In academia, we are used to reading published, polished papers. This masks the messiness of the publication process—to say nothing of the hair-pulling, self-doubt and frustrations. Particularly for new researchers, it can be instructive to see how a paper changed along its road to publication. To that end, I thought I’d share a bit about one of my own papers.

I recently published “The Self and the Ontic Trust: Toward Technologies of Care and Meaning” in Journal of Information, Communication & Ethics in Society. The paper provides a philosophical discussion of the self, information ethics and technology design, using the distinction between selfies and self-portraits as an illustration. This paper changed a lot between its initial submission in August 2017 and its final acceptance in January 2019.

Originally, the paper was more directly focused on the selfie phenomenon, titled “The Self in the Selfie: An Ethical Discussion of Digital Self-Representation.” It was submitted to an information science conference, where it was rejected. Then it was amplified slightly and submitted to a philosophy of technology journal, where it was also rejected. Here’s the abstract:

Humans use technology to extend, explore and establish the self. Digital tools offer many novel ways to achieve these ends, opening up urgent questions of information ethics, particularly regarding the role of selfhood in today’s world. To approach these questions, this paper explores the ethical directive of self-care through the pervasive phenomenon of the selfie. This paper considers the selfie as a documentary form, i.e. through the framework of document theory, discussing how the selfie performs reference, provides evidence and manifests meaning. This analysis is based on a hermeneutic review of the scholarly literature on the selfie. Framing the selfie as a document offers insight into how the self is constructed and understood through the selfie. This leads to an ethical discussion, considering how selfies can contribute to and detract from human flourishing. This discussion focuses on the ethical directive of self-care, describing how lessons from ancient technological practices can be applied today.

One of the reviewers alerted me to a thorough literature review on the selfie, which had been published after I had conducted my initial literature review, and this meant much of my submission was now duplicative. Unfortunate, but it happens. I shelved this piece for a while, unsure of where its contribution now lay.

Later I became interested in the question of whether we have a duty to be informed. For the past several years, of course, we’ve heard much about the “right to be forgotten.” If we have such a right, then others must have an obligation to ignore. If we don’t have such a right, then it ought to be because we have a right to know, and then others must have an obligation to inform. Most likely we should say that in certain situations all of these rights and duties arise. But could it also be that in some cases we have a duty to know? I wrote a paper reflecting on this, and I submitted it to a philosophy journal. Here is the abstract:

We have a duty to be informed. On an informational ontology, all things are informed to some extent, but those entities that are more informed are better entities. This is particularly the case, and of particular significance, with humans, as we are the only known entities that are informed about our being informed, and consequently we can direct the procession of our being informed. As a self, a person has a duty to be the best self possible. Growing as a self involves valuing, loving and caring. It is a matter of discovering and cultivating values, coming to love particular people and things, and caring about these values, people and things. This is the depth of what it must mean to “be informed.” In short, a person ought to be informed about those things they act on or intend to act on, i.e., their concerns. Under this frame, we can reinterpret so-called duties such as not to lie as duties not to inhibit others’ being informed. We can also reinterpret the so-called duty to ignore as rather a duty to cultivate healthy concerns.

This paper was rejected. I set aside this paper for a while, and then I realized that there was an interesting conversation to be had at the intersection of this paper and my also-rejected selfie paper. This led me to combine the two papers, and I submitted “The Self and the Ontic Trust,” where it was accepted with some revisions. Here is the abstract:

Purpose – Contemporary technology has been implicated in the rise of perfectionism, a personality trait that is associated with depression, suicide and other ills. This paper explores how technology can be developed to promote an alternative to perfectionism, which is a self-constructionist ethic.
Design/methodology/approach – This paper takes the form of a philosophical discussion. A conceptual framework is developed by connecting the literature on perfectionism and personal meaning with discussions in information ethics on the self, the ontic trust and technologies of the self. To illustrate these themes, the example of selfies and self-portraits is discussed.
Findings – The self today must be understood as both individualistic and relational, i.e., hybrid; the trouble is balance. To realize balance, the self should be recognized as part of the ontic trust to which all information organisms and objects belong. Thus technologically-mediated self-care takes on a deeper urgency. The selfie is one example of a technology for self-care that has gone astray (i.e., lost some of its care-conducive aspects), but this can be remedied if selfie-making technology incorporates relevant aspects of self-portraiture. This example provides a path for developing self-constructionist and meaningful technologies more generally.
Practical implications – Technology development should proceed with self-care and meaning in mind. The comparison of selfies and self-portraits, situated historically and theoretically, provides some guidance in this regard. Some specific avenues for development are presented.
Originality/value – The question of the self has not been much discussed in information ethics. This paper links the self to the ontic trust: the self can be fruitfully understood as an agent within the ontic trust to which we all belong.