Laws and Ethics Can’t Keep Pace with Technology

Laws and Ethics Can’t Keep Pace with Technology.

-- Tom

 

More like "we haven't come to grips with what is ethical," period.

Abuse of technology has been a problem since the first time some idiot used a spear in anger. Here in America we were propping up dictatorships for "national security reasons", doing medical experiments on children, and enslaving people for profit before electronic computers existed.

Sure, computer technology fits into the pattern too, but IMO too many people talk like it's a whole new ball game. It isn't; and the problem has never been that our technology advances faster than our ethics. The problem has always been that, on a whole, our ethics are pretty shoddy.

 

IMO, the article misses the real issue. There's no link between technology and ethics. The collision is between ethics and the forces driving technology, namely greed and the desire for power and control. Those are what destroy ethics. In the corporate world, ethics are fine as long as they don't interfere with the bottom line. When they do, they're disregarded and the practice is justified with "it's just business" or something similar. Technology is just a tool, a means to an end. It's what you do with it that determines whether it is or isn't ethical.

 

Actually US privacy law is quite lax by European standards, because it's counterbalanced by a strong tradition of free speech. For example, it's far harder to prove libel in the US than in the UK. Also, over the past century in the US, rights to free speech etc have expanded from individuals to corporations. Eventually, they'll probably apply to AIs

Anyway, it's simplistic to discuss ethics and "technology". Rather, it's crucial to distinguish technologies that primarily facilitate the violation of human rights (web spiders and trackers, the NSA's toys, etc) from those that can protect them (strong encryption, Tor, VPN services, electronic "currencies", etc).

 

Anyway, your privacy disappeared right away after you are born; all infos about you are compiled , archived and updated periodically via multiple forms during all your life until you die.

privacy-free is just an illusion

 

For me, anyway, concepts like "me", "my" and so on are quite ambiguous

Everything is still "compiled , archived and updated" of course. But "I" have many profiles, most unconnected.

 

i was talking more about the real-life forms you have to fills during your life for your government, healthcare system, taxes, ISP, bank account, etc... not online ones

 

Even in real life -- but long ago, of course -- I have a few unconnected threads.

But for the most part, I agree that we're all well cataloged

So it's very important to "act normal" ...