GUI Faces / Sticky Ethics

Abstract

In “Face-Interface, or the Prospect of a Virtual Ethics” (Ethical Space, 2007), I provided the rudiments of an ethical framework for computer mediated communication (CMC) based on the work of Emmanuel Levinas and, in particular, a redefinition of the concept of the ‘face’ on which the ethical relation hinges. The present paper resituates these claims within a more detailed analysis of the underlying assumptions driving research into CMC, which I argue is currently in the midst of a paradigm shift: the assumption of categorical difference between CMC and face-to-face (FTF) communication, supported by the trope of direct competition, is being replaced by more nuanced investigations into the role of presentations of faces in CMC and beyond. I contend further that the conclusions drawn in the previous article continue to hold good because the paradigm shift takes a direction that is matched to the general principle I have articulated as a necessary precursor to an ethics of the virtual: as the object changes, then so does the locus of the phenomenological investigation on which any ethical framework is to be founded. My argument is ultimately that any contingent framework also proves to be necessarily “sticky” – that is, it clings to a notion of adherence rather than to an assumption of inherence – which, I contend further, is a crucial feature of any genuinely ethical ethics.