Charles Ess
Papers
11
Total Citations
288
H-Index
7
About
Charles Ess is a pioneering scholar whose work sits at the intersection of digital ethics, philosophy of technology, and emerging questions around artificial intelligence and robotics. Best known for his foundational contributions to Digital Media Ethics — a field he helped establish as a rigorous subdiscipline of applied ethics — Ess has shaped how researchers and practitioners think about the moral dimensions of computing technologies, smartphones, GPS navigation, and digital media more broadly. His most-cited work, *Digital Media Ethics* (2017, 129 citations), remains an essential reference in the field. Beyond digital ethics, Ess has made a distinctive mark in robophilosophy and robo-theology, exploring how social robots intersect with religious traditions, human identity, and spiritual meaning — from Buddhist temples in Kyoto to Lutheran theological frameworks. His empirical research on robot-mediated job interviews has advanced conversations about algorithmic fairness and bias reduction in hiring, earning significant scholarly attention. Throughout his career, Ess has championed critical and human-centered approaches to robotics, consistently asking not merely what technology *can* do, but what it *should* do — making his scholarship essential reading for anyone grappling with the ethics of our technological future.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1Digital Media Ethics129 citations · 2017
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- 3Robots in Religious Contexts26 citations · 2020
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- 8Ethical Approaches to Robotic Data Gathering in Academic Research7 citations · 2008
- 9Critical robotics6 citations · 2018
- 10Special Issue of IJSR on Social Robots: Form, Content, Critique5 citations · 2015