It is well known that information and communication technologies have permeated all corners of the world. Images of farmers in Bangladesh or members of a native tribe in Africa wielding mobile phones have become common place. Moreover, the Internet has continued to penetrate deeper and deeper into the everyday world of ordinary people, so much so that it is fast becoming a ubiquitous medium where its presence is assumed and taken for granted. It is true, however, that a significant portion of the world is still without either the Internet or the mobile phone, but the fact is that the penetration ratio of either technologies is increasing.

In this call, we would like to invite research and scholarly papers that investigate ethical issues that arise from the interplay that information and communication technologies are having on the world’s cultures. An inevitable result of the global penetration of the Internet and the mobile phone (in fact the two technologies are fast merging into one device only) is that presuppositions of the world’s cultures could clash with those accompanying these technologies. This has given rise to an emerging field called “intercultural information ethics,” where the cultural presuppositions of the world’s cultures are seen as an important factor in consideration of ethical theorization and the search for ethical guide-lines.

In fact intercultural information ethics has been with us for quite some time, thanks to the works pio-neered by Charles Ess, Rafael Capurro, Makoto Nakada, Lü Yao-Huai, and others (See references below). In this call, however, we would like to go one step further. We have had a number of compara-tive studies detailing how one particular culture responds to problems arising from the use of informa-tion and information technologies. For example, Charles Ess has edited a landmark special issue in Ethics and Information Technology on how various cultures view privacy and how they respond to the problem (Ess 2005). Rafael Capurro has also edited a volume where he looks at what has happened when the Internet has been ‘localized’ (Capurro, Fruhbauer and Hausmanninger 2007), and has recently written a theoretical work on the topic (Capurro 2008). Moreover, Ess and Hongladarom have edited another volume on cultural perspectives on information technology ethics that deal directly with this issue (Hongladarom and Ess 2007).

Nonetheless, as the technologies are fast developing, and as the world is changing rapidly, there is a need to look at intercultural information ethics more deeply, both in theoretical formulation as well as in how the cultures respond to the technologies. In terms of theory, many questions still remain: How are we to come to terms with the age-old philosophical problem of universalism and particularism? In other words, are values embedded in the use of information and communication technologies culture specific or are they universal? Or are there some values that are specific to time, place and culture, and are there some others that are more universal? Does the term ‘universal’ admit of degree, so that one can be more ‘universal’ than another? Other theoretical formulations are also needed. As the various parts of the world are undoubtedly being bound together more tightly, one part can certainly learn from others. Thus papers that investigate how, for example, Confucianism or Buddhism, or any other ancient tradition, could provide novel insights into intercultural information ethics are welcome too. Apart from the theoretical papers, we also would like to invite papers that investigate cultural res-ponses to new technologies, such as robotics, nanotechnology, human cognitive and physical en-hancement technologies, bioinformatics, and so on. These technologies depend on information in one way or another and they are making their presence known very forcefully, thus accentuating a need for consideration of their social and ethical impact on the world’s cultures. Hence, a paper that focuses, say, on the Japanese attitude on robotic technology and compares that to the attitudes of the Europeans or Americans, suggesting how both could learn from the other in terms of ethics and how we human beings should view the emerging autonomous robots would be interesting. But of course papers that deal with other technologies and focus on other cultural traditions would be appropriate too.

Guest Editors:

Johannes Britz
(University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA University of Pretoria, South Africa)
Soraj Hongladarom
(Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok 10330, Thailand)

References and Suggest Readings

• Capurro, Rafael, Johannes Frühbauer, Thomas Hausmanninger. 2007. Localizing the Internet. Ethical Aspects in Intercultural Perspective. Munich: Fink Verlag.
• Capurro, Rafael. 2008. “Intercultural Information Ethics: Foundations and Applications.” Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society 6.2: 116-126.
• Ess, Charles. 2005. “Lost in Translation?: Intercultural Dialogues on Privacy and Information Ethics (Introduction to Special Issue on Privacy and Data Privacy Protection in Asia).” Ethics and Infor-mation Technology 7.1: 1-6.
• Ess, Charles. 2008. “Culture and Global Networks: Hope for a Global Ethics?” In Jeroen van den Hoven and John Weckert, eds., Information Technology and Moral Philosophy. Cambridge Uni-versity Press: 195-225.
• Hongladarom, Soraj. 2001. “Global Culture, Local Cultures, and the Internet: the Thai Example.” In Charles Ess and Fay Sudweeks, eds., Culture, Technology, Communication: Towards an Inter-cultural Global Village. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001: 307-324.
• Hongladarom, Soraj and Charles Ess. Eds. 2007. Information Technology Ethics: Cultural Perspec-tives. Hershey, PA: Idea Group Reference.
• Lü, Yao-Huai. 2005. “Privacy and Data Privacy Issues in Contemporary China.” Ethics and Informa-tion Technology 7.1: 7-15.
• Nakada, Makoto and Takanori Tamura. 2005. “Japanese Conceptions of Privacy: An Intercultural Perspective.” Ethics and Information Technology 7.1: 27-36.>

Abstracts and Submissions

Potential authors are requested to provide an extended abstract (max. 1,500 words) by April 16, 2010. Abstracts may be submitted in the native language of the author though an English translation of this abstract must be included if the chosen language is not English. IRIE will publish articles in English, French, German, Portuguese or Spanish. The author(s) of contributions in French, Portu-guese, or Spanish must nominate at least two potential peer reviewers.

Abstracts will be evaluated by the guest editors. The authors will be informed of acceptance or rejec-tion by May 15, 2010.

Deadline for the final article (usually ca. 3,000 words or 20,000 characters including blanks) is June 30, 2010.

All submissions will be subject to peer review. Therefore the acceptance of an extended abstract does not imply the publication of the final text by August, 2010, unless the article has passed the peer review and revisions (if required) have been included in the text by July 31, 2010.

All submissions should be sent by email with ‘IRIE Submission’ in the header to: hsoraj@chula.ac.th (Dr. Soraj Hongladarom, Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, Chulalong-korn University, Bangkok 10330, Thailand),.

Call for Papers - Vol. 13 (2/2010)

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