Moral Philosophy and IT (Readings)

I have 3 readings associated with this topic.

The first is titled "What is Moral Philosophy" by Louis P. Pojman. The larger purpose of this reading is, of course, to explain what exactly moral philosophy and why it is important. Morals shape the lives of everyone beyond even religions and laws. It is important to have an understanding of it when you are creating, using, interacting, etc. It has some sort of play on any and every action. It has a different effect on each person as well, so those interplays can be very complex. It is important to remember that.

The second is an article called "Searching for Moral Guidance About Educational Technology" by Randall G. Nichols. It is from the journal Educational Technology. This article is a good illustration of what exactly morality has to do with IT. As outlined above, morality plays into all parts of life and technology is not immune to this condition. There are many moral considerations about technology. I will fully admit to not thinking to long and deeply about those issues often. About larger technology like stem cell research and cloning, yes, but not about educational technology. Then again, I was really raised to accept it without question, just based on all the technological changes just within my own lifetime.

The third and final reading is a paper titled "Augmented Reality: A Class of Displays on the Reality-Virtuality Continuum" by Paul Milgram, Haruo Takemura, Akira Utsumi, and Fumio Kishino. It appeared in an SPIE journal titled Telemanipulator and Telepresence Technologies. This outlines some specifications for a type of virtual reality known as augmented reality. This is basically taking the real world and blending it with virtual images, I believe. A lot of the article went over my head. However, this is definitely another moral issue. If you are allowing people to experience a virtual interactive world, will they become less grounded in this one? I have seen enough shows and movies dealing with this topic that I am made very skeptical.