CEPE 2009 Eighth International Conference of Computer Ethics Philosophical Enquiry

CEPE2009 will be on 27-29 June 2009, at Ionian Academy Corfu, Greece.

The CEPE (Computer Ethics Philosophical Enquiry) conference series is recognized as one of the premier international events on computer and information ethics attended by delegates from all over the world.

Conferences are held about every 24 months, alternating between Europe and the United States. CEPE 2009 is the eighth conference in the series and will be held at the Ionian University, Corfu, Greece.

Identity 2.0

This is a bit old now (2005), but still well worth watching, not least because Identity 2.0 has not happen yet (check for more information here).
Dick Hardt's message is simple, powerful and probably right.
Just don't be mislead by the first few minutes of self-referential indulgence, it has a point.
And, by the way, contrary to what Lessing says, I would not recommend the style of the presentation: the pace is fun, the movie-like use of the slides unusual, but the overall effect is reflection-unfriendly (recall Nietzsche's line on "slow reading", or one should probably say today "slow powerpowering"), a bit tiring (like a pop song played too many times), and looses steam rather quickly (as the sequel shows).

A better song for the film?

Play it loudly, top volume, until your neighbour comes complaining (you live in a nice residential area, he is a lawyer) or crying that yes, that's the problem, that's what really bothers her as well (you are on campus, she is a philosophy student). Enjoy.

Could I have been
A parking lot attendant
Could I have been
A millionaire in bel air
Could I have been
Lost somewhere in paris
Could I have been
Your little brother
Could I have been anyone other than me
Could I have been oh, anyone other than me
Could I have been anyone
He stands touch his hair his shoes untied
Tongue gaping stare
Could I have been a magnet for money
Could I have been anyone other than me
Twenty three
Im so tired of life
Such a shame to throw it all away
The images grow darker still
Could I have been anyone other then me?
Then i
Look up at the sky
My mouth is open wide, like and taste
Whats the use in worrying, whats the use in hurrying
Turn turn we almost become dizzy
I am who I am who I am well who am i
Requesting some enlightenment
Could I have been anyone other than me?
And then ill
Sing and dance and Ill play for you tonight
The thrill of it all
Dark clouds may hang on me sometimes
But Ill work it out
And then i
Falling out of a world of lies
Could I have been dancing nancy
Dancing nancy
Could I have been anyone other than me?

From New York to York

Life can be ironic: within a week, I managed to be in New York, US and then in York, UK. It even took me some time to realise the odd coincidence. I must be tired.

In York, I gave a presentation at the meeting
E-Learning in Dialogue: Innovative Teaching and Learning in Philosophy and Religious Studies.
I enjoyed several of the other presentations and I was sorry to have to leave early.

The problem: an overall impression that e-learning has not advanced much since the eighties.

The solution: trying to reinvent e-learning as a way of teaching humanity to cope with the new informational agents and environments in which they spend some much time. Many people seemed to like the idea.

A Film for Philosophy

Click on the title.
Just replace the elevator-background music with this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBAasek8NR4
and enjoy!

In NY

Being sick is often a good chance to stay alone with yourself, without an agenda to fulfill. Being stuck in a city because your flight leaves only 24 hours later is a more pleasant way to obtain the same goal. And if the city is then NY, it might be a blessing.

The temptation to eat hamburgers in my hotel room, typing on this computer all the time, had to be resisted. And it was. I went for a long walk and then checked what's new in American Contemporary Art. My lucky day: the Whitney Museum houses one of the world's foremost collections of twentieth-century American art, and the Biennial was on.

Unmissable, if one is around. Not only for the single pieces (I enjoyed many of them, especially Walead Beshty, Jedediah Caesar, Charles Long) but also for the overview it affords on today's America art. Not many novelties, perhaps even a lack of clear ideas and purpose, but a tangible sense of search for new ways of expressions.

Probably most of the objects will soon (one hope) be forgotten. And the usual, obsessive, self-referential mumbling of people who have nothing to say, but think that saying this much, in some smart-assish way, can fill the gap, makes one puke. Who cares! Shut-up, please. Don't waste broadband. White noise and zeros acquire meaning only when there is a message or ones to which they can be contrasted. But then, it is the curators' fault if sometimes silence is not respected (Frances Stark).

One simple thing that seems to have been lost is a clear grasp of the inevitably informational nature of art. Art is a form of communication, where there is

• a sender,
  
• a message,
  
• a code,
  
• an encoding process,
  
• a medium,
  
• a communication,
  
• a receiver, and
  
• a final decoding by a receiver.

The sender might be less obvious than it looks (it's the artist, or the museum that ordered the piece, the foundation that provided financial support for it, the Church or Party or Business that commissioned it, the culture that actually produced it...). The message has often many layers and meanings. And the receiver may be hardly identifiable. But these, as well as the other components, are there anyway, whether the artist likes it or not. And the only way to eliminate them is to stop being an artist and going for a walk.

So it is bad, tricky, perhaps disingenuous or simply silly and meaningless to try to avoid the informational nature of art. All rules can be broken but the rule that there will be rules, such as the rule of breaking all rules. Trivial and inevitable truism. One may wish to disrespect, bypass, destroy, annihilate, overcome, disregard, chew and spit out the informational model... but all in vain, for no art is possible without such a structure, let alone an art that denies it.

The best expressions of contemporary art seems to me those that take new and further advantage of the informational model, with innovative techniques, contents, a diversificatoin of senders and receivers, of codes and encoding/decoding processes. Seen in this way, visual-artistic expressions are boundless as music and literature are. The only trouble is that you need to have something interesting to say. And this is not common.

Walking back. A ruminating reflection on silence. On how we miss it so much. Because we cannot listen to ourselves and hence we become strangers to ourselves. The park was blasted by salsa music to force people to jump and exercise at the rhythm of a different kind of sunshine. It ruined the atmosphere.

Information Ethics Roundtable 2008

This Year's Topic of the IER was Information Ethics and its Applications.

I enjoyed the meeting both socially and intellectually. The IRS is a great initiative and the organizers (Tony Doyle, Program Chair, Don Fallis, Kay Mathiesen, and Catherine Womack) have done a great job.

The idea of a full, one-day meeting is attractive, and the careful organization of talks with invited speakers and commentators, makes the debate fruitfully challenging. I certainly have learnt a lot and realised that I have even more to learn.

The information society as a neo-bartering society

We live in a neo-bartering society (www.swapace.co.uk).

On any sterling banknote, one can still read “I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of...”, but the fact is that Britain abandoned the gold standard in 1931, so you should not expect to receive any yellow stuff in exchange. The Euro, more seriously, promises nothing. It might be one of the reasons why we are so reluctant to adopt it in this country.

Since all currencies are free floating nowadays, money may well be just a pile of digits. Indeed, when Northern Rock collapsed, several banks in Second Life (SL) followed suit. Players rushed to close their accounts because SL is not Monopoly: the exchange (technically, redemption) rate is around 260 L$ (Linden Dollar) to 1 $ (secondlife.com/whatis/economy-market.php). This is interesting because it transforms providers of in-game currencies, like Linden Lab, into issuers of electronic money. And since the threshold between online and offline is constantly being eroded, one is left wondering when some kind of regulation will be extended to such companies as well. It seems unfair that no government went out of its way to support users who lost all their L$.

True, at the moment you cannot swap L$ for any hard stuff in first life. For this, you need a Nectar card (www.nectar.com). In this case, the neo-bartering nature of the information society is even more evident.

As with all loyalty cards, one earns points by spending. While the money spent might not be yours (suppose you drive a company car and your travelling expenses are reimbursed), the points are as good as cash: a DVD from Blockbuster costs only 500 points (note Sainsbury’s gives you a worse deal). Clearly, bartering and online swapping are based on fair rules, trust and honesty. But we live in a sad valley of cheaters, where the neologism swaplifting (swapping + shoplifting) is becoming popular.

The simplest scam is to agree to a swap and then disappear without honouring your side of the deal. There are, however, slightly less elementary ways of playing the system. Suppose you buy a product for £1000, register the 2000 points on your Nectar card, then return the object purchased and get a full refund. You just made the equivalent of 4 rented DVDs (approximately £16) at no risk, as it is unlikely that the points will be reclaimed. This is dishonest, for you are supposed to contact Nectar “if you believe points have been incorrectly awarded to your account”, but it’s probably not illegal.

Or consider those loyalty cards that offer a once-only, 10% discount when you register your first purchase (www.debenhams.com). Go to the local retailer looking affluent and well-dressed. Once you have accumulated say £300 of potential shopping, make sure that you are invited to register for the loyalty card. Agree, somewhat reluctantly, but provide some incorrect details regarding your credit card (your old address will do). After several attempts, the registration will fail. You will look perplexed. The manager will be embarrassed. Apologises will be exchanged and it is very likely that they will give you the discount anyway (otherwise, you can still walk out without buying anything). You just gained £30, as you can now get another 10% discount next time you register.

All this may seem applicable only to nerds, middle-managers and desperate housewives, but even high-flyers can barter. They just use frequent-flyer miles. According to The Economist, in January 2005 “the total stock of unredeemed miles was worth more than all the dollar bills in circulation”, and you can exchange them for almost anything (www.points.com). The temptation is to pocket the miles earned through someone else’s money.

Last February, for example, the Parliamentary Standards watchdog complained that the Commons Speaker, Michael Martin, had used air miles earned with public money for his family, the ultimate proof (Mr Martin, not the watchdog) that Britain is an advanced information society.

Of course, one day all barriers between points-systems will be lifted. People will then use only World Credits (www.fireflywiki.org/Firefly/FireflyMoney) to purchase anything in the whole universe, independently of ordinal numbers. I look forward to being able to swap my L$ for a socially responsible coffee (starbucks.co.uk/en-GB/_Card).