Personal moral responsibility, public ethics and accountability in policy making and governance are the essential ingredients (supported by legal measures) which we need in order to institutionalize respectful dialogue across diverse stakeholders at the local, national and international level. The idea is to ensure that the process supports subsidiarity, namely those at the receiving end of a decision should be party to the decision making process, thereby ensuring that complex decisions can be made that represent the needs of the majority whilst taking into account the needs of the minority whose ideas could be vital for problem solving. By engaging in processes that enhance participatory democracy we can match decisions more appropriately and enable people to have ownership of the ideas. Semiotics for the purpose of this paper is about exploring ideas with people and carefully considering who is making the argument, what the arguments mean to individuals and interest groups and why. Critical systemic engagement refers to two way dialogue ('a cybernetics of cybernetics') aimed at achieving syntheses or preserving difference to the extent that difference does not undermine the freedom or diversity of others. Representation is one of the major challenges if democracy is to be enhanced, if terrorism is to be prevented and if people are to be able to understand the consequences of their decisions-a cultural shift-that is needed to develop more sustainable futures. Through the process of engaging in dialogue ideas need to be explored by asking: who said this, why and in what context? How do their ideas overlap or diverge from others? Representation in diverse democracies needs to be based on engagement, not just voting. This is one of the major challenges if democracy is to be enhanced, if terrorism is to be prevented and if people are to be able to understand the consequences of their decisions-a cultural shift-that is needed to develop more sustainable futures. Legal measures that make respectful dialogue constitutional need to be embedded as covenants internationally, thereby ensuring that complex decisions can be made that represent the needs of the majority whilst taking into account the needs of the minority whose ideas could be vital for problem solving. Sustainability needs to be institutionalized.

This paper is directed towards answering questions such as the following:How can policy makers develop agreement on what constitutes and supports well-being of the planet rather than the gross domestic product of a nation state (Stiglitz, Sen and Fitoussi)? How can nested forms of participatory democracy and systemic governance do the following: (i) support the appropriate distribution and consumption of resources; and (ii) protect social and environmental diversity and justice at the local and regional levels? To this end, the paper addresses pathways to redress the commodification of relationships across human beings, the voiceless and the environment, on the basis of considering the consequences for the next generation of life on the planet. It makes the case that the 'technologies of humility' for social and environmental justice (Jasanoff) need to be informed by a caretaking approach. Many kinds of knowledge need to decentre anthropocentricism (Wynne) to protect biodiversity (Rose Bird, Freya Mathews, and Haraway).

To paraphrase Winograd (1992), we bring to our communities a tacit comprehension of right and wrong that makes social responsibility an intrinsic part of our culture. Our ethics are the moral principles we use to assert social responsibility and to perpetuate safe and just societies. Moreover, the introduction of new technologies can have a profound effect on our ethical principles. The emergence of very large databases, and the associated automated data analysis tools, present yet another set of ethical challenges to consider. Socio-ethical issues have been identified as pertinent to data mining and there is a growing concern regarding the (ab)use of sensitive information (Clarke, 1999; Clifton et al., 2002; Clifton and Estivill-Castro, 2002; Gehrke, 2002). Estivill-Castro et al., discuss surveys regarding public opinion on personal privacy that show a raised level of concern about the use of private information (Estivill-Castro et al., 1999). There is some justification for this concern; a 2001 survey in InfoWeek found that over 20% of companies store customer data with information about medical profile and/or customer demographics with salary and credit information, and over 15% store information about customers’ legal histories.

The Popular Memory Archive is an online collaborative research portal for collecting and exhibiting the production and reception histories of Australian and New Zealand micro-computer games of the 1980s. Proposed as a resource for both historians of technology and media, and the public, the site provides the means to collect and share the memories of those who lived and played their way through this period. This article surveys activity on the site and offers some preliminary evaluation of the significance of the online contributions. From this we consider the discursive, inclusive and questioning practices of the portal as a means of exhibiting historic games.

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