The Value (Driven) Web

Abstract

This paper presents a vision on the importance of values and ethical aspects in web science. The complexity of the internet grows fast and might at some point transcend that of ourselves. At the same time the internet escapes our normative, ethical control. Thus, web science is confronted with a crucial challenge and a huge responsibility given the vital and increasing impact of the internet in our society and daily life. Working within the approach of value sensitive design, we sketch how we can capture, formalize and embed a balanced set of values in internet technology as non-functional requirements.