Information Ethics in the Twenty First Century

The discourse of practitioners in the domain of information science has been changing fundamentally in the last decade. The author’s contention is that its centre has shifted from a predominant concern with technique (starting with topics like acquisitions and moving through cataloguing and conservation to user education and beyond), towards engagement with a range of issues (such as intellectual property, user privacy, and serving the socially excluded) in which the ethical dimension predominates. Of course, it would take something such as a major analysis of the information science literature to confirm or deny this proposition. This analysis would be difficult because the greatest volume of professional communication (printed, electronic and spoken) is overtly technical and will remain so, and the literature of theory still sets out to discuss information as a scientific phenomenon, rather than a product of moral action. However, to accept the evidence of titles would lead to an underestimate of the extent to which the literature contains ethical discussion in documents that do not ostensibly deal with ethics. Therefore this paper asks the reader, for the sake of argument, to accept the proposition that the centre of gravity (if not the volume) of the literature of practice, the content of professional conferences, seminars and workshops, and much of the everyday exchange of information and ideas between professionals is in the process of shifting. What follows is quite simply a sampling and rationale designed to flesh out the proposition that twenty first century information science is becoming ethical information science. The proposition will still remain unproven by the end of this paper, but the reasons for suggesting it should at least be clear.