Digital justice: Reflected in the “Black Mirror”

Timur M. Khusyain­ov
Nation­al Research Uni­ver­si­ty High­er School of Eco­nom­ics

Dig­i­tal jus­tice: Reflect­ed in the “Black Mir­ror”

Abstract. This remark for the ”Black Mir­ror” phi­los­o­phy dis­cus­sion con­sid­ers the trans­for­ma­tions of the pun­ish­ment sys­tem based on the tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment per­spec­tives pre­sent­ed in the “Black Mir­ror” series. The state, by intro­duc­ing cer­tain laws, seeks to lim­it the actions of per­sons, cre­at­ing for them a cer­tain frame of behav­ior; more­over, it seeks not only to define the lim­its of what is per­mit­ted, but also to ensure that the per­son does not vio­late them. Mod­ern dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies can pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty not only to mon­i­tor com­pli­ance with all exist­ing rules, but also to make deci­sions about pun­ish­ment and even to imple­ment them. At the same time, unlike in the past, per­sons might be safe not only from any phys­i­cal pun­ish­ment, but also from any exclu­sion from the usu­al phys­i­cal space. They may go on liv-ing in their homes, walk­ing along the streets – how­ev­er, at the same time they are expe­ri­enc­ing an exclu­sion from soci­ety: being phys­i­cal­ly close to oth­er peo­ple, they can no longer con­tact them. The ques­tion is posed of what con­se­quences for the indi­vid­ual and soci­ety such a trans­for­ma­tion of pun­ish­ments might have. 

Key­words: pun­ish­ment sys­tem, “Black Mir­ror”, phi­los­o­phy of tech­nol­o­gy, tech­no-ethics, crime, pun­ish­ment, jus­tice

DOI: 10.5840/dspl2019217

Acknowl­edge­ments
The report­ed study was fund­ed by RFBR with­in the research project №18–011-00335

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