ETHICS AND INFORMATICS: REASONS OF CONCERN

摘要

Some ethical issues related to informatics are discussed in this paper in connection with the role played by this discipline in the development of other fields of science and technology. As in many other cases, the ethical aspects of the technological advances that come out of informatics lay behind any other consideration or are never regarded as a concern of the field itself. Nevertheless, informatics is in the modern world a productive force that determines and controls life in society and the progress of all scientific and technological activities, in what seems to be a permanent and restless process. As a field closely related to the economy and social development, supported by rapid advances in computing and telecommunication technologies, has had an exponential growth but few opportunities to answer some questions regarding its social consequences and impacts on human values. A neat and honest consideration of these answers leads frequently to a conflict between final purposes and values, and if there exists conflict between purposes and values it becomes very important to proceed cautiously in establishing priorities. Technology is not neutral; it transforms and determines the human experience and even the relation between human beings and the world, through the ways humans understand and handle the world itself: if man is conceived as a programmable machine, this necessarily influences all decisions about people.