Holographic communications technologies are a new digital technology being currently developed by companies to be available to the public in the near future. Through holographic communications technologies, the image of one user located in one place can be captured with special equipment from different angles, so that its three-dimensional depiction is created realistically. The 3D depiction is then transmitted in high-quality to another user located in some other remote place, creating a whole new experience of unconventional data communication. This new digital technology is planned to be deployed in several fields, such as marketing, education, medicine, business and entertainment. However, like any new technological tool that is introduced, also in the case of holographic communication technologies there are ethical and/or legal challenges that could emerge from its misuse and set in danger fundamental human rights. Hence, research was conducted as an interpretive qualitative study to explore the potential ethical and/or legal challenges of holographic communications technologies by considering the knowledge, opinions, experiences, and perspectives of legal experts, as well as experts on ethical issues. The empirical data was collected through individual semi-structured interviews from the selected participants, and from the review of mainly confidential documents, before being subjected to a thematic analysis. The analysis of the data gave prominence to five themes which were reviewed in the context of the research question and the proposed theoretical framework with the help of Ethical Technology Assessment (ETA). The discussion of the findings revealed that the most prominent challenges that could arise from the use of holographic communications technologies are privacy and data protection issues. It was further shown that existing digital technologies with similar features and the ethical and/or legal challenges confronted in the past about them can be of help to approach the ones regarding holographic communications technologies. The research indicated that the designing phase of a new digital technology, and accordingly holographic communication technologies, is important as decisions are being made about the technical features of it, as well as the capabilities it will offer to the end users. Hence, it plays a vital role to whether the use of the digital technology will be according to ethics and laws later on. It was also shown that the participation of end users in this phase is important to reflect their concerns and desires with the creators before the new digital technology is introduced, but it is still a challenge to decide who will be included and on what criteria they will be selected. The research showed that existing ethical and legal frameworks are important to form a corresponding framework for holographic communications technologies and can be built upon. However, this is also a challenge, as, according to the research, any new framework that will be constructed with regard to holographic communications technologies cannot possibly be unanimous as different norms and societal beliefs apply to different territories or domains, but should rather be “personalized” according to the targeted audience.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-115227 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Giogiou, Natalia |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för informatik (IK) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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