Ethix & IBTE Enter Fourth Year
This issue — Ethix 19 — is the first in our fourth year of bimonthly publication. A great deal has changed over these three years, and significant changes are planned for the coming year.
In October 1998, we produced our first issue and mailed it to 150 of our friends. Today we distribute almost 2000 copies of Ethix to six continents, and our web site (www.ethix.org) generates thousands of hits per week. We are excited about the growing interest.
Since we launched the Institute for Business, Technology, and Ethics three years ago it has been a weekend and evening effort while both of us worked full time at other jobs. David Gill left the North Park University faculty this summer and has become the first full-time IBTE employee. He is now based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Al Erisman left The Boeing Company this spring, and is spending most of his time at IBTE while doing part time teaching at Seattle Pacific University, and continuing on technology committees such as Vice Chair of the National Institute for Standards and Technology review committee, and Chair of the Technology Development Program and member of the Board of the Washington Technology Center.
We believe we have been successful in raising key questions at the intersection of business, technology, and ethics where new issues continually emerge from the fast-paced changes brought about by technology.
Next issue (November-December) we intend to expand Ethix from twelve to sixteen pages to allow us to draw more voices into the discussion. We will develop an electronic membership for those who prefer to read Ethix on-line. During the coming year we will also develop a series of IBTE seminars and offer them in several locations in the spring. We intend to go beyond raising the questions to developing, with the help of others, position papers on some of the key issues in the business/technology/ethics intersection..
Finally it is our goal to begin working more closely with companies and other institutions to create change. We will do this through consulting arrangements that we are just starting with various companies. We are also developing corporate sponsors for IBTE. Corporate sponsors will help in the funding of IBTE and will identify themselves as committed to working toward the goal of “good business, appropriate technology, and sound ethics.” We expect to announce the first corporate sponsors in the next issue of Ethix. Information on IBTE consulting and on corporate sponsorship will be posted at our web site (www.ethix.org) (or you may write us at contact@ethix.org).
Al Erisman
Executive Co-Editor
David W. Gill
Executive Co-Editor