Introduction

This chapter situates questions of information within a broader critical-constructive theory of technology. I first define information justice as the fundamental ethical judgment of social arrangements for the distribution of information and its effects on self-determination and human development, a judgment that must be understood in both distributive and structural terms. Studying information from the perspective of justice is, however, complicated by the widely held but ultimately unsupportable claim that technology is morally neutral. Instead, I suggest a constrictive view of technologies in which values play a central role in their development, which raises the possibility of critically examining technologies in relation to alternatives that could have emerged. This critical-constructive view of technologies guides the rest of the book, serving as a foundation for theorizing the challenges that my work as an institutional researcher has presented. I conclude by examining the difficulties—but also the opportunities—of writing political theory from one’s own experience.