Digital Virtues
The following comes from a rather lapidary text from 2001: Per Interactivity ad Virtuality via Textuality.
http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~lachance/ivt.htm
In a way it is a meditation upon the micro-theatre of navigating cyberspace. Each tiny moment is an encounter with decisions and such decisions can be figured as the exercise of a given virtue. It is a glimpse at agency.
Meet the digitalized cardinal virtues.The text of course needs to be aerated, supplied with examples.
Prudence is responsible for juggling bonds that link the here and the not here, for the means that link the this and the not this, and the norms that link the now and the not now. Prudence asks the question: is this or is this not the correct question. Prudence invites us to choose between concentrating on time, on person or on place.
Fortitude deals with cognitive overhead with a fight or flee response. Fortitude is concerned with space. Fortitude asks whether to stay or to go. Fortitude manages bases.
Temperance asks whether it is time or not. Temperance manages messages and cues.
Justice assesses who counts as a person and by which names they are to be known.
Their portfolios can be shuffled. Prudence need not be the exclusive metacognitive virtue, that role can be played by the time management guru, Temperance. Fortitude is sometimes needed to ask the question about the question. Justice can sit in judgement, of course.
And so for day 907
07.06.2009
