The Social Contract Revised: Obligation and Responsibility in the Information Society

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.