Digital Ethics

“Those who describe machines as intelligent or smart are naive.” SARAH SPIEKERMANN Apps that send information without being prompted; cars that are driven by Google; tablets that update programs of their own accord – more and more people are asking: what is digitalisation doing to me and my life? Sarah Spiekermann laments that the person is being degraded to a “user” and uses IT systems because he/she is afraid of being left behind. The expert for ethical technical development demands a radical rethink: we need technology that serves us rather than controls us. Digitalisation may no longer be driven by the profit-seeking of large IT concerns. Rather it must be determined by the values of friendship, privacy and freedom. For it is only in that way that we can ensure our own self-determination in a pluralistic society.


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  • Publisher: Droemer TB
  • Release: 01.09.2021
  • 320 pages
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David Payr
© David Payr

Sarah Spiekermann

Sarah Spiekermann is a professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business where she is part of the management team of the Information Systems and Society Institute and where she established the “Privacy and Sustainable Computing Lab” in 2016. Her professional career started in Silicon Valley at Openwave Systems before she moved to strategy consultants A.T. Kearney. Subsequently, she headed the Research Center for Internet Economics at the Humboldt Universität Berlin. Thanks to her many years of research Sarah Spiekermann has become a high-profile critic of the IT sector and its concept of humanity. In the summer of 2016, she was given the task by the IEEE, the biggest and oldest engineers’ association in the world, of leading the historic first standardisation process addressing the ethical configuration of technology. Sarah Spiekermann is a sought-after keynote speaker.