overview | structure | concepts | applications | supplementals
Part IV: Social Theory and Ethics
Terje Rasmussen, in Chapter
16, examines the social history of the Internet and sociological theory to illustrate
how "the Internet suggests that society should be observed as a social
system of social systems" (463). Rasmussen argues the Internet could be
viewed as a "distributed society."
In Chapter 17, Roger Silverstone
discusses the concept of media ethics and how the Internet "might be seen
to enable or disable" what he terms the moral life (469). He claims that
"the possibility of a moral life is dependent upon our capacity to define
and sustain proper distance in the relationships we have between ourselves and
others and that our media technology can be seen to affect that" (470).
Essentially, he argues that an ethics of cyberspace must take into account the
distance and mediation present on the Internet and/or cyberspace (488).
Ingunn Moser and John Law, in their chapter entitled "Making Voices: New
Media Technologies, Disabilities, and Articulation," focus on disabilities
and new media, including how "a person" is constructed in relation
to new media studies (491). They explore the ways in which "assistive technology
for multiply disabled people works to articulate subjectivities," and locate
"consciousness and action" (509, 493).
In the final chapter of
the volume, "The Good, the Bad, and the Virtual: Ethics in the Age of Information,"
Mark Poster explores the hypothesis that the information age may challenge established
ethical principles as well as the possibilities of inventing new principles
for ethics in digital media. He argues that "the virtual may not fit into
existing definitions of the good and the bad," as characterized by Sergio
Leone's film (522-23).
See the summary for part 1, 2, 3, and 4.
