Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2002
Information Technology, Responsibility, and Anthropology
Bernd Carsten Stahl
University College Dublin, Department of Management Information Systems
Bernd.Stahl@ucd.ie, www.bc-stahl.de
Abstract
Information technology is one potential object of
responsibility as we know from texts about computer
ethics, information ethics etc. This article aims to
demonstrate that the ethical problems of computers and
information technology frequently result from
anthropological assumptions. The interaction of humans
and computers is more than just the use of a value-neutral
tool. The use of information technology changes the way
we perceive ourselves and the way we can discharge our
responsibilities.
There are positive and negative sides to this
anthropological question of responsibility for IT.
Computers increase our reach and multiply the amount of
information at our disposal. We can know more about
more subjects and communicate with more people than
ever before. On the other hand communication using
information technology is systematically distorted. If we
neglect to take this into account responsibility for and
through IT can lose its legitimacy.
1. Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to call attention to an area
of information technology that is usually overlooked. My
thesis is that the use (especially the commercial use) of IT
in general and of computers and information systems in
particular has serious ethical implications, some of which
are caused by anthropological views and suppositions.
Neglecting to take this into account, so my thesis
continues, endangers the legitimacy and thus the
acceptance of the use of information systems. IT in the
wide sense of the word, ranging from telephones over
computers to the Internet, is a crucial success factor in
today's economy. In times of globalisation, e-commerce,
and an ever increasing number of new business models it
appears to be impossible for most businesses to survive or
prosper without IT. The reality of our businesses today is
that most steps of production or service are aided,
organized or even done by computers and information
technology. Therefore the topic of this paper is situated
somewhere between business ethics and computer and
information ethics.
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In order to prove my point that IT is of relevance to
ethics I will concentrate on the notion of responsibility as
a central model for moral philosophy. Responsibility is
certainly not the only possible ethical model for this
purpose but it is a good starting point because it is
frequently used in business. On the other hand
responsibility is especially suitable to demonstrate some
of the ethical shortcomings of information technology.
Several of these ethical problems are based on
anthropological assumptions in information technology
and some appear to be intrinsically linked to it. In the end
I hope to prove that there are some ethical problems
inherent to information technology, which every theory of
professional ethics has to take into account. To get there,
however, we will first have to define the notions and work
out the relationships between them.
2. Business Information Technology and
Ethics
Finding a precise definition of what information
technology is would probably be a difficult endeavour. If
one includes communication technologies then the scope
of possible theories and artefacts contained in information
technology becomes hard to delimit. One possible
definition can be found in Mason et al. (1995, 80) stating
that information technology is "the tangible means by
which information is manipulated and carried to its
ultimate users."1 Mason et al. continue by pointing out
some further ingredients modern information systems
contain. Those are "hardware, software, people, data, and
procedures - designed to deliver services intended to
improve a social System" (ibid). Business information
technology (BIT) then is that part of information
technology that is used in businesses. A definition
borrowing heavily from Langford (2000, 227) suggests
that business information technology is "any activity using
information technology which is undertaken by business".
And while it may be difficult to give an exact definition of
1
The notion of IT that I use here exceeds that of information
systems. Most of my argument, however, concentrates on computers and
information systems, which is the reason why I hope the paper is suitable
for the HICSS.
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 Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2002
business information technology from a technical point of
view I believe that our common sense understanding of
the term will mostly suffice for the purposes of this paper.
This same common sense knowledge of BIT allows us a
first glimpse of why it might be ethically relevant from a
viewpoint of business ethics as well as from a viewpoint
of computer ethics. Whether BIT is in fact the backbone
of modern business may in some instances be doubted but
it is certainly true that "everyone working in the
businesses of today’s developed world experiences -- and
is affected by computers in virtually every aspect of their
working lives" (Langford 1999, 3).
If we want to ascertain this first suspicion that BIT is
ethically relevant we next have to shed some light on the
subject of ethics. In this paper I want to follow the
"German tradition" of applied ethics that makes a
distinction between ethics and morality along the lines of
theory and practice of moral philosophy. Morality in this
model stands for the stock of existing and factually
recognized norms whereas ethics is the philosophical
discipline that reflects the actual multiplicity of moralities
(Steinmann / Löhr 1994, 8). Morality is a notion of little
controversy since it does nothing than contain the norms
and rules that govern our social interaction. Ethics can be
described in the widest sense to be the reflection of
morality (Bechmann 1993, 214). Others are more
affirmative and believe that ethics has to provide us with
answers or at least arguments about which morality is the
"right" one (Hastedt 1994, 57; Siep 1993, 288). This
distinction between ethics and morality between theory
and practice, between doing and reflecting is a constant
feature of German moral philosophy and can be traced
back to Kant whose categorical imperative (Kant 1995,
BA 67) is a purely ethical, that is to say reflective,
position. Similar ideas can be found in most of the
German literature about ethics, especially in modern
thoughts about applied ethics such as medical ethics,
business ethics, computer ethics etc. The reason why I
follow this tradition apart from my personal provenance is
that it allows a more precise use of the notions, which
would be impossible if one equated ethics and morality as
is often the case in Anglo-American literature (Hausman /
McPherson 1996, 222; Weckert / Adeney 1997, 1).
While it is rather obvious that ethics and morality have
something to do with the realm of business this is far less
clear in the case of information technology. Even the
biggest sceptic of business ethics must admit that factual
morality of the economic subjects has relevance for
economic decisions and for markets. Whether it is in fact
true that the "Social Responsibility of Business is to
Increase Its Profits" (Friedman 1970) or whether we
believe that businesses have some kind of moral role to
play, moral preferences of consumers or producers are
relevant because they matter in the bottom line. My
hypothesis is now that IT also has a high ethical relevance
but in many cases this is due to reasons that are not
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directly obvious and that in spite of this, or maybe
because of this, ethics has to pay closer attention to IT as a
fact of business life. Before we come to the heart of this
argument, however, we should take a look at some of the
more commonly recognized ethical problems of BIT.
Information technology in general and its application
in business can lead to a number of ethical problems that
have led to the development of an academic discipline
often called computer ethics or information ethics. One
purpose of ethics, as we have seen, is the description of
morality. Morality is often understood as having the
objective of facilitating human life and coexistence. It can
thus be understood to be a tool for solving interpersonal
conflicts and for optimising social life. Our ways of
perceiving, managing and solving conflicts alter
necessarily with the advent of IT and so does our ability to
be good citizens or contribute to a good society, whatever
that may mean. Briefly, "this puts information use
squarely in the field of ethics" (Mason et al. 1995, 4).
Without being able to discuss these points here in more
detail it should be obvious that information is inherently
ethically charged. Without information there would be no
life, at least no human life, and there would not even be
the possibility for a need for ethics.
One branch of information ethics is computer ethics.
This branch is more restricted in its subject because it
leaves aside a large portion of questions related to
information and instead concentrates on ethical problems
related to computers. The term was coined in the mid
1970 by Walter Maner who "began to use the term
"Computer Ethics" to refer to that field of applied
professional ethics dealing with ethical problems
aggravated, transformed or created by computer
technology" (Bynum 2000, 37). In this sense computer
ethics is a notion denoting a special field of attention for
ethics similar to business ethics, medical ethics, technical
ethics etc. While some of the authors differ as to whether
computer ethics will die out in the near future (Johnson
2000, 25) or whether it will become the focal point and
lone survivor of ethics (Bynum 2000, 51f), for the
moment it is a small but recognized field of ethics. One of
the main differences between information ethics and
computer ethics is that computers, contrary to
information, are generally not seen as inherently ethically
charged. Computers only become ethically relevant
because of their ubiquity in modern society and because
we cannot avoid their use in our everyday moral
dilemmas. Often this sentiment is expressed in phrases
like this: "Ethics is about human conduct, and the use and
development of computer technology is part of human
conduct." (Weckert / Adeney 1997, ix) This, to me, seems
to be one of the central mistakes that, due to its status as
an axiom of computer ethics, leads to wrong or
incomplete conclusions. But before we discuss this let us
take a brief look at the important problems of computer
ethics as they are discussed today.
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 Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2002
The ethical problems of IT are usually divided into
several categories. Hauptman (1999) for example sees the
problems of privacy, fraud, monitoring and surveillance,
censorship, integrity, and overload. Apart from these
general categories one can try to discern problematic areas
for certain parts of IT, the most important of which today
is certainly the Internet. Here again one can find
categories or orders of problems such as those suggested
by Langford (1999, 108) who sees data piracy, publication
of inaccurate or deliberately erroneous material,
inappropriate linking, trademarks and domain name
‘passing off’, and wider issues as moral problems of the
Internet. The connection between these problems and
business ethics has also been made and De George
concludes that
"There are […] some areas in which the
introduction of the computer into business either
raises familiar problems in a somewhat different way
or raises new problems […]: (1) computer crime; (2)
responsibility for computer failure; (3) protection of
computer property, records, and software; and (4)
privacy of the company, workers, and customers.
Three basic concepts emerge in many of the cases in
these areas and will require special attention:
information, privacy, and property." (De George
1999, 329)
All of these problems and others have been discussed
intensively and are still under investigation by many
researchers. We will therefore leave them aside as long as
they do not directly support my underlying thesis that one
of the central reasons for the ethical problems of BIT is
located in its anthropological assumptions. 2
3. IT and Anthropology
Anthropology is the "science" of the human being and
it constitutes one of the fundamental pillars of philosophy.
From the beginning of philosophy in ancient Greece up to
today anthropology has always had a close connection to
ethics. It is plain to see that the nature of man determines
the way men interact and the rules of this interaction; that
is what we call morality in this paper. Furthermore the
nature of man also determines the way we think about
ethics and our general ability to justify or criticise
morality, which is what ethics stands for. It is obvious that
a concept of human beings as primarily social beings
(Aristotle's zoon politicon) leads to another concept of a
2
For the sake of completeness I have to mention that I do not claim
that IT is only negative for man and for ethics. There are doubtlessly
many positive aspects of IT that have led to its widespread use and that
also lead to the improvement of human life. Since my argument aims at
ethical problems, however, I will leave it with this remark and continue
with ethical problems. Some of the advantages of IT for ethics will be
named in the last section of this paper.
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community than the view of humans as primarily self-
centred and anti-social.
In order to find out how the anthropological
implications of IT affect responsibility we first have to
give some thoughts to these implications and their roots.
Information technology must have anthropological
foundations. If computers and technology are made for the
use of humans then there need to be assumptions about
these humans and their capacities. Some of these
assumptions are so obvious that to mention them may
seem trivial. The use of a keyboard, for example, implies
the existence of hands and fingers and for a monitor to
make sense the user must be equipped to see and
understand the symbols displayed on it. There are other
assumptions or implications that are less obvious and that
are, maybe for that reason, important for the impact of IT
on ethics.
One description of human beings is that they are
incomplete when compared to other species (Gehlen,
1997). Man's natural equipment seems to be lacking the
necessities that almost any other species has. We have
neither fur nor weapons; we can neither run quickly nor
swim well nor fly. In order to survive human beings had
to rely on their intellectual capacities. Since survival
would have been impossible in most environments
without the help of thought and consequently of tools man
has often been called the tool-making animal. His being
unspecialised has often been perceived as man's weakness
but it can also be seen as his strength. It can be argued that
only our lack of specialisation enables us to the adaptation
to many environments and that it made us the winner of
evolution that we are (Eibl-Eibesfeld 1997, 244).
Either way, man has the capacity of developing and
using tools to change his environments according to his
needs and wishes. A commonly found interpretation of IT
is now that it is nothing but a certain sort of tool, albeit a
sophisticated one. Technology as the continuation of tools
extends human reach and substitutes for human action. It
helps us achieve our goals and it can even be seen as the
incarnation of our Western culture (Collste 2000, 181).
Technology gives man new power and this power is what
is most commonly seen as the ethically relevant point of
BIT. Before we come to this we should try to dig a little
deeper into the relationship of technology and
anthropology and try to understand how the concepts of
man and machine sometimes become confused or even
fused.
3.1 Man and Machine
The interpretation of the relationship of man and
machine offers two extreme positions, namely that of man
as machine and that of machine as man. The first one,
man as machine, is an interpretation that can be found
since the beginning of modern philosophy (Leukip,
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 Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2002
Demokrit) and is connected to such well-known names as
Descartes or Hobbes. In accordance with the technological
ideas of his time Hobbes sees man as a mere mechanical
apparatus (Hobbes 1994). One can state that the
interpretation of man as a machine has changed with the
machines used by mankind. The modern equivalent of
Hobbes's man as a mechanical puppet is therefore the
model of man as an information processor.
There are several aspects of man and computer that
suggest this comparison. Human beings, in order to
survive, have to process information. If we were not able
to receive information, filter the relevant pieces and act
accordingly we would not be able to survive. To some
extend this is true for every living being but it may be
especially true for us because our capacities of processing
information are higher than those of most or all other
animals. Another point may be the abstract and symbolic
nature of the information we can process. Unlike animals
we can transform most of the information we receive into
symbols like language or writing and then work with it on
an abstract level. In the end we can translate the results
back and they have a considerable impact on our
environment or on us. On the other hand there are relevant
differences between computers and humans, some of
which will be discussed later.
It does seem clear that our society in general and
business in particular are moving towards the often
invoked information society. Without bothering too much
what this notion stands for one can conclude that this
change will have consequences for the members of this
society. Some authors conclude that for the information
society we even need a new conceptualisation of mankind
is needed. This new archetype is then called the
"information person". "Information persons are primarily
givers, takers, and orchestrators of information. They live
and work in a period in which most people have close
contact with information technology and in which all of us
are affected by it." (Mason et al. 1995, 24) This idea is
close to the idea of man as information processing
machine, it is the application of that concept to the
developments of society.
Another possible conception of the relationship
between man and machine other than the modelling of
man according to the capacities of a machine is the
attempt to reverse this association, to model machines as
humans. While this was easy to reject when our
technology was still mechanical it is now easier to
conceive. Computers are becoming increasingly
interactive. This new way of interacting with users
combined with new approaches to computers such as
expert systems or artificial intelligence may lead us to
believe that the computer actually is more than a machine.
This raises the question whether machines can think. Alan
Turing put forward the famous test according to which the
capacity of thinking could be measured in terms of the
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capacity of communicating (Bollmann / Heibach 1998,
324).
The relationship of man and machine, especially IT, of
course has more aspects than the ones mentioned so far. It
would for example be possible to look at the age-old
question of body and soul from the perspective of IT. If
we say computers are indistinguishable from humans then
we might ask whether they have souls, which again leads
to a whole host of mostly theological problems (Weckert /
Adeney 1997, 146). For our purposes it will suffice to
concentrate on the more manifest aspects described so far.
3.2 BIT, Ethics, and Anthropology
Ethics and morality both are based on assumptions
about the nature of humankind. Many ethical theories are
based on the "fundamental recognition that human life is
vulnerable and fragile, defenseless and abandoned,
mangled and suffering. Ethics emerges from our
confrontation with this inescapable fact of human
existence" (Mendieta 1999, 116).3 According to Habermas
(1991, 14), morality can be understood as a safeguard that
has the purpose of compensating the vulnerability that is a
structural part of our socio-cultural form of life.
One philosophical concept with ethical relevance
based on anthropological assumptions is that of the
person. It is worth noting in this paper because the person
is often seen as the subject of responsibility and ethics.
The notion of a person descends etymologically from the
Latin persona, which originally denoted the roles of a
theatre play (French 1992, 134). From there it evolved to
describe the sides of a legal dispute and then it became a
moral notion. According to Kant (1990, 53 f.) a person is
the subject whose actions can be attributed. It follows
from this that the person has to be the autonomous being,
which follows the laws given by itself. Today there are
three different parts that constitute personhood in our
Western tradition: metaphysical, moral, and legal concepts
(French 1991, 133f). Most important in this context is the
moral side, the fact that the person is the centre of moral
ascriptions (Flynn 1984, 10). Before we return to the
question of the person under the heading of responsibility,
we should take a brief look at some other aspects of the
connection of ethics, BIT, and anthropology.
As already mentioned, the aspect most commonly
named as a reason for ethical considerations of IT is its
use as a tool. Like all tools IT increases range and scope
of humans' power over their environment and about
fellow humans. "Power is the ability to achieve one's
goals, and in an information society information replaces
weaponry and monetary wealth as the principal source of
power. The exercise of power always raises ethical
issues." (Mason et al. 1995, xvi) All uses of power are
3
This quote refers specifically to Dussel's ethics but it is applicable
to a number of other ethical concepts.
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 Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2002
ethically charged because they affect others in their
(moral) rights and obligations. Since modern technology
allows us to affect more people than ever before with
decreasing effort it has ethical implications. The use of IT
as a tool brings disruptions to many traditional social
settings, thus threatening "existing distributions of power,
money, rights, and obligations" (Laudon / Laudon 1999,
453). What is worse, not only the actual use of IT leads to
an increase of power, the mere consideration of its use and
the subsequent rationalisation of processes and structures
have the same effect (Johnson 2000b, 90). All of this I
want to call the "tool-approach". It is held together by the
thought that only the use of an otherwise ethically neutral
device leads to its ethical relevance. Representative for the
tool-approach is Johnson when she says:
"[...] it is not exactly computer technology that
poses or could pose an ethical issue but rather what
the technology makes possible for human action and
interaction." (Johnson 2000, 26)
There are, however, views that see IT as inherently
ethically relevant independent of the use it is put to. An
important reason for this kind of argument is the
anthropological idea of man as a machine. If one
subscribes to this identification then it is no longer
important to observe moral rules since those apply only to
humans, not to machines. "Once human and machine are
said to be indistinguishable, our previous moral
commitments are easily cast aside in the name of progress.
Conduct previously prohibited becomes permissible
simply because technology makes it possible." (Kerr
1999, 241)
Some other important ethical considerations are also
based on the idea of the equality of human beings and
information processing machines. These considerations
can be summarized under the heading of
"dehumanization". This stands for a variety of ways that
computers, information systems, or modern technology in
general takes away some of the central and defining
characteristics of mankind. According to Johnson (2000,
19) this was one of the first ethical problems discussed in
relation to IT. Especially the fear that computers might
take over our most important activities such as decision-
making is the background to this sentiment. It is reflected
in popular culture in literature and films about computers
becoming independent of humans and taking over the
ruling of the world. Why would we see this as
dehumanizing? Apparently we take pride in our
supposedly unique capacity of making judgments. If
computers can do the same thing this lessens our self-
respect. Information systems trying to duplicate these
human abilities such as expert systems or artificial
intelligence thus have a potential for being dehumanizing.
The problem does not stop there. Computers taking
over human tasks not only affect our self-consciousness
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but they may even physically replace humans, thus
making them redundant. While this may be positive in the
case of hard or dangerous labor it may have devastating
effects on whole industries and their employees.
The blurring of the distinction between man and
machine can also lead to physical or psychological illness.
A lack of ergonomics can induce repetitive stress
syndrome but more importantly, there is a new work
related illness called technostress. It is stress induced by
computer use and has symptoms including aggravation,
hostility towards human, impatience, and fatigue. This is
caused by humans' continuously working with computers
and thus coming "to expect other humans and human
institutions to behave like computers, providing instant
responses, attentiveness, and an absence of emotion."
(Laudon / Laudon 1999, 476)
Privacy, one of the frequently discussed topics of
computer and information ethics, also has an
anthropological side to it. Human communication, which
is at least an important part of what it means to be human
and may even be the base of reality, is severely
handicapped by invasions of privacy. It is one of the
assumptions we make when we communicate that we
have complete power over who is privy to this
communication. IT and especially its uses and abuses in
business call in question whether that is still so in the
information age. There are many possible ethical
arguments against the invasion of privacy, such as the
argument that it is a sign for the use of man as a mean
instead of an end but there is also an anthropological side
to it. "Privacy, or personal freedom, is the basis for self-
determination, which is the basis for self-identity as we
understand it in American society." (Severson 1997, 65)
After having established the link of BIT, ethics, and
anthropology I will in the final step of my argument focus
on the notion of responsibility and demonstrate that the
use of IT leads to increased problems in this area.
4. IT and Responsibility
Why does it make sense to further complicate the
discussion by introducing another notion and why do I not
leave it at the end of the last section? There are several
reasons for taking the notion of responsibility into
account. First of all, responsibility makes it easier to
communicate questions of ethics and morality in a
business setting. While many of the actors of business
from top level management to the worker in the assembly
hall will quickly conclude that business ethics is a
contradiction in terms, the same is not true for
responsibility in business. Every manager or worker will
agree that she is responsible for her work and that there
are a lot of responsibilities in economic life. The same is
true for technical communities that tend to avoid ethics
but will recognize the importance of responsibility. This
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 Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2002
positive aspect of the notion of responsibility leads to a
negative aspect, to its ambiguity. The ubiquity of the
notion in today's discourse has led to the fact that it has no
binding meaning. When talking about responsibility it is
therefore necessary to say a few words about the notion
before drawing any conclusions. Another reason for the
discussion of responsibility is that some of my arguments
become clearer when rephrased in terms of responsibility.
Finally there are some structural similarities between
business, information systems and responsibility that
facilitate the translation from one area to the other.
4.1 Responsibility
Responsibility is a term stemming from the legal
sphere where it stands for the response that the accused
has to give to the judge. This etymological root, the
answer, can be found in the English respons[(e)ibility],
the French respons[(e)abilité] or the German
(Ver)Antwort(ung). The stem of the word points in the
direction of communication, which will be the central
thrust of the following argument. Another important
aspect is that responsibility is not a fact of nature but a
social construct with the aim of ascribing something to
someone. Due to a lack of space I will omit a more
detailed discussion of the notion of responsibility and just
try to show three features that most ascription of
responsibility share.
Those common features are openness, closeness to
action, and consequentialism. Openness stands for the
property of responsibility of not giving clear instructions
how to behave, which is what many traditional moralities
do. Openness of responsibility is due to the fact that it is a
communicative notion and that it aims at ascribing an
object to a subject. While there may be meta-rules for that
there are no direct rules for our behaviour involved
(Kaufmann 1995, 88). Closeness to action means that the
use of the word responsibility always promises some
manifest results. If we say that somebody is responsible
for something, be it good or bad, we imply that this
responsibility will have an effect. Consequentialism,
lastly, is the consideration of results as the basis for an
ethical judgement. It can also be interpreted as a kind of
teleology, which in this case means that some idea of the
"good life" is the motivation for moral action (Ropohl
1987, 157). All three of these points bear a close
proximity to business life and combined they are one
possible explanation for the popularity of the notion of
responsibility.
4.2 IT as Support of Responsibility
Before we proceed to the additional problems for
responsibility induced by the use of new technologies in
businesses we should for the sake of a balanced argument
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look at the additional advantages. Ethically motivated
responsibility is a social construct, which aims at
ascribing results to agents. Its most basic requirements are
the ability and the willingness to communicate by all
affected parties. This is where the aims of IT coincide
with the aims of responsibility. In this sense the two
concepts are structurally similar. They not only help
people to communicate but they also aim at the creation of
a shared reality. Information systems have as one of their
important points the task of informing people of what is
happening and what is real. Management information
systems are an example. They tell management what the
status quo is, which in return serves as the base for further
decisions. Responsibility, on the other hand, requires
exactly this kind of accord. In order to ascribe
responsibility, the affected parties not only have to share
moral norms but, maybe more importantly, they have to
share the same reality. IT can be helpful in this respect.
Also, IT and its use in business allow for formerly
unimaginable increases in range and scope of
communication. It is no problem for a user of the Internet
to acquire information about all kinds of facts or activities
that used to be inaccessible. Therefore IT can help
responsibility develop in areas where it might not have
been a useful concept before. On the other hand it
increases the burden of information on the individual. We
can no longer pretend we do not know what happens in
the third world or other places of global problems. As
Gorinak-Kocikowska puts it: "for the first time in the
history of the earth, ethics and values will be debated and
transformed in a context that is not limited to a particular
geographic region, or constrained by a specific religion or
culture." (Gorinak-Kocikowska, quoted in Bynum 2000,
49)
The positive effects of the spread of information are
not confined to responsibility but can have political
implications as well. This argument can be put as follows:
"if democracy means power in the hands of the many, if
information is power, and if the GII [Global Information
Infrastructure, BCS] puts information in the hands of the
many, then it follows that the GII means (supports, leads
to) democracy." (Johnson 2000b, 98)
Furthermore, one can even conclude that the
increasing use of BIT even leads to the necessity of
responsibility and thus promotes its development. "[…]
developing new expectations of appropriate electronic
behavior is essential, but such development can only be
effective through emphasis on personal responsibility and
appropriate education." (Langford 1999b 73) Whether this
is really so would have to be debated and this kind of
conclusion looks very much like naturalistic fallacy.
However, there do seem to be numerous ways in which IT
might further the assumption or discharge of
responsibility. This discussion will have to wait for
another occasion since I now want to concentrate on the
intrinsic problems that BIT holds for responsibility.
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 Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2002
4.3 BIT as a Problem for Responsibility
In the next part of this last section I want to take a brief
look at some of the problems, which the use of IT will
bring to responsibility (a) before I shift my attention to
those problems of responsibility that are specifically
caused by the anthropological assumptions and problems
of IT (b).
(a) One open question in relation to the use of
communication technology and responsibility is the
question of accountability. Accountability can be defined
as the social side of responsibility, as "a feature of systems
and social institution: It means that mechanisms are in
place to determine who took responsible action, who is
responsible." (Laudon / Laudon 1999, 457) If we accept
this definition then it is easy to see how the increasing use
of IT may lead to problems in this area. Interconnection
often makes it difficult to trace the origin of one particular
piece of information. Collste (2000c) uses the example of
medical consultations via the Internet to demonstrate this
point. More generally it can be said that the tracing of
information and thus the ascription of accountability and
responsibility may become more difficult due to IT.
Another problem is the legal aspect of responsibility.
So far we have concentrated on moral responsibility but
that in many cases is closely related to the legal sort.
Legal responsibility faces a whole number of new
problems caused by the increased use of IT. Laws are by
their nature slow entities to change and in the rapidly
changing world of information and communication
technology lawmakers are often hard pressed to keep up
with the relevant aspects. But even if one particular
legislative body manages to do so that may turn out to be
useless because of the international nature of today's
technology. The Internet is again the best example for
this. If a French person reads something on the Internet
that is illegal in Germany, that was written by an Italian
and that is stored on an American server, but routed
through German systems, then this produces numerous
legal problems, which I do not even pretend to be aware
of.
Apart from many further detailed problems that might
be discussed here such as the question whether IT really
helps democracy or does not in fact hinder it (Breen
1999), the last general point I want to make now is the
problem of access. Even without too much ethical theory
it seems plausible that a responsibility ascription can only
retain its moral status if all parties affected are involved.
IT can be a big plus in this respect since it allows more
people to interact on certain topics than ever before. The
downside, however, is that any attempts to discharge
responsibility is doomed to failure if it relies on IT and not
all of the affected parties have access to IT. And this leads
to the general problem of access to new technologies. We
already divide the world into information rich and
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information poor, which generally correspond to
financially rich and poor. The attempt of realizing
responsibility via IT will lead to the exclusion of the
information poor, who are the financially poor, who are
mostly excluded already. A moral notion like
responsibility may thus lead to immoral effects.
(b) Let us now come to the last point of my argument,
to the problems that the use of information technology
causes problems for responsibility due to its
anthropological assumptions. The first and in my mind
most important point is that of a structural weakness of
communication via electronic means. This structural
weakness can best be explained on the basis of a theory of
communication. The theory of communication that this
paper is based on is that of Jürgen Habermas. Since it is
impossible to adequately reflect on this extensive
theoretical structure I can only point to the relevant
literature (Habermas 1981) and try to spell out the most
important parts as I regard them as relevant for this topic.
For Habermas communication is aimed at the
coordination of the behaviour of different people. He
states that every piece of communication implies three
validity claims (Geltungsansprüche), namely truth,
rightness, and veracity. That means that every sentence we
say implies that the speaker holds the stated facts for true,
holds the stated norms for valid and means what she says.
This, of course, does not mean that we always speak the
truth, accept valid norms or mean what we say. It only
means that we have to rely on these assumptions if
communication is to be fruitful. All three of these validity
claims, in order not to remain in obscurity or idiosyncrasy,
can be challenged by every participant of the discourse.
The discourse is another normative fiction, which
comprises everybody who has something to say to a
certain topic and which is without temporal or spatial
limits. All of these ideals, even though unattainable in real
life, play an important role for our factual communication.
They also lead to consequences in different areas of
philosophy such as ethics (Habermas 1991), philosophy of
the law (Habermas 1998) or sociology.
Habermas' ideas lend themselves perfectly to an
interpretation of responsibility because of their emphasis
on communication. We have seen that communication is
the theoretical and practical root of responsibility and
therefore the ethical but also the sociological results of
Habermas theory of communicative action go well with it.
This is certainly the reason why in the German field of
applied moral philosophy, especially in business ethics,
Habermas has a large amount of followers who more or
less directly try to derive their ideas from his theories (e.g.
Ulrich 1997)
The central idea of doubting and justifying validity
claims as a means to coordinate human action leads to
many difficulties when transformed from theory to
practice. The questions might be: What are the relevant
norms, who is affected, what is the relevant piece of
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 Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2002
reality and how do we determine it, when do we end the
discourse? etc. While this is already true for any sort of
responsibility ascription it becomes much worse in case
we attempt to do the same via IT. Our new media make it
harder to even discern which validity claim is contested.
While in a person-to-person communication it may be
possible to determine the truth, that is to say those
propositions that are accepted by all participants of the
discourse, the same can no longer be said for
technologically enhanced communication. The advantage
of linking otherwise unacquainted people turns into a
disadvantage if the respective life-worlds of these people
is so different that even the simplest validity claims
become contested. For a successful communication,
though, one needs consensus; at least consensus about the
points of dissent. This seems to become much harder to
come by in the case of communication via IT.
Apart from the differing life-worlds there are other
difficulties that the medium of technology poses to
communication. One of these problems may be described
under the heading of the "Other". The Other in this case is
the other person with whom the moral agent wants to or
has to interact. This idea of the other as the central point
of ethics had a strong influence on the French ethics of the
20th century from Sartre to Levinas. Even though there are
great differences between these theories of ethics their
common point is that the other induces ethical
responsibilities on the moral agent. For Sartre it is the fact
that the agent recognizes an entity similar to herself in the
Other. For Levinas, on the other hand, the Other signifies
the otherness as what is completely alien to the agent. His
countenance then forces responsibility on the agent.
Whether one subscribes to these views or not, it is
easy to see that the Other is important for ethics. Morality
interpreted sociologically as a means to the end of group
survival is grounded in human interaction in small groups.
This kind of interaction again finds its most important
realisation in the interaction with other individuals, which
can therefore be seen as the basis of ethics. Technological
interaction leads us to lose the other from sight and thus
touches the anthropological roots of morality. "[…] the
electronic environment can make us lose sight of the fact
that there is a person at the other end of the machine."
(Gannon-Leary 1999, 172) The other loses his face, even
his reality, and this of course reflects back on morality and
responsibility. It is difficult to envisage the duty to answer
to somebody whom one cannot even imagine. This
situation may be aggravated by technological measures to
stop certain kinds of communication such as censorship.
While censorship may be justified, it holds a hidden
danger caused by the anthropological blindness of
technological communication. The danger is that we may
lose possibilities of communication that we are not even
aware of. Many of the programs used for blocking out
certain parts of the Internet, for example, do so on the
ground of algorithms that are generally unknown to the
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user. The fact that such programs tend to block out names
such as Sussex shows that they are error prone. While this
is no principal problem, it can become serious when it is
unknown what part of the information is suppressed.
Another observation is that technological means are
not able to reproduce all relevant aspects of
communication. In order for communication to be
successful as a means of coordinating people all of its
aspects must be understood. Written communication like
Internet or email cannot reflect the nonverbal part, which,
according to some authors, stands for up to 65 percent of
communication (Mills, quoted after Weckert / Adeney
1997, 114).
Yet another difficulty for the ascription of
responsibility caused by anthropological questions of IT is
the relationship of responsibility and the person. We have
seen that the notion of the person is often used to denote
the human being as a moral agent. It is a philosophical
construction that tries to capture some of the facets of
human life, which go beyond simple and simplistic
definitions of man.4 The property of being a person is
often seen as a precondition for the participation in the
process of responsibility ascription. Some authors go so
far as to say that responsibility and person are two
concepts that are dependent on one another and that are
necessary for a comprehensive description of humanity
(Neuberg 1997, 2). "We can assign responsibility only to
persons." (Baier 1972, 50) One of the many aspects of this
relationship between responsibility and person is the
question of body and mind. For Velasquez (1991) moral
responsibility has to originate in the agent and the
origination (dependent on mens rea and actus reus) can
only come from human beings as having a mental and
bodily unity. Computers and IT in their actual form cannot
be persons, therefore they cannot be responsible in the
moral sense of the word.5 Their lack of personhood makes
it more difficult to convey information necessary for
responsibility. The complete lack of the bodily side of
being human and being responsible leads to problems
worth being further explored.
Another anthropological problem is the perception of
man as a machine, which leads to further problems for
responsibility than the lack of personhood of machines.
We have seen that human vulnerability, physical and more
importantly social vulnerability, can be seen as the reason
for morality and ethics. If we see man as a machine this
sense of vulnerability is lost and with it we lose the reason
for acting morally and thinking ethically. Also, a machine
that does not work any more can be repaired or has to be
4
A simplistic definition of humans would for example be the
ridiculous reduction of man to his genes that seems to follow the
publication of the genome. The notion of a person aims to comprise
more aspects of man than just the scientifically observable.
5
Should computers ever progress to the form we find in science
fiction the question might have to be reconsidered. The android Data in
Star Track for example is for a pertinent discussion.
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 Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2002
replaced. Treating human beings this way is highly
immoral. There are many who believe that today's
societies are drifting in this direction, not least of all
because of the impact of IT. Man as a machine also does
not need rest, does not become ill, does not have social
and personal wishes etc. On the other hand the often-
bemoaned information overload or new diseases like
techno stress seem to be the result of this view of humans.
We tend to treat people like information systems, which
have a high input capacity and can be upgraded if need be.
By doing so we often do not recognise people's needs and
capabilities.
To make the last point in my argument that
anthropological assumptions based on IT lead to new
problems for responsibility, I have to borrow from another
field of philosophy, from metaphysics. Metaphysics as the
"science" of being has close ties to anthropology as well
as ethics. On the one hand computers reduce reality to
highly structured and formalized models that can be stored
and processed by computers using mathematical
algorithms. This leads to the problem already discussed
that many important aspects of communication are
blended out. "Computers do not know how to handle data
that are related to extraordinary events or individual
persons, or issues that cannot be quantified or coded."
(van Bemmel 2000, 147). On the other hand computers
create new realities (for example via virtual realties but
also on a more mundane level) and they control the access
to these realities (Britz 1999, 13). This in itself is a
problem requiring that responsibility be assumed for but it
can also become a problem for the assumptions of
responsibility. The multiplicity of realities increases the
difficulties for moral agents to find out what reality is
relevant. Without a consensus about this, however,
ascriptions of responsibility are doomed to failure.
4. Conclusion
Computers, information systems, the use of
information technology in and out of businesses lead to
new chances and to new risks for the assumption of
responsibility. This summary of this article may not be too
surprising. The analysis of the problem did show,
however, that while the advantages on the whole seem to
be rather superficial, the problems run deeper. The
interaction of man and machine leads to problems that
cannot be easily overcome.
There are suggestions as to how to deal with some of
the problems of the use of IT in businesses. These often
tend in the direction of some formal approach. On the one
hand we have codes of conduct, of which there is an ever-
growing number for the use of IT. On the other hand there
is the approach via legal procedures. If my argument in
this paper is right, such formal approaches can at best be
partial solutions.
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Responsibility has been shown as an integral notion
for the transport of moral and ethical questions in
businesses. As such any ethicist can probably approve of
the attempt to increase the scope of responsibility in
business. On the other hand this article shows clearly that
there are limits to the increase and the acceptability of
responsibility. If these limits are recognized and taken into
account then there is a good chance that the use of IT can
not only further business processes but also moral issues.
Otherwise there are possibly severe pitfalls that may turn
ethical intentions to unethical results.
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