Jessica Heesen

This article deals with the technical genesis of ubiquitous computing and the opportunities for social participation in the development of technology. In this context, the ability of the system to protect the private sphere is identified as one of the most important criteria for a socially acceptable constitution. On the basis of the relationship between privacy and freedom, it is shown that the trust necessary for the social establishment of global IT networks is only developed through the preservation of the freedoms of choice and action

Big data-analysis is linked to the expectation to provide a general image of socially relevant topics and processes. Similar to this, the idea of the public sphere involves being representative of all citizens and of important topics and problems. This contribution, on one side, aims to explain how a normative concept of the public sphere could be infiltrated by big data. On the other, it will discuss how participative processes and common wealth can profit from a thorough use of big data analysis. As important parts of the argument, two concepts will be introduced: the numerical public and total politicisation.

In the following contribution we will investigate the digital divide with respect to a philosophically and ideologically founded concept of universalisation. The documents of the World Summit on the Information Society show that the creation of a global information society not only concerns a technical structural transformation, but also a technical implementation of a normative guiding principle. I will show that overcoming the digital divide corresponds to the inner logic of universalisation as an ethical model of reasoning. Furthermore, we will see that in reality this formal approach to reasoning proves to be a means of realising certain ideological perspectives. This interdependency of cultural dispositions and technical developments in the global information society will be shown in five aspects: • The creation of a global social utopia based on the concept of the information society. • The objectification of the concept of universalisation in information and communication technology. • The linking of global internet use to a normative idea of the public sphere. • The tendency towards totality as a problem of the public sphere and ICT. • Possible reasons for demanding ICT-free areas.