Open AccessEtyka w społeczeństwie skomputeryzowanym. Problem izolacji komunikacji współczesnej
Author(s) -
Peter Kemp
Publication year - 1988
Publication title -
etyka
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2392-1161
pISSN - 0014-2263
DOI - 10.14394/etyka.335
Subject(s) - information ethics , face (sociological concept) , criticism , sociology , ethics of technology , meta ethics , order (exchange) , applied ethics , interpersonal communication , isolation (microbiology) , normative ethics , space (punctuation) , epistemology , engineering ethics , philosophy , social science , law , political science , engineering , linguistics , microbiology and biotechnology , finance , economics , biology
This paper deals with an important aspect of ethics in computer society: isolation in communication systems. In the first part the author analyses the notion of self-help intimated by the computer’s many possibilities for “do-it-yourself” and working at home. Some experiments (from Denmark and Japan) concerning “the electronic cottage” prove that modern electronic communication entails the risk of being isolated and perverted by the narcissistic love of privacy. The second part focuses on some moral philosophers (especially Jean-Paul Sartre in his posthumous ethics) in order to define an ethics of help in interpersonal relations. This ethics is opposed to the ethics of self-help and may constitute a foundation for an ethical criticism of computer society. In the third part the limits of the personalist ethics of help are recognized: this ethics stresses face-to-face relations, but today it is necessary to take new considerations into account regarding responsibility at long distance in the space and time of electronic society.