As communication technology is invented and adopted, inventors and users alike ponder its meaning and value. Communication technology is very useful but its effect can also trigger both questions and problems. Philosophy provides tools to explore those questions and to solve those problems. Gary Percesepe, in Philosophy: An Introduction to the Labor of Reason (1991), states that the tasks of philosophy are to identify, clarify, classify and analyze problems that seem to resist common sense or scientific resolution.

Communication technology is an appropriate area for philosophical exploration. Some philosophers have pondered and even warned of the dangers of scientific and technological developments that ignore or fail to consider human values and the human spirit. Others have pondered the enhancements to the human spirit brought about by science and technology. This entry will apply the four branches of philosophy—logic, epistemology, metaphysics, and axiology—to concerns...