The social contract revised: obligation and responsibility in the information society

  • Authors:

  • Robert Joseph Skovira

  • Affiliations:

  • Robert Morris University

  • Venue:
  • Current security management & Ethical issues of information technology
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

This chapter introduces the social contract as a basis for personal and corporate responsibility and obligation. I briefly discuss three perspectives on the nature of the social contract: the Hobbesean, the Lockean, and the Rousseauean. I discuss the idea that information technology and the information society are in the process of revising the social contract. It sees the Internet as a key transformer of the sense of the social contract. It ends with a discussion of three revisionary frames: virtual communitarianism, radical individualism, and social capitalism.