Vol. II: Shaping Information and Communication ... - IMA,ZLW & IfU

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the occasion of a high-level meeting at Paris, Sept. 13, 1999. Among these companies are
AOL, Bertelsmann, IBM, Nokia etc.. Their aim is to create a new set of regulations to be
applied by these companies themselves. These regulations are to prevent misuse of the web
for such harmful purposes. One of their proposed concepts is a Code of Honour of the
enterprises involved in this global dialogue. A further approach may be to develop
technological filters and checking systems for such web contents, and additional tracking
procedures for persons who misuse the web. The procedures may be similar to tracking
hackers today - or similar to the use of filters to restrict information flow in countries which
have not yet moved towards democratic governance.
Society may develop self-regulatory standards of what may or may not be done through the
web and related technologies. One important aspect of these developments may be to
reinforce the individual responsibility of the system designers by a professional code (like the
Hippocratic Oath of medical doctors). One result may be to define limits of using information
and communication technologies: a new Ethics of Limits. The German Association of
Engineers VDI has recently put forward such a code which is called The Fundamentals of
Engineering Ethics (VDI, 2002). Its perspectives are very much in line with the aspects
discussed in this chapter.
Still it remains to be examined how to reinforce such ethical standards without endangering
free access to essential information and communication structures. It appears to be necessary
first to discuss the ethics of information and pictures in view of the cultural pluralism of
countries, their different traditions and value systems. It must be avoided to establish any one
value system across the world. As Horner put it at the : “What kind of ethical rules might be
relevant, for example, in regulating the local-global nexus when dominant global value
systems confront or conflict with local ones... Globalisation from this perspective celebrates
the symmetry of value systems and seems to mark an end to the hegemony of (Western)
enlightenment claims to universality.“ (Horner, 1999)
3. Tasks of Engineers, Society and Politics Today - Recommendations for Human-
Centred Technology Design
In this paragraph, the outcome of the Professional Congress on Information and
Communication during the World Engineers` Convention, Hannover, Germany, 19.-