The Face of the Other....Electronically?

So Folks, as I begin my first venture deep into the Face of Levinas, I am puzzled by one extension of his concept of responsibility through encounter...namely, how does this extend into the modern world of faceless technology?

I'm not sure I have a conclusion yet, but I do think its worthwhile to notice that Levinas talks about the encounter as necessitating ethical interaction. That is, when in relationship with the Other there is already the responsibility to the other. So when I am in dialogue with another, there is necessarily responsibility between us. I have obligations about responsiveness and attentiveness. Levinas offers that one hears the call of the other, and sees the other, and is therefore called to ethics....think 'bout how we bag up folks heads before death, or torture - its a simple way of dehumanizing an individual. I'm prepared to think that we do indeed have this ethical relationship, but is this relationship alleviated when we aren't in that face to face connection? Levinas seems to want to use ideas of auditory responsiveness, but it is still the Face of the other that is mentioned.

So, while I have yet to really grasp the concepts of the Third or the Stranger for Levinas, I don't think I'm prepared to ask questions that might fall into those categories. So when dealing with this modern faceless communication, I don't want to deal with completely anonymous communication yet, things like Chat rooms, or Forums (where identity is concealed).

Thus, the question in my mind that percolates is: How do situations of faceless communication, say in Phones, Cell Phones (as a very separate way of using a phone), IM, Email interplay with the supposed ethical relationship between two people in dialogue? My inclination is to suppose that these things offer a large risk, because it is easier to shirk one's responsibility, but that the communication must in some sense, entail ethics. Yet, I'm not sure I can say they entail ethics in the sense Levinas mentions, or simply ethics in the way that I think one is responsible for what one says. Another consideration is the distance face to face communication, video mediums allow for one to say the radically different superficial other, that will show the depth of the Other....how does that relate to one's ethical obligations?

I think a key to this comes in our sense of communication, as well as our sense of identity. If we can understand what it is that builds our identity, then it seems one will be able to understand in what ways, and through what mediums one is sending out the call for ethics. That is, I expect the call from the physical aspects of my identity, as a white male, as a brownhaired person, as a member of a privledged class that lets me scrape my existence through studying and teaching. I also expect that response intellectually in dialogue with other critical thinkers who can pick up this call....Do these identities spread out into the virtual world, or am I creating different identities?

Am I Joel Van Zanten on the world wide web, and deserve ethics and responsiveness and am required towards responsibility and attentiveness as this being, or have I invented and created a virtual persona with the people who know this being of Joel Van Zanten. Do my family and friends expect me to react the same over the phone? cell phone? email? IM? Can we react in these same ways, is it even possible to!

I'll be struggling through these notions for awhile, lemme know if you have any thoughts.