CALL FOR PAPERS Twenty-five years ago, William Gibson presented an extraordinary and prophetic account of _cyberspace_: this space contained a complete virtual world so rich and complex as to be capable of replacing a real world and embodied existence, thereby eliminating what seemed to be a hard and stable boundary between the real and the virtual, the inner and the outer, the offline and the online. What was once clearly science fiction now becomes ever more the reality of our lives in the developed world, as increasingly intertwined with the multiple interactions made possible by ever-increasing bandwidth and the explosive diffusion of computers and computer-based communication networks. The resulting blurrings of these once hard and stable boundaries thereby results in a number of ethical challenges. We invite chapters that help us explore the various ethical dimensions of these broad terrains, through analysis and reflection that include attention to one or more specific issues. Possible topics include: changing senses of self/selves vis-à-vis others; changing understandings of privacy, intellectual property, etc; changing understandings of real _harm_ and _benefit_ - e.g., in connection with online pornography and computer games (including virtual worlds such as Second Life) - where these were once usually restricted to what we now characterize as the offline world, etc. Chapters should include contemporary examples of mobile/ubiquitous computing technologies that facilitate specific ethical challenges. Analyses and reflections involving more speculative but fruitful thought experiments surrounding probable blurrings of real/virtual boundaries are also encouraged. Final date for submissions: July 1, 2010. Contributions in English as well as Scandinavian languages welcome. cheers, |