"The Algorithmic Condition & The Ethics of Coding [EoC] Summary
The main objective of this research was to prepare a report on the Ethics of Coding [EoC], and present a philosophical overview. Exploring how knowledge forms and ethical concepts are altered in societies governed by the range of coding generating algorithmic digital systems and objects endowed with agency, we name this as ""The Algorithmic Condition"".
The research joined discourses, and objects of the sciences and the humanities, to present a snapshot of the diversity of issues generated by this condition, and survey of the wide-ranging considerations and potential applications of this topic. Further, this report on the ethics of coding and the algorithmic condition asks how can knowledge be ethically generated. The research examines the algorithmic condition within the three domains of social coding, ethical coding, and educational coding, where the notion of “code” was taken in its broadest context, to encompass forms, meanings, and materials from the biological to cryptocurrency.
Social Significance: The dominant practice when considering the “ethics” of a thing, design, practice, process, or situation, tends to concern human-centric concerns, sidestepping the technical. This report asks how can we approach the notion of ethics when in the domain of mass data mining, and the implementation of algorithmic uses of data at multiple levels of society? The research was concerned to canvas opinions on what happens to the production and implementation of forms of knowledge in a digitised economy (as a “data economy” that is part of the Digital Single Market [DSM]). Algorithms are a part of the “toolkit” in the world of the Internet of Things (IoT). In view of this, their ethical implementation should be considered in terms of their contribution to any decentralised or cybernetic system, in terms of its use, transparency, data sovereignty, and any algorithmic procedures. This report examines and defines the idea of “the algorithmic condition” : where the use of algorithms (for the detection of patterns in information; the organisation and analysis of data; the implementation of data codes and sequences; and other computational systems) in societies changes knowledge forms, and requires a new kind approach to thinking about the ethics of technology.
Conclusions: A key question for an ethics in – and of – the DSM environment (for e-health, population, migration, security, communications, education, automation of all forms, and research) is: How can we develop, use, and evaluate decision support systems that engage with data? The question that arises from the research is: How does one become a digital citizen with a clear commitment to ethics? The research draws attention to the question of ethics in relation to ICT issues in Europe; the role of education in addressing the change in knowledge production in this society; and the need to develop new forms of literacy that are responsive to this condition."
