"I am delighted to offer my highest praise to Dean Cocking and Jeroen
van den Hoven's brilliant new book, Evil Online. The confrontation
between good and evil occupies a central place in the challenges facing
our human nature, and this creative investigation into the spread of
evil by means of all-powerful new technologies raises fundamental
questions about our morality and values. Cocking and Van den Hoven's
account of the moral fog of evil forces us to face both the demons
within each of us as well as the demons all around us. In the end, we
are all enriched by their perceptive analyses."
--Phil Zimbardo, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Stanford
University Principal Investigator, Stanford Prison Experiment
"The internet offers new and deeply concerning opportunities for
immorality, much of it shocking and extreme. This volume explains with
great insight and clarity the corrupting nature of the internet and the
moral confusion it has produced. It will play a vital role in the
growing debate about how to balance the benefits of the internet against
the risks it poses to all of us. Evil Online is an excellent book."
--Roger Crisp, Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of Oxford
We now live in an era defined by the ubiquity of the internet. From our
everyday engagement with social media to trolls on forums and the
emergence of the dark web, the internet is a space characterized by
unreality, isolation, anonymity, objectification, and rampant
self-obsession--the perfect breeding ground for new, unprecedented
manifestations of evil. Evil Online is the first comprehensive
analysis of evil and moral character in relation to our increasingly
online lives.
Chapters consider traditional ideas around the phenomenon of evil in
moral philosophy and explore how the dawn of the internet has presented
unprecedented challenges to older theoretical approaches. Cocking and
Van den Hoven propose that a growing sense of moral confusion--moral
fog--pushes otherwise ordinary, normal people toward evildoing, and that
values basic to moral life such as autonomy, intimacy, trust, and
privacy are put at risk by online platforms and new technologies. This
new theory of evildoing offers fresh insight into the moral character of
the individual, and opens the way for a burgeoning new area of social
thought.
A comprehensive analysis of an emerging and disturbing social
phenomenon, Evil Online examines the morally troubling aspects of the
internet in our society. Written not only for academics in the fields of
philosophy, psychology, information science, and social science, Evil
Online is accessible and compelling reading for anyone interested in
understanding the emergence of evil in our digitally-dominated world.
