ABSTRACT
‘The good life’ is a universal and perennial human concern. Most thinkers hold that the good life either requires or is greatly enhanced by close personal relationships, and any careful inquiry into the impact of modern technology on the good life must address the social dimension of our technological age. This requires a philosophical appraisal of recent technology-driven changes in the way that many humans build and sustain intimate relationships, and more specifically, how such technologies may impact the development of certain social virtues essential to the good life. Unfortunately, the influence of technology on the virtues is largely ignored in the otherwise burgeoning research on the ethical impact of technology. In a preliminary and partial attempt to address this lacuna, I explore here one set of technology-mediated shifts in human relationships, namely, those driven by new social media, such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter.
