Ethics and the Internet

Highlights of a workshop on ethics and the internet held at the Royal Society of Engineering, London, on 3 December 2010, featuring Yorick Wilks (organiser), Luciano Floridi, Jeroen van den Hoven, Aleks Krotoski, Mike Rosner, Ralph Schroeder, Noel Sharkey, Henry Thompson.

Topics covered include:

• ethical foundations for attitudes to privacy and data protection

• ethical considerations as a driver for engineering

• the relationship between theories of ethics and practical considerations

• the benefits the internet and its negative aspects

• ethical issues relating to breaches of the anonymity of the unsuspecting

• the implications for cyberwar and computer-assisted warfare

• the vulnerabilities of internet-age weapons of war

• the illusion of individual anonymity online

• the power of large-scale distributed collaboration