Virtual Morality


Book Description

Table of contents




Artificial Morality


Book Description

Explores the role of artificial intelligence in the development of a claim that morality is person made and rational.This book explores the role of artificial intelligence in the development of a claim that morality is person-made and rational. Professor Danielson builds moral robots that do better than amoral competitors in a tournament of games like the Prisoners Dilemma and Chicken. The book thus engages in current controversies over the adequacy of the received theory of rational choice. It sides with Gauthier and McClennan, who extend the devices of rational choice to include moral constraint. Artificial Morality goes further, by promoting communication, testing and copying of principles and by stressing empirical tests.




Ethics in the Virtual World


Book Description

Ethics in the Virtual World examines the gamer's enactment of taboo activities in the context of both traditional and contemporary philosophical approaches to morality. The book argues that it is more productive to consider what individuals are able to cope with psychologically than to determine whether a virtual act or representation is necessarily good or bad. The book raises pertinent questions about one of the most rapidly expanding leisure pursuits in western culture: should virtual enactments warrant moral interest? Should there be a limit to what can be enacted or represented within these games? Or, is it all just a game?




Virtual Morality


Book Description

"Parker Thompson, the young, morally-challenged star of the city's top law firm," goes into action when a student is expelled from Western University after an exchange of insults with a female professor.--Jacket.




Morality USA


Book Description

In today's world, moral uncertainty is found everywhere. MORALITY USA calls for recognition of the multiplicity of moral structures that now exist and argues that we need to rethink our concepts of morality. Controversial, comprehensive, engaging, and timely, MORALITY USA is sure to spark debate and contemplation across political and social spectrums. 23 photos.




Social Media and Morality


Book Description

Is social media changing who we are? We assume social media is only a tool for our modern day communications and interactions, but is it quietly changing our identities and how we see the world and one another? Our current debate about the human behaviors behind social media misses the important effects these social networking technologies are having on our sense of shared morality and rationality. There has been much concern about the loss of privacy and anonymity in the Information Age, but little attention has been paid to the consequences and effects of social media and the behavior they engender on the Internet. In order to understand how social media influences our morality, Lisa S. Nelson suggests a new methodological approach to social media and its effect on society. Instead of beginning with the assumption that we control our use of social media, this book considers how the phenomenological effects of social media influences our actions, decisions, and, ultimately, who we are and who we become. This important study will inform a new direction in policy and legal regulation for these increasingly important technologies.




SimChurch


Book Description

The meeting place for the church of tomorrow will be a computer screen. Don’t laugh, and don’t feel alarmed. The real-world church isn’t going anywhere until Jesus returns. But the virtual church is already here, and it’s poised for explosive growth. SimChurch invites you to explore the vision, the concerns, the challenges, and the remarkable possibilities of building Christ’s kingdom online. What is the virtual church, and what different forms might it take? Will it be an extension of a real-world church, or a separate entity? How will it encourage families to worship together? Is it even possible or healthy to “be” the church in the virtual world? If you’re passionate about the church and evangelism, and if you feel both excitement and concern over the new virtual world the internet is creating, then these are just some of the vital issues you and other postmillennial followers of Jesus must grapple with. Rich in both biblical and current insight, combining exploration and critique, SimChurch opens a long-overdue discussion you can’t afford to miss.




Automation and Utopia


Book Description

Automating technologies threaten to usher in a workless future. But this can be a good thing—if we play our cards right. Human obsolescence is imminent. The factories of the future will be dark, staffed by armies of tireless robots. The hospitals of the future will have fewer doctors, depending instead on cloud-based AI to diagnose patients and recommend treatments. The homes of the future will anticipate our wants and needs and provide all the entertainment, food, and distraction we could ever desire. To many, this is a depressing prognosis, an image of civilization replaced by its machines. But what if an automated future is something to be welcomed rather than feared? Work is a source of misery and oppression for most people, so shouldn’t we do what we can to hasten its demise? Automation and Utopia makes the case for a world in which, free from need or want, we can spend our time inventing and playing games and exploring virtual realities that are more deeply engaging and absorbing than any we have experienced before, allowing us to achieve idealized forms of human flourishing. The idea that we should “give up” and retreat to the virtual may seem shocking, even distasteful. But John Danaher urges us to embrace the possibilities of this new existence. The rise of automating technologies presents a utopian moment for humankind, providing both the motive and the means to build a better future.




Storytelling Online


Book Description

This is an original sociological study of breast cancer patients' participation in Internet spaces. While much has been debated about the significance of the Internet, the actual processes of communication in which people engage online are little understood as yet. Exploring the ways in which participants in online spaces configure their experience into a story, the book presents readers with an innovative way of understanding online communication as a socially significant activity. The substantive focus of storytelling online is analyzed sensitively and thoroughly in its specificity as a social phenomenon. At the same time it is connected to a broad range of debates on communication and Internet, health, illness, and social agency.




Revitalising Audience Research


Book Description

The revitalisation of audience studies is not only about new approaches and methods; it entails a crossing of disciplines and a bridging of long-established boundaries in the field. The aim of this volume is to capture the boundary-crossing processes that have begun to emerge across the discipline in the form of innovative, interdisciplinary interventions in the audience research agenda. Contributions to this volume seek to further this process though innovative, audience-oriented perspectives that firmly anchor media engagement within the diversity of contexts and purposes to which people incorporate media in their daily lives, in ways often unanticipated by industries and professionals.