory of Human Action [A Doctoral Dissertation at the Graduate Center of the City
University of New York], University Microfilms.
Bynum, T.W. (1991) “Human Values and the Computer Science Curriculum”, A Keynote Address at the National
Conference on Computing and Human Values, New Haven, CT. Published as “Computer Ethics in the Computer Science
Curriculum” in Bynum, T.W., Maner, W. & Fodor, J.L., Eds. (1993). Teaching Computer Ethics. New Haven, CT:
Research Center on Computing & Society. [Also available at http://www.computerethics.org ]
Bynum, T.W. (2000). “The Foundation of Computer Ethics”, Computers and Society, June 2000, 6-13.
Eichmann, D. (1994), “Ethical Web Agents” available at
http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/IT94/Proceedings/Agents/eichmann.ethical/eichmann.html
Ess, C. (2002), “Cultures in Collision: Philosophical Lessons from Computer-Mediated Communication”. In Moor, J.H. &
Bynum, T.W., Eds. (2002) Cyberphilosophy: The Intersection of Computing and Philosophy, Blackwell, 2002.
Floridi, L. (1999) “Information Ethics: On the Theoretical Foundations of Computer Ethics”, Ethics and Information
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