The Machine Question: Ethics, Alterity, and Technology

Ethics, especially communication ethics, is customarily understood as being concerned with questions of responsibility for and in the face of an other with whom we interact and exchange information. This Other is more often than not conceived of as another human being. This anthropocentric assumption has been significantly challenged by computer technology, intelligent systems, virtual realities, and cybernetics, all of which introduce the possibility of communicative others that are and remain otherwise. This article investigates the unique ethical challenges, complications, and possibilities introduced by these other forms of otherness that populate and are encountered in the new environment of cyberspace.