TU Delft Publications - Delft Design for Values Institute

2020

Grunsven, Janna

Perceptual breakdown during a global pandemic: introducing phenomenological insights for digital mental health purposes Miscellaneous

2020.

Abstract | Links | BibTeX | Tags: COVID-19, digital ethics, value:health

@misc{Grunsven2020,

title = {Perceptual breakdown during a global pandemic: introducing phenomenological insights for digital mental health purposes},

author = {Janna Grunsven},

editor = {J. van den Hoven M. J. Dennis and Georgy Ishmaev},

url = {https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-020-09554-y#Sec4},

doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-020-09554-y},

year  = {2020},

date = {2020-09-01},

journal = {Ethics and Information Technology (2020)},

abstract = {Online therapy sessions and other forms of digital mental health services (DMH) have seen a sharp spike in new users since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Having little access to their social networks and support systems, people have had to turn to digital tools and spaces to cope with their experiences of anxiety and loss. With no clear end to the pandemic in sight, many of us are likely to remain reliant upon DMH for the foreseeable future. As such, it is important to articulate some of the specific ways in which the pandemic is affecting our self and world-relation, such that we can identify how DMH services are best able to accommodate some of the newly emerging needs of their users. In this paper I will identify a specific type of loss brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and present it as an important concept for DMH. I refer to this loss as loss of perceptual world-familiarity. Loss of perceptual world-familiarity entails a breakdown in the ongoing effortless responsiveness to our perceptual environment that characterizes much of our everyday lives. To cash this out I will turn to insights from the phenomenological tradition. Initially, my project is descriptive. I aim to bring out how loss of perceptual world-familiarity is a distinctive form of loss that is deeply pervasive yet easily overlooked—hence the relevance of explicating it for DMH purposes. But I will also venture into the space of the normative, offering some reasons for seeing perceptual world-familiarity as a component of well-being. I conclude the paper with a discussion of how loss of perceptual world-familiarity affects the therapeutic setting now that most if not all therapeutic interactions have transitioned to online spaces and I explore the potential to augment these spaces with social interaction technologies. Throughout, my discussion aims to do justice to the reality that perceptual world-familiarity is not an evenly distributed phenomenon, that factors like disability, gender and race affect its robustness, and that this ought to be reckoned with when seeking to incorporate the phenomenon into or mitigate it through DMH services.},

keywords = {COVID-19, digital ethics, value:health},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {misc}

}

Online therapy sessions and other forms of digital mental health services (DMH) have seen a sharp spike in new users since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Having little access to their social networks and support systems, people have had to turn to digital tools and spaces to cope with their experiences of anxiety and loss. With no clear end to the pandemic in sight, many of us are likely to remain reliant upon DMH for the foreseeable future. As such, it is important to articulate some of the specific ways in which the pandemic is affecting our self and world-relation, such that we can identify how DMH services are best able to accommodate some of the newly emerging needs of their users. In this paper I will identify a specific type of loss brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and present it as an important concept for DMH. I refer to this loss as loss of perceptual world-familiarity. Loss of perceptual world-familiarity entails a breakdown in the ongoing effortless responsiveness to our perceptual environment that characterizes much of our everyday lives. To cash this out I will turn to insights from the phenomenological tradition. Initially, my project is descriptive. I aim to bring out how loss of perceptual world-familiarity is a distinctive form of loss that is deeply pervasive yet easily overlooked—hence the relevance of explicating it for DMH purposes. But I will also venture into the space of the normative, offering some reasons for seeing perceptual world-familiarity as a component of well-being. I conclude the paper with a discussion of how loss of perceptual world-familiarity affects the therapeutic setting now that most if not all therapeutic interactions have transitioned to online spaces and I explore the potential to augment these spaces with social interaction technologies. Throughout, my discussion aims to do justice to the reality that perceptual world-familiarity is not an evenly distributed phenomenon, that factors like disability, gender and race affect its robustness, and that this ought to be reckoned with when seeking to incorporate the phenomenon into or mitigate it through DMH services.

Klenk, Michael; Duijf, Hein

Ethics of Digital Contact Tracing and COVID-19: Who Is (Not) Free to Go? Miscellaneous

2020.

Abstract | Links | BibTeX | Tags: active responsibility, COVID-19, digital contact tracing, digital ethics, fairness, SARS-CoV-2, value:health, value:justice

2017

Hoven, Jeroen

Ethics for the Digital Age: Where Are the Moral Specs? Proceedings Article

In: Werthner, Hannes; Harmelen, Frank (Ed.): Informatics in the Future, pp. 65–76, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2017, ISBN: 978-3-319-55735-9.

Abstract | Links | BibTeX | Tags: computer ethics, data protection, digital ethics, privacy, responsible innovation, value sensitive design, value:justice

@inproceedings{10.1007/978-3-319-55735-9_6,

title = {Ethics for the Digital Age: Where Are the Moral Specs?},

author = {Jeroen Hoven},

editor = {Hannes Werthner and Frank Harmelen},

url = {https://link-springer-com.tudelft.idm.oclc.org/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-55735-9_6 

https://www.delftdesignforvalues.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Van-den-Hoven_Ethics-For-The-Digital-Age-Where-Are-the-Specs.pdf},

isbn = {978-3-319-55735-9},

year  = {2017},

date = {2017-01-01},

urldate = {2017-01-01},

booktitle = {Informatics in the Future},

pages = {65–76},

publisher = {Springer International Publishing},

address = {Cham},

abstract = {In the middle of the twentieth century scholars in the social sciences and humanities have reflected on how the telegraph, the telephone and TV have shaped our societies (A good example is the work of Ithiel de Sola Pool in the mid twentieth century. See for example Politics in Wired Nations, Selected Writings, Transaction Publishers, London/New York.). In the last 30 years, researchers in a variety of disciplines such as technology assessment, computer ethics, information and library science, science and technology studies and cultural and media studies have conducted research into the way new media, computers and mobile phones have turned a wired society into a full-fledged digital society. In the last 10 years we have entered a new phase of the digital shaping of society. We are trying to come to grips with artificial intelligence, big data, social media, smart phones, robotics, the Internet of Things, apps and bots, self-driving cars, deep learning and brain interfaces. New digital technologies have now given rise to a hyper-connected society. IT is not only getting in between people, but it is also getting under our skin and into our heads—often literally. Our standard ways of keeping tabs on technology by means of information technology assessment, tech policy and regulation, soft law, ethical codes for IT professionals, ethical review boards (ERBs) for computer science research, standards and software maturity models and combinations thereof, are no longer sufficient to lead us to a responsible digital future. Our attempts to shape our technologies are often too late and too slow (e.g. by means of black letter law) or too little or too weak (e.g. codes of conduct). The field of privacy and data protection is an example of both. Data protection lawyers are constantly trying to catch up with the latest in big data analysis, the Internet of things, deep learning and sensor and cloud technology. On any given day, we often find ourselves trying to regulate the technology of tomorrow with legal regimes of yesterday. This gives rise to the question `How should we make our ethics bear upon high impact and dynamical digital phenomena?'},

keywords = {computer ethics, data protection, digital ethics, privacy, responsible innovation, value sensitive design, value:justice},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {inproceedings}

}

In the middle of the twentieth century scholars in the social sciences and humanities have reflected on how the telegraph, the telephone and TV have shaped our societies (A good example is the work of Ithiel de Sola Pool in the mid twentieth century. See for example Politics in Wired Nations, Selected Writings, Transaction Publishers, London/New York.). In the last 30 years, researchers in a variety of disciplines such as technology assessment, computer ethics, information and library science, science and technology studies and cultural and media studies have conducted research into the way new media, computers and mobile phones have turned a wired society into a full-fledged digital society. In the last 10 years we have entered a new phase of the digital shaping of society. We are trying to come to grips with artificial intelligence, big data, social media, smart phones, robotics, the Internet of Things, apps and bots, self-driving cars, deep learning and brain interfaces. New digital technologies have now given rise to a hyper-connected society. IT is not only getting in between people, but it is also getting under our skin and into our heads—often literally. Our standard ways of keeping tabs on technology by means of information technology assessment, tech policy and regulation, soft law, ethical codes for IT professionals, ethical review boards (ERBs) for computer science research, standards and software maturity models and combinations thereof, are no longer sufficient to lead us to a responsible digital future. Our attempts to shape our technologies are often too late and too slow (e.g. by means of black letter law) or too little or too weak (e.g. codes of conduct). The field of privacy and data protection is an example of both. Data protection lawyers are constantly trying to catch up with the latest in big data analysis, the Internet of things, deep learning and sensor and cloud technology. On any given day, we often find ourselves trying to regulate the technology of tomorrow with legal regimes of yesterday. This gives rise to the question `How should we make our ethics bear upon high impact and dynamical digital phenomena?'