Volume 9, Issue 1, Spring/Summer 2002
Luciano Floridi
Pages 39-45
Information Ethics
An Environmental Approach to the Digital Divide
As a full expression of techne, the information society has already posed fundamental ethical problems, whose complexity and global dimensions are rapidly
evolving. What is the best strategy to construct an information society that is ethically sound? This is the question I discuss in this paper. The task is to formulate an
information ethics that can treat the world of data, information, knowledge and communication as a new environment, the infosphere. This information ethics must be able to address and solve the ethical challenges arising in the new environment on the basis of the fundamental principles of respect for information, its conservation and valorisation. It must be an ecological ethics for the information environment.