Abstract

This paper deals with an important aspect of ethics in computer society: isolation in communication systems. In the first part the author analyses the notion of self-help intimated by the computer’s many possibilities for “do-it-yourself” and working at home. Some experiments concerning “the electronic cottage” prove that modern electronic communication entails the risk of being isolated and perverted by the narcissistic love of privacy. The second part focuses on some moral philosophers in order to define an ethics of help in interpersonal relations. This ethics is opposed to the ethics of self-help and may constitute a foundation for an ethical criticism of computer society. In the third part the limits of the personalist ethics of help are recognized: this ethics stresses face-to-face relations, but today it is necessary to take new considerations into account regarding responsibility at long distance in the space and time of electronic society.