This chapter discusses some conceptual undercurrents, which flow beneath the surface of the literature on information and computer ethics (ICE). It focuses on the potential impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) on our lives. Because of their 'data superconductivity', ICTs are well known for being among the most influential factors that affect the ontological friction in the infosphere. As a full expression of techne, the information society has already posed fundamental ethical problems, whose complexity and global dimensions are rapidly evolving. The task is to formulate an ethical framework that can treat the infosphere as a new environment worth the moral attention and care of the human inforgs inhabiting it. We have begun to see ourselves as connected informational organisms (inforgs), not through some fanciful transformation in our body, but, more seriously and realistically, through the re-ontologization of our environment and of ourselves.

For both men, as for most people in Britain, knowledge was embedded in print, and preserved by its use. It is impossible to compartmentalise the creation and management of knowledge, or of the kindred, if very different, information. The nineteenth century witnessed an information revolution that was directly linked to revolutions in knowledge. Knowledge was also promulgated and shared pictorially, in engravings, lithographs, paintings and drawings and, not least, with the development of photography. Fears of publication, and therefore of losing secrecy and leaving the way open to theft by unscrupulous competitors. Specialist catalogues of collections provided route for public education. The public library represented an unprecedented extension of knowledge and entertainment, both to those who had previously had access to shared collections and to the many more who had not. The publishing societies promoted the subjects to which they were allied, not just by encouraging and supporting minority interests but also by providing a means to enlarge public knowledge.

The Victorians knew they were living through a time of transformation in the provision of information. Anachronistic as it is, the immediate benefit of using the term 'information revolution' to describe the changes is that it directs our attention to facts, information and knowledge, or, prosaically, non-fiction. This chapter discusses the attempts to make scholarly information more widely available through new publishing formats, but it will also include a wide variety of other factual publications, from railway timetables to cricket statistics, and from government proceedings to company reports. In the nineteenth century, 'knowledge' and 'information' carried different connotations, but they shaded into one another. The chapter introduces the rise of statistics by asking why so much of that new information was then published. It concludes with a discussion of the mechanisms, techniques and technologies which were introduced to help people to cope with what would now be termed 'information overload'.