Dissemin is shutting down on January 1st, 2025

Published in

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2006

DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3844568

Springer Verlag, Ethics and Information Technology, 4(8), p. 253-262

DOI: 10.1007/s10676-006-9110-6

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Information technologies and the tragedy of the Good Will

Journal article published in 2006 by Luciano Floridi ORCID
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

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Abstract

Information plays a major role in any moral action. ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) have revolutionized the life of information, from its production and management to its consumption, thus deeply affecting our moral lives. Amid the many issues they have raised, a very serious one, discussed in this paper, is labelled the tragedy of the Good Will. This is represented by the increasing pressure that ICT and their deluge of information are putting on any agent who would like to act morally, when informed about actual or potential evils, but who also lacks the resources to do much about them. In the paper, it is argued that the tragedy may be at least mitigated, if not solved, by seeking to re-establish some equilibrium, through ICT themselves, between what agents know about the world and what they can do to improve it.