We say that those who switch on their computers, log on to a program, perhaps go to a website, send an email or enter a chat room - go ‘on the net’. However, this does not mean that they get caught up in the net, but that they enter a social and public space of communication. Such a space is not material space. If we want to describe it, we will have to use technical terms otherwise used in the field of broadcasting or communication. We won’t be able to speak about cubic meters or the proportions of a building. Thus the word ‘cyberspace’ is a metaphor. And yet, those who go ‘on the net’ and communicate with others via internet, experience space in a peculiar way. And if experience is the only way to speak about reality, while such an experience has aspects of space and involves our senses, then it is by no means absurd to describe the internet as a ‘space’. If we combine space with the word ‘cyber’ we signal that it is in fact different from those spaces which we perceive as three dimensional. It signifies that it is by nature fictional and utopian though not outside of our experience.
My basic theme is that those who act in this space and become open to such experiences of space are moving in a space which is not free from the necessity to make ethical decisions. Moving in cyberspace implies relevant ethical decisions. Those for who this theme is evident and without question will want to extend and apply traditional ways of asking ethical questions immediately to the new experience and opportunities which this technology generates. Such evidence presumes however that internet has been sufficiently understood as a means of communication between human beings, that a clear distinction can made between the subjects and recipients of ethical actions and that human dignity and the common good can be applied immediately as a measure for assessing certain events in cyberspace.
The internet opens up new, hitherto non-existent, ethical questions, in so far as we have to show anew the inevitability of the question of good and evil in a space which is entirely created and shaped by human beings. In its own way it places itself outside of the validity of ethical norms. Human beings and human community are aim and measure for our handling of the media. ‘Communication should be between human beings and to the advantage of human development’. This principle of media ethics, pronounced by the papal Council for Social Means of Communication, is itself a valid maxim. Its factual validity is obscured because in the perception and awareness of many people the internet, and with it the experience of cyberspace, has escaped the world of means.
For the purpose of making a limited contribution to dealing with this task, I want to relate the discourse of media theory and ethics to each other:
Media ethics as sector ethics reaches its limitations due to the universal character of the internet.
Theological justifications of norms for acting on the internet reach into the void as they apply a conventional interpretation of the effects of the internet on real life.
The internet generates the appearance of a momentum without a subject
The internet as a means to achieve real-life ends
The internet can be used to make arrangements for terrorist’s attacks. On it we can find calls for collective acts of violence. Following the basic model of communication theory of sender, receiver, message, medium and context, sender and receiver of calls to criminal actions are outside the net - the internet is (at the moment) only a means for ethically relevant events that take place outside the net. In this sense the net itself is morally neutral. It is open to any kind of intention for the realization of which it can be used. It can be an effective means for bringing about something good or for doing evil.
Ethical judgments about these phenomena are made ex-post. They are caused by violations of the norm. In the context of calls and incitements to criminal and violent actions ethical and legal judgments are indisputable. The internet however raises hitherto unresolved questions of the implementation of legal norms and criminal prosecution. The internet is a means of communication which increases the range and speed of communication. The connections of media, (telephone, TV, computer) which have hitherto functioned separately and their global character makes them vast and uncontrollable. Easy and uncontrollable access to the mass medium internet offers increased opportunities for those who break the law in democratic societies as well as democratic oppositions in totalitarian states.
There are two kinds of responses to these challenges: on the one hand people are looking for technical solutions. Image and language recognition software is supposed to identify on the world wide net so – called propaganda crimes or pages with pornographic content. Assessments on technical efforts of this kind are however rather skeptical. For this reason one is beginning to see the necessity to increase user competence from the point of view of ethics. As the internet is largely outside the classic means of controlling the media, there is no other option, but to improve the users’ self regulation and responsibility.
Internet ethics is first of all media ethics. Media ethics is a particular sector ethics: it is constituted through the application of general ethical norms on a limited area of society. It is largely restricted to those areas of society where the internet is used as a means of communication. The multiplication of the effects of this means of communication seems to necessitate the development and expansion of the internet ethic.
We come to two conclusions, which appear to make a heightening of human self-awareness in a world conditioned by information and communication technology:
If the internet as a control technology is necessary for the functioning of society, then it is a means, even though a highly complex one, for the sustaining of the primary world. It is one of its attributes and subordinate to it. The system of means, , mentioned above, does not lose its ontological rank as a means. Only in this rank can the internet require adaptability from human beings. Adaptability can however not mean for human beings to surrender their subjectivity. For it is n the willingness to do precisely that cyberspace as space gathers momentum. As such it would become alienated or liberated from its function as a means, depending on one’s point of view.
Those who regard the internet as a necessary means to sustain the world, and as a consequence demand adaptations with regard to human behavior and self- perception, have to hold the primary, sensorial, given world in high regard. Otherwise their arguments remain meaningless. It is essential for human beings in this world to live and act as a unique unit of body, soul and spirit. If we consider adaptability necessary, we simply resistance to any endangering of this human constitution.
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