Virtue and Virtuality: Technoethics, IT and the Masters of the Future

This paper is an attempt to establish a foundation for technoethics of IT that makes an account of the virtual environment based within the lived situation of those who work and dwell in that emerging realm. The most important phenomenon for technoethics of IT is the relationship between knowledge about information and the capacity to turn information into knowledge. This relationship is embodied in being a Master of Information Technology. To achieve mastery of information and mould it into knowledge, a useful tool-like entity, is to have power in the contemporary world. Once this situation is recognised ethical questions arise of their own volition. A selection of these questions are dealt with in the following paper, they are the questions of the distinction between information and knowledge, the central issue of virtue and virtuality, and the distinction between stealing and sharing in the virtual environment. This paper constitutes a think piece; readers who have a stake in the virtual environment and its ethical makeup are urged to ask themselves these questions and come up with others in turn.