New Frontiers for Computer Ethics: Cyberspace

Abstract

This chapter discusses cyberspace as one of the new frontiers of ethics. In our discussion, we note that is a global artificial reality environment based on a global mesh of interconnected computer networks. This mesh allows and makes it possible for anyone using a point-of-entry device like a computer, smartphone, or any other Internet-enabled electronic device to reach anyone else, with the potential to access the mesh, through a one-on-one, one-to-many, and many-to-one communication capabilities or through broadcasting via the World Wide Web . Cyberspace, because of immerse and telepresence capabilities and global reach, is used either in real time or otherwise simultaneously by millions if not billions of people around the world. We note that these notions give cyberspace and in fact makes cyberspace not only a virtual environment but also makes it a potentially dangerous environment where one can do anything with no elegance, no accountability and limited responsibility, and all in a cover. So personal privacy becomes the number-one social and ethical issue of concern in our discussion. With the changing cyberspace technologies, we wonder whether cyberspace communities will see their etiquettes, if any, eventually amalgamate, mutate, and spread into global cyberethics . How about cyberspace lingua franca and a global cyber culture ?