Jennifer Tryba

Digital Media Ethics Journal 1

There are a number of Ethical quandaries in existence, there is nothing about that that is new to humanity who has been studying what is “right” and what is “wrong” since he could discern the different between pain and pleasure. A question that arises from the development of new technologies such as the computer and the internet is if it is necessary to create new theories of ethics to attempt to regulate the actions of users or if the problems that come from these technologies are ones that have always existed and are simply passing through a new medium. I believe that the ethical problems that come from Digital Media are the same ethical problems that have always existed depending on where one lives and the culture of the environment.

There is also the question of whether can be a global ethics system that is agreed upon by all cultures, I found it interesting that the key to having a global ethics in digital media ethics might be using the underlying emotions involved in the way people make ethical choices in their everyday life and studies that question why certain choices are believed to be more ethical than other such as Carol Gilligan’s study of the way both men and women make ethical choices. It shows a critical difference in the way in which men and women make ethical choices. Women use emotions in making ethical choices while men tend to use more reason. Women also appreciate that ethical choices surround the relationships between those involved where men see those involved as more isolated nodes that are able to interact but are not necessarily defined by their actions and inactions.

I was most surprised by the part of the readings for this journal was the fundamental differences in Western and Eastern views of the way people are defined. In Western tradition people are thought of like peaches. They believed that though the outsides of an individual develop and change and rote away, their insides are hard and permanent. While in Eastern traditions people are thought of as like onions were they’re defined by their interactions and relationships they hold as represented by the many layers of an onion. As well as the difference between western views of copying other’s work which consider illegal as compared to the eastern idea that something that is great should be copied and shares without consequence as it is considered an honor.