It is stated in the Hans Jonas article that initially, the short arm of human power did not call for a long arm of predictive knowledge. An interpretation is that it does not take an elite level of knowledge to understand and carry out ethical actions in the short term, because it can’t determine the long term knowledge. It is argued that human good is the same for all time, and that this assumption can be a framework for ethics, and therefore policy.

With the implementation of modern technology, it is now argued that this stance on short arm ethics has changed. It is stated that since the influence of action in this new technological realm has such a broader and expanding effect, that we have to now take into account our actions because of its widespread implications. Another aspect laced into this is that with this new technological realm, there is also a greater number of people effected by this, and that now the group is responds in its own way where before this wasn’t the case. The example indicated in the Jonas paper is our effect on ecology, how our massive group of human may be affecting the planet. He applies this though to the new technological realm, the fact that this can be applied to what we know now as the internet, and the effects of social media is remarkable.

With this understanding from Hans Jonas, we have to take into account those arguments when developing policy in the cyber realm. Policy has to establish proper ethics of this newer realm. It has to take into account how one person may be able to affect a wide population of people or systems. A real world application of this may be how policy is formed regarding the cybersecurity of a power grid system. The policy has to take into account the potential impact on a single person on a wide spreading system.