Maybe the very philosophical concept of “the Other” arises only when certain communicative technologies allow us to converse with people who are not in any traditional or ordinary sense our neighbors. In his book Works of Love, Kierkegaard sardonically comments, “Neighbor is what philosophers would call the other.” And it is perhaps significant that Kierkegaard, who spent his whole life engaged in the political and social conflicts of what was then a small town, Copenhagen, can see the degeneration involved in the shift from “neighbor” to “other.”*8
