We form our ideas about what information we need under assumptions about what information is available. We form our ideas about what to tell people under assumptions about what means of communication are available. We form our ideas about clear and adequate expression under assumptions about what forms of expression are available. Those assumptions are very rarely acknowledged, except in science fiction, but they are real constraints on our imagination. So, as tools change, our basic notions of knowledge, communication, and expression are up for re-evaluation. We may have defined "necessary information" to exclude information that was unavailable, but now is easy to find. We may have accepted as adequate communication modes that are simply outmoded.
An example: weblogs themselves, snapshots of thought that track people's biographies, giving the reader a look at how thinking evolves and intersects with life. This information was until recently mostly available for high energy public figures, whose letters and memos allowed one to put together a rich biographical record. It is now much easier to generate -- through weblog technology -- and ethics is in front of the question: "Does this information matter?" How are people helped by tracking the twists and turns of an individual mind, as that mind copes with various events? Does it matter, for example, who one's teachers are, at this fine-grained level of analysis, or is it enough to know what they think, in their polished, finished, public productions? One can imagine a university requiring that all its philosophy faculty publish a regular weblog. One can also imagine a university discouraging that practice. And behind each policy would stand a whole conception of moral evaluation and documentation.
Posted by shea0017 at November 23, 2004 10:06 AM