Narrative technologies meets virtue ethics in alternate reality: investigating the possibility of a narrative virtue ethics of technology, using the example of pokémon go

Source: Wessel Reijers and Mark Coeckelbergh

This academic paper has the following abstract:

Virtue ethics offers a promising starting point for thinking about ethics of technology. Usually, virtue ethics of technology focuses on explaining how we can cultivate our technomoral virtues to cope with technological change. However, it is not clear yet how exactly technologies in turn mediate technomoral virtues, or more precisely how the technological practices that cultivate these virtues do so. Inspired by Ricoeur and MacIntyre, this paper responds to this challenge with an account of technological mediation based on Ricoeur's narrative theory, and explores the possibility of a narrative virtue ethics of technology. We argue that the virtues are technologically mediated because particular technologies configure the practices by which people cultivate their virtues. We demonstrate how this approach could be applied by discussing the example of Pokémon Go: an alternate reality game that enjoyed a brief time of great global popularity and allows players to act through the game in the real world.

Keywords: Computer Science , Tech Ethics , Virtue Ethics