Personal values and computer ethics

This chapter provides a means of thinking of inequalities in relation to the design and use of information and communications technologies (ICTs), arguing that equality is often expressed as a liberal value, which rests on a view of the relationship of technology and society that is determinist in inspiration. This is particularly important when the adoption of ICTs is increasingly bound up with identity, in making communities, in gender identity, in terms of the construction of disability and in terms of age. Hopes for virtual communities were initially often based on a utopian vision. The experiences of young people using social networking technologies, women in the IT industry and on the Internet, disabled people accessing ICTs and older users, particularly of the World Wide Web, demonstrate a complex picture of a world which is still unequal and where old inequalities prevail.