Edward Spence

As in Chap. 3 and emphasised in Chap. 4 with regard to mediated agency, the concept of dignity is central to both Stoic and neo-Stoic philosophy and specifically with regard to the problem of control, as expressed in Stoic philosophy and analogously as it applies to technology, and in particular, ICTs and AI technologies. As most of the key problems in the use of those technologies are generated through the use of AI algorithms, those problems will be analysed in conjunction with the normative impact those technologies have on well-being, on individuals and society generally. This chapter will examine and evaluate in more detail the impact of ICTs and AI technologies on well-being through a close analysis of two major problems in AI machine learning and neural network algorithms: that of the inscrutability or the black box problem and the control problem. This chapter will also suggest possible solutions to both of those problems, some of them proposed recently by AI researchers. A key concern that both those problems raise is that without transparency there is no accountability and without accountability there is no normative way to monitor AI systems for potential adverse and harmful impacts on society, let alone control them. As such, the common collective good of society and humanity generally, is at stake. This chapter will also introduce the notion of anticipatory normative controls through design to prevent or at least minimise the risk of the adverse impact of AI technologies on well-being through opacity or lack of control. Can we now like the Trojans standing on the broken walls of Troy looking down at the ruins of their fallen city hear the warnings of Cassandra “beware of Big Tech bearing gifts” before we too find the last citadel of our inner freedom and autonomy are under the control of the Big Tech companies.

This chapter examines how Stoic and neo-Stoic philosophy as a philosophy of practical and applied wisdom applies to technology, and specifically to Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. Unless otherwise stated for convenience I will refer to these technologies collectively, as “technology.” The chapter comprises three sections: (1) Comparison of the control problem of AI technology and how it aligns to the control problem of Stoic philosophy; (2) the core principles of Stoic philosophy and how they apply to technology; and (3) why Stoic philosophy as practical wisdom is of relevance and importance to technology. Given that any technology cannot be good for itself or the good of the Big Tech companies that manage them, but good for humanity overall, any instrumental positive value of such technologies must not be at the cost of their negative eudaimonic impact on society. Ultimately, the core problem of technology is not technical to be solved by engineers but a moral problem to be solved collectively by society and the global community. The overarching rationale for the application of Stoic and neo-Stoic philosophy to evaluate the impact of technology on society is that Stoic philosophy as a way of life with its focus on the attainment of eudaimonia or well-being is conceptually and practically relevant and important to the eudaimonic assessment of technology. The Dual Obligation Information-Wisdom Theory (DOIT-Wisdom) designed to enable the operationalisation of the application of Stoic ethics to technology forms a central feature of the application of Stoic philosophy to technology.

This chapter will address a very important topic in the Philosophy and Ethics of Technology, which is that of artificial mediated agency and autonomy and its moral significance and impact on human well-being. Furthermore, it will address the key question of this chapter whether artificial agency and autonomy can be extended to the notion of wisdom: if agency is mediated and distributed between humans and intelligent machines, can there also be a mediated wisdom? Although several well-known philosophers of technology, such as Luciano Floridi (The Ethics of Information. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press UK, 2013, The Fourth Revolution: How the Infosphere is Reshaping Human Reality. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press UK, 2014), Peter-Paul Verbeek (Moralizing Technology: Understanding and Designing the Morality of Things. Chicago University Press, 2011, The Moral Status of Technical Artefacts. Dordrecht: Springer, 2014), Richard Heersmink (Distributed Cognition and Distributed Morality: Agency, Artifacts and Systems, Science Engineering Ethics, 23(2):431–448, 2017), to mention but a few, have researched and written on the issue of artificial moral mediation, very little research has been published on the topic of wisdom with regard to AI technology and its impact on well-being. This chapter and the book in general, sets out to address and fill that gap. According to Verbeek, “only by recognizing this interweaving of human and technologies can we take responsibility for the ways in which technologies have an impact on society and on human existence [my emphasis] – in practices of technology design, implementation, and use” (The Moral Status of Technical Artefacts. Dordrecht: Springer, 2014: Chapter 5, p. 76). However, Verbeek, Floridi and Heersmink and the other aforementioned philosophers do not refer to the important role that wisdom should play in recognising and assessing the mediated impact of technology on well-being, and it is precisely that missing inclusion of wisdom and its gap that this chapter and this book overall, intends to fill. Namely, to examine and evaluate the impact of mediated AI technologies on our well-being, in terms of our agency, autonomy, morality and most importantly, as we shall examine in Chap. 8 of this book, our dignity, through the concept of wisdom.

Applying the analysis and argument for dignity and its conferring universal rights of freedom and well-being to users and data subjects of the ICT and AI technologies of Big Tech companies, a major issue identified under that topic, is that personalisation of subjects’ data by algorithms poses a threat to their autonomy and moreover to their digital identity. This poses an insidious and potentially crucial existential problem not just for data subjects but humanity generally, is the split of our personal identity into two separate identities: a group digital-identity controlled externally by AI algorithms, and our natural individual identity controlled internally by us as individuals, but whose autonomy, however, is also precariously under the systemic control of the Big Tech companies through their persuasive technologies enabled by their invasive algorithms. In this chapter this identity problem is referred to as the identity paradox. Crucially, this poses a significant existential problem, not just for data subjects but humanity generally. For the split of our identity into two separate identities: a group digital identity controlled externally by algorithms, and our natural individual identity controlled internally by us as individuals, but one whose autonomy, however, is also precariously under the systemic manipulative control of the persuasive technologies of the Big Tech companies. The chapter will examine and argue for the adoption of a eudaimonic Stoic and humanistic approach to AI technologies on the basis of wisdom towards the design and use of ICTs and AI technologies, and other emerging technologies in general, with the aim of: (a) ameliorating or at least minimising the negative and harmful impacts of technology on human well-being; (b) enhancing the design and uses of technology for the overall Eudaimonic Benefit of Humanity presently and in the future; (c) to ensure that those technologies are not under the exclusive control of the Big Tech companies that own and operate them for their primary gain and benefit, but under the shared societal control of citizens and their authorised democratic representatives and institutions, as individuals and collectively as societies, for the common good of citizens, as well as the global community.

This chapter provides a general philosophical groundwork for the theoretical and applied normative evaluation of information generally and digital information specifically in relation to the good life for the attainment of well-being, through the overarching notion of wisdom on the basis of a theoretical normative tripartite model of Wisdom, the Dual Obligation Information Theory-Wisdom (DOIT-Wisdom) (Spence. 2011) that comprises three inter-related normative components, the epistemic, ethical and the eudaimonic, within the overarching conceptual framework. Following from the question posed in in the Introduction (Chap. 1) what is technology good for and specifically AI technology, the overall aim of this chapter is to address more specifically, the question of how the epistemology and ethics of information and communication technologies (ICTs), as well as the epistemology and ethics of AI technologies (abbreviated to technology, henceforth) can be expanded to include more centrally the issue of its eudaimonic impact of technology on well-being for individuals, and society. To answer that question, the chapter provides by way of a theoretical groundwork, the concept of wisdom understood as a type of meta-knowledge as well as a type of meta-virtue, which can enable us as individuals and collectively as a society, and humanity generally, to both know in principle what constitutes a good life, and how to successfully apply that knowledge as know-how in living such a life in practice, for the ultimate purpose of attaining well-being or eudaimonia. This answer will be based on the main argument presented in this chapter that the notion of wisdom understood as a triadic concept, at once a meta-epistemological, meta-ethical and meta-eudemonic, provides the essential conceptual link between information on the one hand and well-being on the other. In the digital age of information, both the theoretical examination and analysis of the question of how information in its technological construction and dissemination relates to well-being, and the provision of an adequate answer to that question are essential for developing a deeper understanding of how to evaluate the theoretical and practical implications and impact of digital information on well-being for individuals and societies.

Choosing Facebook as an illustrative example of what is referred to in this chapter as the 6th Estate in order to distinguish it conceptually from the 4th and 5th Estates, the primary objective of the Section “What Is Facebook’s Professional and Institutional Role?” of the chapter is to examine if digital information created, disseminated and mediated increasingly via the Big Tech companies such as Facebook and Google, are also subject to those same normative principles as the 4th and 5th Estates. Having established that Facebook, as an illustrative example, is in essence a media company, Section “Role Morality” of the chapter will demonstrate, on the basis of the Dual Obligation Information Theory (DOIT) and the DOIT-Wisdom model that Facebook and Google, among other tech media companies are also subject to the same normative principles and requirements that other media companies of the 4th and 5th Estates, are. Section “Facebook’s Primary Role” of the chapter will examine if Facebook’s role in the Cambridge Analytica case not only violated the fundamental normative principles and requirements to which all media companies are subject, but moreover, its actions constituted media corruption. More generally, Facebook’s media corruption as illustrated in the Cambridge Analytica case, relates to a conflict of interest emanating from its Business Model that in its design and practice is conducive to systemic media corruption.

Starting with a brief overall global view of wisdom, the peculiar knowledge, shared by gods and humans stretching through ancient times to the present from East to West incorporating sacred texts from Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Islam and other Indigenous religions and cultures, including of course the ancient religion and myths of Rome and Greece, the book’s main focus is the examination and normative evaluation of the impact AI technology has on our well-being now and potentially in the future. The key question is what is technology good for and specifically artificial intelligence (AI) technology? This book is motivated by the need to answer that question by examining the impact AI technology (henceforth technology) has on human well-being, through the notion of Wisdom. For in the absence of any tangible or potential eudaimonic benefit for society on our collective well-being, what is technology good for, especially in cases where the eudaimonic impact of technology on society is not only very negligible but harmful? To answer that question, the book develops and applies a meta-normative model of wisdom whose primary purpose is to determine the essential conditions that any normative theory that seeks to assess the impact of technology on well-being must adequately address in order to be able to account for, explain and evaluate the capability of any technological product or process in its design and/or its use to contribute in some way, if any, to the good life for the well-being of individuals and society generally. Using a theoretical normative tripartite model of Wisdom, the Dual Obligation Information Theory-Wisdom (DOIT-Wisdom) (Spence, Information, knowledge and wisdom: groundwork for the normative evaluation of digital information and its relation to the good life. Ethics Inf Technol 13, 261–275, 2011) that comprises three inter-related normative components, the epistemic, ethical and the eudaimonic, within an overarching conceptual framework, this book examines the actual and potential impact of AI technology on well-being. For example, information and communication technology (ICT) and AI technologies that do not protect the justified autonomy and privacy rights of its users or allow and do not restrict the indiscriminate dissemination of misinformation and disinformation, as well as the indiscriminate harvesting of user’s information for the primary gain of Big Tech companies such as Facebook and Google, would have a low and negative capability for well-being. As such, it would potentially generate a negative epistemic, ethical and eudaimonic impact for its users and generally, a negative impact on society and the global community overall and therefore would not be wise to use such technologies.

This book concludes by way of reasoned speculation about some theoretical and practical problems that may potentially arise through our future relationship with AI machines and their impact on our well-being. Could wisdom be humanity’s secret weapon in ensuring that AI machines far more intelligent than humans live peacefully with us and do not enslave us nor seek to destroy us? Moreover, could we be, as James Lovelock speculates in his last book Novacene (2020), “all watched over by machines of Loving Grace”?

What’s Love Got to Do with It? So goes the popular song by Tina Turner. A good song, a simple song, a song to sing along, to dance to, but what does that have to do with the present objective of this chapter concerning the control problem of AI technology? A lot as it happens. Surprisingly given the central place that the concept of love plays in human civilisation throughout the ages, expressed through culture, music, poetry, literature, art and philosophy, as well as in most world religions, such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, among others, the notion of love, though indirectly implied in concepts such as justice, solidarity, empathy, equality, compassion, has received scant direct attention in AI research. Yet it would seem at first blush a fertile concept to explore as at once a theoretical and practical concept of providing, at least conceptually, a solution to the control problem of AI technology. Especially, with regard to the goal-alignment control problem we examined earlier in this chapter, namely, how to align our goals with those of a superintelligent AI. Given its great motivating power, might not love, motivate a superintelligent AI to be positively predisposed towards human beings and not harm them but always seek to do them good, and do so because it learns to loves us, in an analogous way that an omnipotent, omnipresent and benevolent God, at least according to most of the world religions “loves us.” So much so, that according to Christianity, God so much-loved us, that he sacrificed his own son to save us from our sins for our ultimate redemption and salvation. The comparison here is of course only meant allegorically and metaphorically to emphasise the central role that the concept of love plays in human civilisation. As Philip Larkin puts it in the last line of his poem An Arundel Tomb, “What will survive of us is love.” If AGI machines can be designed to develop rational minds that though far more intelligent than us, are not as wise as we are, is there any rational reason, barring any unforeseen technological difficulties, why rational true minds cannot love and care for each other’s eudaimonic good through the overarching concept of a universal love as conceived by Plato and the Stoics? A Love that is at one with Wisdom, for as Diotima tells us, “Eros who is in love with what is beautiful, is a lover of wisdom” (Plato, Plato: Symposium and Death of Socrates. 1997, 38;204).

This book offers an innovative approach to evaluating information and knowledge and its relation to the good life, in the Age of Autonomous Intelligent Machines, through the concept of Wisdom. Wisdom is understood as a type of meta-information and meta-knowledge, which comprises epistemic, ethical, and eudaimonic features, and provides a direct conceptual and practical link between the concepts of information, intelligence, knowledge, the good life, and wellbeing. More generally, it provides a direct link between technology and in particular Information Communication Technology (ICT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, the good life and wellbeing. As such, the concept of wisdom allows for a direct normative evaluation of the impact the dissemination of information through ICTs and AI technologies have on the wellbeing of individuals and society at large. It provides a theoretical rationale to demonstrate the important and relevant role that wisdom plays in the specific evaluation of information in the digital and technological age in which we now live. To that end, a methodological approach is used in this book to show how some different general types of practical manifestations of digital information and intelligence can be normatively evaluated (if they are good or bad for us) through the application of the concept of wisdom. Edward H. Spence draws from the Stoics to present a neo-Stoic account of wisdom, which he then then applies to the technologies in question.

The aim of this book is to introduce the topic of media corruption. The topic of media corruption is important in the age of information in which we now live and most of our daily activities including work, shopping, travel, banking, communication, learning and teaching, and play, are conducted informationally online, through the internet. For good or bad, we are now to an unprecedented extent, informational beings in possession of digital informational identities. We use these to communicate with other informational beings, globally. Information matters to us because information dominates all aspects of our lives. The need to know, communicate and share information with others is, therefore, a significant and crucial aspect of our lives as citizens. As the current Covid-19 pandemic has so painfully shown, we need and require information to be true or at least truthful (intended to be true), accurate, reliable, trustworthy, and credible. Information places upon us, in our capacity of producers, users, and disseminators of information, as individuals and collectively as groups, institutions and societies generally, both epistemic and ethical responsibilities in ensuring the accurate, truthful, reliable and trustworthy dissemination and communication of information on the World Wide Web. When those responsibilities are not only not complied with, out of ignorance or negligence, but worse intentionally infringed for personal interest or profit, the value of information like counterfeit currency is corrupted and is diminished, undermining trust and the common good of society.

We know of the key cases of media corruption and generally of corruption referred to in this book, because they were first exposed and reported through the media, and specifically investigative journalists working in conjunction with whistleblowers and citizen journalists. Using the metaphorical analogy of Socrates as the first investigative journalist, the chapter will demonstrate the crucial importance that investigative journalism still plays in exposing and reporting worldwide corruption as illustrated by the Panama Papers case and the Cambridge Analytica controversy, analyzed in this chapter. The chapter will also examine how the symbiotic relationship between the fourth and fifth Estates working together in conjunction, help expose and report on global corruption. This is a welcome and major development and paradigm shift on how this symbiotic relationship between the corporate investigative journalists of the fourth Estate and the citizen journalists of the fifth Estate, as well as whistleblowers, such as Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, and before them many others such as Daniel Ellsberg, Frank Serpico and Katharine Dunn, and the collective voices of social media in their role of bearing witness, valiantly expose major and worldwide instances of corruption, including media corruption.

This chapter will identify and examine the presence of corruption as it is manifested, specifically in the media. As in the case of the general account of corruption examined in Chap. 3, this chapter will also examine media corruption by reference to Plato’s Myth of Gyges (The Republic, Plato. The dialogues of Plato. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., Chicago, Book II, pp 359–361, 1952) as this has contemporary significance and relevance in explaining corruption generally and specifically as it applies to the media. The chapter will use a model of media corruption that shares the same characterizing features of the general account of corruption that was examined in Chap. 3 but designed specifically and developed for application to the phenomenon and practice of corruption in the media (Spence. Corruption in the media. In: Aßländer MS, Hudson S (eds) The handbook of business and corruption: cross-sectoral experiences. Emerald Group Publishing, Bingley, pp 453–480, 2017; Spence. Int J Appl Philos 22:2 – Fall 2008:231–241, 2008). As well, the chapter will identify and categorize the different types of media corruption, the ways in which these are caused, and the contexts in which they are manifested in current physical and virtual media environments and practices.

This chapter will provide a general philosophical account of corruption that applies to all forms of corruption, such as political, financial, police corruption, sports corruption, among others, and media corruption, which is the main topic of this book. It demonstrates why such practices are not only unethical but also corrupt. Such practices are of greater concern as they have the tendency not only to cause harm to individual persons or groups of persons but also cause harm to the institutions that underlie the democratic system itself. Insofar as this is the case, the harm that is caused by corruption and especially media corruption, affects every citizen. However, like the proverbial fifth-phalanx, media corruption is not always apparent and when apparent is not understood as media corruption as other forms of corruption are. As in Plato’s Myth of Gyges (Republic Book II) that will be examined in this chapter, the media, merely “appears just, when it is not”. Having determined the essential characterizing features of corruption as well as its necessary and sufficient conditions, the chapter will also provide a taxonomy of corruption of its various manifestations.

This chapter explains that a normative evaluation of digital information on the internet necessitates an evaluative media model that is universal and global in character and application. This chapter will show that information has a dual normative structure that commits all disseminators of information to both epistemic norms (those that relate to knowledge) and ethical norms (those that relate to moral behavior) that are in principle universal and thus global in application. Based on this dual normative characterization of information, the chapter will seek to demonstrate that information and, specifically, digital information on the internet, as a process and product of communication, has an inherent normative structure. As such the inherent normative structure of information, commits its producers, disseminators, communicators, and users, everyone in fact that disseminates information, to certain mandatory epistemological and ethical commitments. Moreover, the negligent or purposeful abuse of information in violation of those commitments is also a violation of universal rights to freedom and wellbeing to which all agents are entitled by virtue of being informational agents. The chapter refers to the above argument as the Dual Obligation Information Theory (DOIT).

Choosing Facebook as the specific example of what is referred to in this chapter as the 6thEstate in order to distinguish it conceptually from the fourth and fifth Estates, the primary objective of the first part of the chapter is to examine if digital information created, disseminated, and mediated increasingly via Facebook is also subject to those same normative principles as the fourth and fifth Estates. Having established that Facebook is in essence a media company, the second part of the chapter will demonstrate, on the basis of the Dual Obligation Information Theory (DOIT), that Facebook is also subject to the same normative principles and requirements that other media companies of the fourth and fifth Estates, are. The third part of the chapter will examine if Facebook’s role in the Cambridge Analytica case not only violated the fundamental normative principles and requirements to which all media companies are subject, but moreover, its actions constituted media corruption. More generally, Facebook’s media corruption as illustrated in the Cambridge Analytica case, relates to a conflict of interest emanating from its business model that in its design and practice is conducive to systemic media corruption.

This chapter will examine the systemic changes in policy and legislation as well as issues of self-regulation and government regulation needed in combating corruption and media corruption and specifically in the Big Tech companies such as Facebook and Google, as well as explore anti-corruption solutions needed in effectively responding to the challenge of media corruption in the Age of Information. The role of investigative journalists in the exposure of corruption examined in Chap. 6 will be revisited in this chapter to illustrate the ongoing significance of investigative journalism in the regulation of corruption and media corruption specifically. The chapter will then argue for a clear public articulation of public ethical principles and values through an examination of their historical justification and motivation on the basis of several contemporary ethical theories. The chapter will then examine the necessary normative alignment of public ethical principles and values with government regulation comprising both retrospective regulation through penalties such as fines as well as prospective regulation through external and independent audits of the Big Tech companies by the government and its associated agencies. As well, the chapter will argue for the inculcation of public ethical principles and values within the corporate structures of the Big Tech companies through education training programs.

The paper will seek to demonstrate that information as communication has a dual inherent normative structure that commits its disseminators, especially the media, offline and online, to epistemological and ethical principles that are universally mandatory. With regard to the dissemination of information by the media, its business intelligence constituted by its commercial interests as a media market must always be congruent with moral intelligence on the basis of the epistemological and ethical universal principles that the dual normative structure of information gives rise and to which the media itself is committed. When the media?s business intelligence comes into conflict with moral intelligence, the latter must always take precedent over the former. Moreover, the communication of information to the public by the media, offline and online, even if conceived merely as another market commodity, commits the media to ethical conduct regardless of any other commercial interests that may come into conflict with the media's ethical commitments to the public

This paper aims to systematically explore and provide answers to the following key questions: When is government secrecy justified? In a conflict between government secrecy and the public's right to be informed on matters of public interest, which ought to take priority? Is Julian Assange a journalist and what justifies his role as a journalist? Even if Julian Assange is a journalist of the new media, was he justified in disseminating classified information to the public? Who decides what is in "the public interest"? Is it only journalists of the Fourth Estate who decide that or also journalists of the Fifth Estate ? This paper will answer the aforementioned questions by arguing that the media in the form of both the Fourth and Fifth Estates should inform the public on matters of public interest truthfully and ethically, even if sometimes they have to breach government secrecy

The title refers to the question addressed in this paper, namely, to what degree if any technology, including nanotechnologies, in the form of products and processes, is capable of contributing to a good life. To answer that question, the paper will develop a meta-normative model whose primary purpose is to determine the essential conditions that any normative theory of the Good Life and Technology (T-GLAT) must adequately address in order to be able to account for, explain and evaluate the Contributive Capability of Technology for a Good Life (CCT-GL). By CCT-GL understand the capability of any technological product or process in its design and/or its use to contribute in some way, if any, to the good life of individuals and society at large. In this paper, the all-embracing term “technology” will be used to refer to both the products and processes of different technologies.

This paper provides a general philosophical groundwork for the theoretical and applied normative evaluation of information generally and digital information specifically in relation to the good life. The overall aim of the paper is to address the question of how Information Ethics and computer ethics more generally can be expanded to include more centrally the issue of how and to what extent information relates and contributes to the quality of life or the good life , for individuals and for society. To answer that question, the paper explores and provides by way of a theoretical groundwork for further research, the concept of wisdom understood as a type of meta - knowledge as well as a type of meta - virtue , which can enable one to both know in principle what a good life is and how to successfully apply that knowledge in living such a life in practice. This answer will be based on the main argument presented in this paper that the notion of wisdom understood as being at once a meta - epistemological , meta - axiological and meta - eudemonic concept, provides the essential conceptual link between information on the one hand and the good life on the other. If, as we are told, this is the Age of Information, both the theoretical examination and analysis of the question of how information relates to the good life and the provision of an adequate answer to that question are essential for developing a deeper understanding of how to evaluate the theoretical and practical implications and ramifications of information for the good life, for individuals and societies generally

Beginning with the initial premise that as the Internet has a global character, the paper will argue that the normative evaluation of digital information on the Internet necessitates an evaluative model that is itself universal and global in character. The paper will show that information has a dual normative structure that commits all disseminators of information to both epistemological and ethical norms that are in principle universal and thus global in application. Based on this dual normative characterization of information the paper will seek to demonstrate: that information and internet information specifically, as a process and product of communication, has an inherent normative structure that commits its producers, disseminators, communicators and users, everyone in fact that deals with information, to certain mandatory epistemological and ethical commitments; and that the negligent or purposeful abuse of information in violation of the epistemological and ethical commitments to which its inherent normative structure gives rise is also a violation of universal rights to freedom and wellbeing to which all agents are entitled by virtue of being agents, and in particular informational agents.

This article explores the phenomenon of Internet addiction and its possible amelioration, from both Eastern and Western philosophical perspectives. Internet addiction is caused by the excessive use of the Internet and its resulting dependence, having negative effects on human well-being. The ideas of a key ancient Chinese Daoist thinker Zhuangzi 莊子 and his Western contemporaries, the Stoics, as viewed through the world, the things and beings in it, and their relationships, offer insights which may be used to alleviate these effects. The application of and comparison between the two ancient philosophies in addressing the issue of Internet addiction can give us inspiration to confront the challenges of technological enslavement in general and Internet addiction in particular. This is no doubt a help in our pursuit of well-being.

PurposeBeginning with the initial premise that the internet has a global character, the purpose of this paper is to argue that the normative evaluation of digital information on the internet necessitates an evaluative model that is itself universal and global in character. To this end, the paper aims to demonstrate and support a universal model for the normative evaluation of information on the internet.Design/methodology/approachThe design and application of a dual normative model of information show how such a model commits all disseminators of information to universal epistemological and ethical norms.FindingsBased on the dual normative characterization of information, the paper demonstrates that information and internet information specifically, have an inherent normative structure that commits its disseminators to certain mandatory epistemological and ethical commitments; and that the negligent or purposeful abuse of information in violation of those commitments is also a violation of universal rights to freedom and wellbeing to which all agents are entitled by virtue of being agents, and in particular informational agents.Research limitations/implicationsOwing to space constraints it is impractical to provide in this paper a detailed account of how the argument for informational universal rights can deal with other competing moral obligations.Originality/valueThe findings based on an innovative dual normative model of information demonstrate and support the initial thesis of the paper, namely, that the dissemination of internet information due to its global nature commits all informational agents to universal epistemological and ethical principles.