New Environments: Rethinking Ethics in an Era of Technological Changes

The paper analyses howthe meaning of theword “environment” has grown in common language due to the birth of artificial environments resulting from technological developments. The analysis focuses on information and communication technologies (ICTs). The environments in which human beings live and with which they interact are many, including natural, cultural, and artificial environments. This implies the need to find an adequate relationship among them and often the necessity to privilege one over the others. The paper concludes that ethics, understood as the discipline that justifies the principles of good choices, is in need of a radical reconception today, as its goal is not only to provide the criteria for the good choice in one environment, but rather within the variety of environments in which we live.