I read the following last night and while it will be included in this week’s “Some things read this week” post I wanted to comment on it now.

Introna, Lucas D. “The (im)possibility of ethics in the information age.” Information and Organization 12, 2002: 71-84.

Cited by Kemp (NASKO 2007) “Classifying marginalized people, …”, p. 59, but I was really more drawn to it by its title and not by its use as a citation.

Wow!

This article is amazing. I agree with much of it, although I would use different theoretical commitments to come to the same conclusions [Stivers. Todorov, Baumgartner, ... (see below)].

Although I do agree with much, it still seems overly deterministic. While 3 years ago I might have bought the implications of this view wholesale I can no longer do so.

This paper is concerned with the possibility that the ethical claim of the other, that sense of being bound to the other, may becoming more and more difficult to experience as information technology increasingly mediates our social being. … This paper will argue that electronic mediation is inducing a sense of hyperreality into our world (Baudrillard). It will argue that this hyperreality is making our ethical sensibility nebulous to the point that we are not coming face to face with our obligations. … The paper argues that we do not need more codes, imperatives or moral arguments, as such. Rather we need to keep our lives at the resolution, of faces and proper names—if obligation happens this is where it is likely to be (abstract, 71)

1 Introduction

“It seems as if the ethical resources available to the ordinary person is rapidly becoming fragemented, distributed and ambiguous. … At the same time ethical dilemmas confronting the citizens of the information society are rapidly expanding locally and globally” (72). If this is the case, what is a proper response? A ‘veil of ignorance’ (Rawls), the categorical imperative (Kant), Jesus’ sermon on the mount, the writings of the Buddha? Proposing and implementing more moral imperatives? (73)

The answer to these questions is “No.”

However, proposing these imperatives, principles and codes with enthusiasm and vigour does not release the sense of uneasiness within. The question remains: do we respond to actual obligations in factual life because we apply an imperative, principle or code? Or, do we rather find ourselves dragged into obligations by something that grabs us from within the event, situation, or disaster? Is the source of obligation in the code or in the particulars, the facticity, of the disaster? (73)

2 Obligation, disaster and proper names

Introna argues

that it is possible to know ethical responsibilities through ethical discourse. However, they are experienced in the facticity of the situation—when facing a face in a disaster. To know my obligations may be necessary but it is not sufficient for me to enact them. To enact them I need to experience them in the facticity of the situation (74).

I fully agree with Introna here. While some might parse out various meanings of “know” and “experience” to claim that this is a simple tautology I would, not beg but, insist on differing.

These claims in no way are tautological, although they can be made so via wordsmithing. But aren’t you brilliant for being able to do so? I insist on the difference between knowing and experiencing (feeling) due to a fully lived experience while coming out of the deepest depths of depression where I knew full well that there were many people who loved me and cared about me but I could not, in any way, feel (or experience) it. There are certainly other examples that could be used to parse out the difference Introna is pointing out, but this one clinches it for me. Perhaps it doesn’t for you. Spend a few minutes thinking about it and I have no doubt you can come up with an example where you know something but do not experience it. Even a mundane example will give you a foot into the door of understanding this.

Introna argues ala Don Caputo that “obligations happen to us” (75). Caputo (cited in Introna) says

If an obligation is ‘mine’ it is not because it belongs to me but because I belong to it. Obligation is not one more thing that I comprehend and want to do, but something that intervenes upon and disrupts the sphere of what the I wants, something that troubles and disturbs the I … (75).

What is this “disaster”? It is an economic notion “of excessive cost,” a “sheer loss” (75). I’m not so sure if I like this notion of disaster but I’m willing to allow that it is doing some useful theoretical work until something better can be found. There is much more on this concept of disaster in the paper.

“Obligation consorts with disasters, it is a matter of being bound (ligare) to, grabbed by, a disaster in-the-world” (75). But the claim of obligations cannot be forced or made to stick (76-77). Attempts to strengthen the claim of an obligation can be undertaken but, “in ‘sounding the alarm’ we must be careful not to turn disasters into meanings, categories and themes” (76).

Disasters are about particular bodies not meanings (such as law and order, the struggle, freedom, the people, the Law, the Faith, and so forth). Disasters have a face and a name, a proper name. The currency of obligations is proper names, particular individuals (76).

Meanings hide disasters and make them fit our systems of cost accounting (76-77).

Proper names are the locale and limit of obligations. Proper names are the im/possibility of obligations (77).

What happens when faces become representations, images, through electronic mediation? (77)

This section is required reading for a proper understanding of Introna’s argument. I’m still uneasy with the term “disaster” and its economic reading, but it’s working for now. I think this view of obligations (or something very close) is the correct one, and it fits in well with Todorov’s theory of the “ordinary virtues.”

3 Obligation, information technology and the hyperreal

This is the section where I would probably find completely different theoretical foundations. Nonetheless, I support its basic conclusions, at least in general. More on what I find lacking later.

Relies on Baudrillard (the hyperreal) and Taylor and Saarinen (the Simcult) to explicate a view of information technology that presents to us, but does not involve us. Large parts of me—experientially and theoretically—agrees with this. I just wouldn’t get there in such postmodernist ways, and I’d hopefully be a bit more nuanced.

It is my supposition that electronic media with its hyperreal effect—even if we do not take it to its Baudrillardian extreme—is turning disasters into hyperreal events and proper names into meaningless electronic representations; hyperreal events and representations that come before us, but do not involve us. In hyperreality we are less and less likely to meet our obligations face to face (80).

4 Obligation, hyperreality and Nick Leeson

As an example of the hyperreal acting to divorce someone from their obligations to individuals—proper names—Introna uses the case of Nick Leeson. Leeson was the derivatives trader for Barings Bank who lost an estimated £830 million of very real people’s money.

It is my supposition that he could not blink because he could not see those faces. He was wholly unable to come face to face with obligation (82).

In the (re)presentations, the images on the screen, the voices of the other become faint and disappear. It is my contention that electronic mediation distances us from the face of the other—we remain undisturbed in our uncertainty (83).

The author’s choice is interesting in that Leeson worked in a very hyperreal world, in several senses. Ultimately, though this may have had some impact on Leeson’s decisions and actions, and I think it did, it still fails.

It is not (only) the hyperreality that leads to this disconnection from one’s obligations. Whether or not it is technology and/or hyperreality that is mediating between the faces of one’s obligations and oneself I would claim that it is the distance between them that is the real issue. It matters not whether it is time, physical distance, social stature, bureaucracy, or hyperreality that mediates. They all (amongst other things) distance oneself from real relationships with the other, with proper names.

I do think, though, that hyperreality can and often does aggravate this distancing.

5 What now?

Introna sees the various efforts to encode ethical obligations as “a non-sensible response. … Obligation needs a face and a proper name. We must experience it not merely know it” (83).

In confronting hyperreality, we do not need rules, principles and arguments. I believe we need to get faces and proper names together, break through mediation—mediation of categories, principles, concepts, representation, commodities, to name a few. We must get those who command, construct, recommend, and so forth to meet face to a face with those who will be affected by their commands, constructions and recommendations. Let flesh meet flesh. We do not need codes. We need to become involved in the world, it is in being—in that we will experience our being bound—to (83).

Mark’s Further Comments

While I agree with the author that many attempted codifications of ethical rules are senseless and wrongheaded, I also feel that often they are needed as a first step towards knowing one’s obligations. If our ethical world is becoming fragmented and less available while our ethical dilemmas are expanding, and I do agree with both premises, then helping people to know their obligations is a good first step; if handled well, which is a whole ‘nother can of worms.

I think the biggest problem is not with information technology and hyperreality, although I do agree that these can seriously exacerbate the problem. The biggest problem is the distance between one person and the next, one proper name to another proper name. There are many forces of mediation between individuals in our society that work to diminish the experience of obligation to the other individual.

There are many people whom I know primarily mediated through information technology. Some of these I feel little obligation to other than in a general human rights sort of way. Others—like Walt, Meredith, and Jenica, for instance—I feel much more of an obligation to. One could argue that it is because I have actually met these folks. This is true and probably has some influence. In reality though, the longest I have spent with any of them is a dinner with one of them and 6 other people. In total, there has been at most a few minutes here and there during one event with each of them (dinner with one, and the 1st OCLC Blog Salon for the others).

Then there is someone like jennimi. I still know her mostly via electronically mediated forms of communication, but I also have spent several hours over several occasions now with her, face to face. We have had serious and personal (and seriously personal) conversations. I feel my obligations far more intensely in this instance.

But now the kicker. One of the best friends that I have ever had I have never met. She is not a face to me (at least in a direct sense). We chat primarily via IM and across our and sometimes others’ blogs. But. She is a proper name, a known proper name and an experienced proper name and all that goes with it.

How can this be if hyperreality is the dominant factor in disconnecting one from one’s obligation to the other? My ethical obligations to my friend are deep and felt, that is experienced.

I would modify Introna’s thesis to state that, yes, hyperreality and mediation through information technology can have a profound impact on our ability to experience our obligations to another, but they do not preclude it. Many other mediating forces also have this ability; it is more that it is just another one of these kinds of forces.

The difference lies in the fact that through various electronically mediated forms I have come to know these people. They are proper names to me; they are faces with which I am face to face. Through their blogs, Flickr streams, Facebook noodlings, etc. I have been allowed to see them as people and, more importantly, as generally whole people. It is by being allowed into various portions of their lives that I have come to know them.

Now I fully agree that this is still a limited exposure to the other. Clearly, and hopefully, some things are being left out of the account. But this is the case when face to face with others also. I doubt that very few (if anyone) has another that they would tell every single thought and/or experience to. We constantly self-select what we present to others whether it is our mothers, our partners, the loan guy at the bank, or whomever. This is an important skill and, like many, can be used for good or ill.

Thus, in my view, it is the direct, unmediated (by any force) access to the other, to the proper name, to their face, to their voice that provides the best exposure to the experience of obligation to the other. The more mediation between that name/face/voice, the less the felt obligation to them. This brings me to my next point, “professionalism.”

I think this discussion addresses a point regarding “the professional” vs. “the person,” both in general and particularly here in the blogosphere. “The professional” is at best one (very limited) side of a person. By presenting only this side of oneself it is hard for the other to feel much real obligation towards you. Perhaps this is one of the reasons for so many codified statements of “professional ethics.” As a professional, one will (re)present only a limited view of themselves to their clients/patrons, their fellow professionals, and perhaps to the world at large. This limited and often distanced profile of one’s face allows little for obligation to hook into.

Recently, a friend of mine changed her electronic “profile.” I fully support her decision in this based on the seeming reality of today’s “professional” library environment. But I worry that along with this change it will impact how others experience their obligations toward her.

This is only a small example and perhaps as badly chosen as the author’s use of Leeson. My point is that the (attempted) separation of the professional from the personal is destructive to this process of being able to experience one’s obligations to another, amongst other things.

The very fact that I feel an obligation to Walt, Meredith, Jenica, jennimi and Iris is because of their voices, because of their faces, because of their proper names. Without the mediating influence of information technology I would hardly be able to recognize those voices, faces, and names. In one case, I would not even know that she exists!

Introna’s article is highly recommended and although I am quite sympatico with much of it I think one should just think a little broader than the author himself seems to. I think it can give us all cause for reflection on how we interact with the other in the world.

I particularly feel that it can offer much to ponder in this seemingly endless fragmentation into “the professional” and “the personal.” Going (too far) down that road is madness.

“Rather we need to keep our lives at the resolution, of faces and proper names—if obligation happens this is where it is likely to be” (abstract, 71) Strict, standoffish “professionalism” is not at the resolution of faces and proper names, in my view.

Sources cited by Introna

• Baudrillard, J. (1980). The implosion of meaning in the media and the implosion of the social in the masses. In K. Woodward (ed.), The myths of information: technology and post-industrial culture. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
• Baudrillard, J. (1983). Simulations (P. Foss, P. Patton, & P. Beitchman, Trans.). New York: Semiotext(e).
• Baudrillard, J. (1993). Symbolic exchange and death (I. Grant, Trans.). London: Sage.
• Caputo, J. D. (1993). Against ethics. Indianapolis: Indiana University.
• Taylor, M. C., & Saarinen, E. (1994). Imagologies: media philosophy. London: Routledge.

Sources cited by me

1. M. P Baumgartner, The Moral Order of a Suburb (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).
2. Richard Stivers, The Culture of Cynicism: American Morality in Decline (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1994).
3. Richard Stivers, Technology As Magic: The Triumph of the Irrational (New York: Continuum, 1999).
4. Richard Stivers, Shades of Loneliness: Pathologies of a Technological Society (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004).
5. Tzvetan Todorov, Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1996).

Note: I have used these authors repeatedly on this blog, often in the service of discussing “professionalism,” fragmentation and other moral and ethical issues. I’m feeling too sick to hunt down the links but a search on fragmentation, moral minimalism, Stivers, Todorov, or Baumgartner ought to find most of them.

Note: It appears Zotero is embedding COinS when I export as HTML, and it appears that so far WP is not stripping them out. Yippee! Now if I only had the time to experiment some more.