Philosophy of Information

The ethics of WikiLeaks

2010-12-08T11:39:00.000Z

The Wikileaks phenomenon is intricate, but suppose we reduce its ethical evaluation to two questions: is whistleblowing ethical, even when motivated by resentment and the desire to harm its target? And is Wikileaks’ facilitation of whistleblowing ethical, even if it might put at risk innocent people? A deontologist, convinced that telling the truth and never lying is an absolute must, is likely to appreciate whistleblowing as the right thing to do, independently of the reasons behind it. And a consequentialist may support Wikileaks as a means to maximise the welfare of the largest number of people, especially if risks are minimized by censuring sensitive information. So current answers in the mass media seem to converge: Wikileaks is a good thing. I am not entirely convinced.

Confidential communication is a three-player game – sender, receiver and referent – in which sender and receiver trust each other. The receiver, not the referent, trusts and holds responsible the sender for the truth of what is communicated about the referent. The referent may know about such communication and may even easily guess its contents (imagine a letter of reference), but there is confidentiality only if the receiver, not the referent, has access to the information exchanged. Accountability is present and connects sender and receiver. Whistleblowing disrupts such a three-player game. In the new, metagame the sender is the whistleblower through Wikileaks, the whole world is the potential receiver, and the referents are the players in the previously confidential communication. This is problematic. The relation of confidentiality of the original game is shattered: the new referents are also among the new world-receiver, which now holds the old sender responsible for what is communicated, not only for its truth (if you say that the moon is made of blue cheese, that is false, if I report that you said so then what I say is true). The metagame reinstates, somewhat hypocritically, the same rules it criticises: Wikileaks, quite rightly but inconsistently, defends the anonymity and confidentiality of its sources, which are likely to make an exception about the information transparency of their own identity, frowning upon MetaWikileaks, with leaks on leaks. Finally, the relation of accountability is missing. In the metagame, the whistleblower and Wikileaks might be good-willed and well-intentioned but are not bounded by professional codes of conduct or legal requirements. So the receiver, which is also the referent, is at the mercy of the sender. Wikileaks knows this and that is why it “whitemails” the world, i.e., it blackmails it by threatening to disclose even more damaging information through its “insurance file”, should anything happens to Wikileaks or its spokesman Julian Assange.

Wikileaks itself shows that, without confidential communication, there would often be no communication at all. Thus, any argument in favour of Wikileaks to the effect that most of the information was already public or suspected anyway misses the point, which is that Wikileaks may undermine the possibility of future frank communication. Imagine an Academic Wikileaks that regularly publishes confidential information about the assessment of grants, the evaluation of book proposals, the reviewing of journal submissions, letters of reference for candidates and so forth. After the initial embarrassment, the whole system would come to a standstill.

Finally, “information liberation” arguments are not universalisable. The new Wikileaks’ About file (retrieved 12.12.10, http://www.wikileaks.ch/about.html) holds that “publishing improves transparency, and this transparency creates a better society for all people”. Yet this is naïve at best. First, because the value of information is not absolute, but relative to its use. Judas’ kiss tells the truth about the identity of the kissed, but it hardly creates a better society. And second, because the value of the use of information is not absolute either, but relative to the goals that one is seeking to achieve, and the sort of possible world that one is trying to bring about. This is why personal details about religious and sexual orientations must be protected. Information “macht frei”, but also doubles as a necessary condition for discrimination.

The lesson is simple: facilitating whistleblowing is morally good not absolutely, but only if the whistleblowing itself is morally good; and the latter is morally good not absolutely, but only if the specific cause it fosters is morally good. So the two conditionals call for an explicit, ethical commitment. And Wikileaks old About file (archived 10.03.08, http://web.archive.org/web/20080314204422/www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Wikileaks:About) acknowledged this much: “Our primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations. We aim for maximum political impact.” Unfortunately, this strong and explicit ethical statement has disappeared (Wikileaks is not a Wiki, so old versions are no longer available from its website). Luckily, so far Wikileaks has picked up causes judged by most morally good. Support for Wikileaks would quickly vanish if the leaks undermined a cause such as the democratic movement in China. Yet the real ethical debate must concern the moral value of the causes supported by Wikileaks. And the concern remains: those who defend accountability should themselves be accountable. Who will blow the whistle on the whistleblowers, if their behaviour will become unethical?

CFP IEEE Technology and Society, special section on "green computing"

2010-08-18T09:13:00.000Z

SPECIAL SECTION ON GREEN COMPUTING: Call for Papers

IEEE Technology and Society (T&S) is planning a special section on the topic of “green computing”.

The magazine has a long history with the theme of “green technology,” going back to at least 1995, when it published the article “Going Green Makes Business Sense” by Jim Lippke (T&S, Vol. 14, No. 3, 24-25). It recently published “Greening IEEE” by Patrick Meyer (T&S, Vol. 28, No. 3, 64-72).

The focus of this special section will be on environmentally sustainable computing and IT.

Dr. Luciano Floridi (University of Hertfordshire and University of Oxford, UNESCO Chair in Information and Computer Ethics) will coordinate the special section.

Submissions should be emailed to T&S’s editor-in-chief, Keith Miller (miller.keith@uis.edu), and should conform to the usual suggestions for authors (please see http://www.ieeessit.org/technology_and_society/authors.asp).

Please indicate in your email that the submission is to be considered for the special section.

Papers received by December 15, 2011 will receive first consideration for the special section.

Universities giving more in bursaries to poor students

2010-08-05T07:36:00.001Z

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/education-10872740

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Problemata

2010-08-04T22:18:00.000Z

Questions and answers about the philosophy of information.

The construction of personal identities online

2010-08-03T18:34:00.000Z

I recently met a very bright and lively graduate, who registered with Facebook during the academic year 2003-04, when she was a student at Harvard. Her ID number is 246. Impressive. A bit like being the 246th person to land on a new continent.

In the past six years, that continent has become rather crowded, as she has been joined by 500 million active users worldwide. The round number has been reached last July. It is a good reminder of how more and more people spend an increasing amount of time “onlife”, interacting with and within an infosphere that is neither entirely virtual nor only physical. It is also a good reminder of how influential Information and Communication Technologies are becoming in shaping our personal identities.

In the philosophy of mind, there is a well-honed distinction between personal identity and self-conception, or more simply between who we are (call it our ontological self), and who we think we are (call it our epistemological self). Like many other handy distinctions, this too seems to work at its best once you drop it. Like a Wittgensteinian ladder, it helps you to reach a better perspective, as long as you don’t get stuck on it.

Of course, there is a difference between being and believing to be. But it is equally obvious that, in healthy individuals, the ontological and the epistemological selves flourish only if they support each other in a symbiotic relationship. Not only our self-conceptions should be close to who we really are. Our ontological selves are also sufficiently malleable to be significantly influenced by who we think we are, or would like to be. And such epistemological selves in turn are sufficiently ductile to be shaped by who we are told to be. Enter the social self: “[…] even in the most insignificant details of our daily life, none of us can be said to constitute a material whole, which is identical for everyone, and need only be turned up like a page in an account-book or the record of a will; our social personality is created by the thoughts of other people. […]” (Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past – Swann’s Way).

The social self is the channel through which interactive media, such as Facebook, have their deepest impact on our identities. Change the social conditions in which you live, modify the network of relations and the flows of information you enjoy, reshape the nature and scope of the constraints and affordances that regulate your presentation of yourself to the world, and your social self will be radically updated, backfeeding into your self-conception, which ends up shaping your personal identity.

To someone used to ruminate about personal identity puzzles in terms of continuity through time or possible worlds, the whole phenomenon of the construction of personal identities online (Facebook, Second Life, My Space, Webpages, Blogs, YouTube and Flickr accounts, Twitters and so forth), might seem something frivolous and distracting, unworthy of serious reflection. Yet, to many people who have never heard of Theseus’ ship, but have lived all their adult life with “online awareness”, it seems most natural to treat their personal identities as a very serious work-in-progress, and toil daily to shape and update them online. It is the hyperconscious generation, which facebooks and twitters its views and tastes, its experiences and its personal details. Nothing is too small to be left unsaid, anything can contribute to the construction of one’s own personal identity, and everything may leave a trace somewhere, including your silly pictures posted by a schoolmate years ago.

Some Jeremiahs lament that the hyperconscious, Facebook generation has lost touch with reality, that it lives in a virtual bubble, that it cannot engage with the genuine and the authentic, that it is mesmerised by the artificial and the synthetic.

I am not convinced. Partly because the genuine and the authentic tend to be highly manufactured cultural artefacts. Partly because social media like Facebook represent an unprecedented opportunity to be in charge of our social selves, to choose who the other people are whose thoughts create our social personality, to paraphrase Proust, and hence, indirectly, to determine our personal identities. Recall how the construction of the social self feedbacks into the development of the epistemological self, which then feedbacks into the moulding of the ontological self. More freedom on the social side means more freedom to shape oneself.

This is no longer the freedom of anonymity advertised by Peter Steiner’s famous cartoon (“On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog”). Those were the nineties (the carton was published in The New Yorker, July 5, 1993). Today, if you are or behave like a dog, Facebook probably knows it. Rather, it is the freedom associated with self-determination and autonomy. You can no longer lie so easily about who you are, when 500m people are watching. But you can certainly try your best to show them who you might reasonably be, or wish to become, and that will tell a different story about yourself that, in the long run, will affect who you are. Facebook is a bit like Proust’s account-book, but with you as the writer.

Snapshot of global internet speeds revealed

2010-07-29T14:15:00.001Z

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/technology-10786874

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VC Award 2010

2010-07-11T10:30:00.000Z

Received the Vice Chancellor Award 2010
"Highly commended for research supporting engagement with business, the profession and partner organisations".

Chinese translation of The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Computing and Information

2010-07-11T10:02:00.000Z

The Chinese translation (2010) in two volumes of The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Computing and Information (Oxford - New York: Blackwell, 2004) has been published.

BBC News - Over 5 billion mobile phone connections worldwide

2010-07-11T08:14:00.001Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/mobile/technology/10569081.stm

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Ministers turn to Facebook users for cuts suggestions

2010-07-09T07:16:00.000Z

Unions: if you consult the population about the cuts you must be wrong, if you don't, you cannot be right.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/mobile/politics/10563598.stm

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Three quarters of employers 'require 2:1 degree'

2010-07-06T07:16:00.001Z

They are happy with philosophy and do not care much about the university.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/mobile/education/10506798.stm

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iPhone 4 signal fault leaves Apple 'stunned'

2010-07-03T08:26:00.001Z

Faulty logic for a faulty phone: if you hold it differently the strength of the signal changes, THIS is the problem, and below is not a solution.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/mobile/technology/10490572.stm

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BBC News - Finland makes broadband a 'legal right'

2010-07-01T07:17:00.001Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/mobile/technology/10461048.stm

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Apple issues advice to avoid iPhone flaw

2010-06-26T08:19:00.001Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/mobile/technology/8761240.stm

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50 philosophical ideas for the future

2010-06-18T11:37:00.000Z

From the editorial:

The 50th issue of The Philosophers’ Magazine is now on its way to readers and bookshops around the world. Regular readers will notice that, in many ways, the special issue is very different from the 49 that preceded it. Celebration and celebrant are somewhat out of sync. What we’ve done is invited 50 philosophers to each outline one of the most important ideas in philosophy of the 21st century so far.

NYT: I.B.M.'s Supercomputer to Challenge 'Jeopardy!' Champions

2010-06-18T08:16:00.001Z

A long but absolutely MUST read:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/magazine/20Computer-t.xml

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Forth Valley Royal Hospital to use robot 'workers'

2010-06-18T07:23:00.001Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/mobile/scotland/tayside_and_central/10344849.stm

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Avatar, Personal Identity, and The 4th Revolution

2010-06-12T10:07:00.000Z

Avatar, Personal Identity, and The 4th Revolution

http://critiquemythinking.com/2010/02/03/avatar-personal-identity-and-the-4th-revolution/

US debates its broadband future

2010-06-12T08:52:00.001Z

Is net neutrality becoming a dogma?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/mobile/technology/8734347.stm

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Bill Gates offers $10m fund for mobile banking in Haiti

2010-06-11T07:33:00.001Z

An African lesson duly learnt (but not in Europe, where legislation currently makes mobile banking impossible).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/mobile/technology/10273158.stm

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Clones of bomb-sniffing dog delivered to Jeju police

2010-06-10T08:10:00.000Z

"Researchers led by cloning expert Hwang Woo-suk have delivered five clones of an active police search dog to the Jeju Provincial Police agency, which plans to use the animals for bomb detection and other missions."
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2010/05/133_66504.html

Wikileaks site unfazed by arrest of US army 'source'

2010-06-09T07:17:00.001Z

Information transparency is not always welcome.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/mobile/technology/10265430.stm

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University guide 2011: Philosophy

2010-06-08T23:18:00.001Z

University guide 2011: Philosophy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/table/2010/jun/04/university-guide-philosophy"The study of how to think about ideas and ask questions about truth, right and wrong - includes ethics, history of philosophy, logic."

Cloud Matters: Ethics and Policy in the Digital Age

2010-06-06T13:09:00.000Z

Cloud Matters: Ethics and Policy in the Digital Age

6th July 2010, 10.00 – 17.00, The Royal Society, London

Jointly hosted by the RCUK Digital Economy Programme and the Royal Society

The emergence of cloud computing and the establishment of commercially viable cloud based services offers tremendous potential for a future digital economy. Many companies are already providing utility computing services with on-demand access to storage and computation facilities. The advocates of cloud computing suggest that the move to utility computing represents a paradigm shift in how we might exploit computer systems and the Internet and that it will promote creativity and the new forms of entrepreneurship needed to fuel the growth of a digital economy. They also suggest that this will have a profound impact on us all and will shape an increasingly digital society.

Cloud computing requires us to embrace a globally connected infrastructure with data and computation moving away from our personal control to reside within a complex global infrastructure that crosses international boundaries and is accessible by billions of potential users. This shift raises significant ethical and policy challenges that will need to be addressed if we are to reap the benefits of cloud computing. How might an individual control access to their personal data if they are unsure of where it is stored? What are the legislative implications of an infrastructure where storage and computation span the globe? How might we govern Cloud computing to ensure that we accrue benefit from its potential while avoiding the pitfalls that may arise from the inappropriate use of this emerging technology? What are the issues around inclusion and availability if citizens increasingly require access to a global computational infrastructure?

Cloud computing requires increased cooperation between those involved in realizing the underpinning technologies, those exploiting these emerging facilities and those involved in its governance and legislation. In this event we wish to stimulate the debate needed between these often disparate groupings to consider the implications of cloud computing for us all.

Keynote speaker: Charles Leadbeater, author of We Think: The Power of Mass Creativity and leading authority on creativity and innovation

Panel Debate Chair: Aleks Krotoski, internet ethics researcher and journalist

RSVP to digitaleconomy@epsrc.ac.uk by 16th June to secure your place. Attendance is by invitation only and places will be allocated on receipt of confirmation as numbers are strictly limited.

Interfacing with our machines

2010-06-06T13:02:00.000Z

Blogging a blogger who liked the World Science Festival panel on minds and machines.

http://blogs.nature.com/news/blog/2010/06/interfacing_with_our_machines.html

Smart clothes offer emotional aid

2010-06-06T06:52:00.001Z

Smart as in smart weapon, not as in elegant Armani.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/mobile/technology/10236143.stm

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Bletchley Park WWII archive to go online

2010-06-06T06:50:00.001Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/mobile/uk/10239623.stm

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PhD Grant. Models and simulations in engineering

2010-06-04T08:10:00.001Z

PhD Grant. Models and simulations in engineering

The PhD Grant is part of the project PROCEED: A Program of Research on Opportunities and Challenges in Engineering Education in Denmark. The overall objective of PROCEED is to investigate how engineers and engineering educators are responding to the environmental, socio-economic and scientific-technological challenges facing their profession. It is organized as a strategic alliance among four universities in Denmark (Aalborg, Århus, Roskilde, and the Danish Technical University) with international collaborators in the United States, the Netherlands, Australia and Vietnam.

This special PhD project is related to a thematic project which studies the role of models and simulations in engineering. It is well known that today computer simulations and mathematical modeling are an essential part of engineering work. They are important both as tools in engineering research and as tools for solving concrete practical problems in industry and other areas of application in the society and economy. This project will investigate the development of complex models and how they are used in engineering research as well as in selected application areas. The project should lead to a systematic classification of types of models used in engineering research. In cooperation with other thematic projects within PROCEED some characteristic engineering work domains and research areas will be selected for detailed study. It is expected that applicants have some acquaintance both with mathematical model building in engineering and methods of science and technology studies.

The Project will be based at Roskilde University within the doctoral school of philosophy and science studies: http://www.ruc.dk/cuid/uddannelser/ss_selt/. The university is located outside of Copenhagen. The Grant amounts to an annual salary of about 280.000 Danish Kroner per year before tax.

Applicants must satisfy the Danish requirements for PhD education, namely a completed master’s degree and a formally certified diploma and educational record. Applications must include curriculum vitae, examination certificate, references and a cover letter outlining the motivation for the PhD study that indicate the competence of the applicant and sketches a preliminary work plan.

Both Danish and foreign applicants are welcomed, since the working language within the program is English. All interested candidates irrespective of age, gender, race, religion or ethnic background are encouraged to apply.

The deadline for applications is June 12. Applications should be sent online to Professor Andrew Jamison, Aalborg University, the program coordinator, in accordance with the application requirements for the PhD program to which the applicant’s project is to be based: andy@plan.aau.dk. The assessment of applicants will be carried out by the program coordinator and the PROCEED management board. Please contact Professor Jamison for further information.

Mind And Machine: The Future of Thinking

2010-06-03T22:06:00.000Z

http://www.worldsciencefestival.com/mind-and-machine

Friday, June 4, 2010, 8:00 PM - 9:30 PM

NYU Skirball Center

"Creative thought is surely among our most precious and mysterious capabilities. But can powerful computers rival the human brain? As thinking, remembering and innovating become increasingly interwoven with technological advances, what are we capable of? What do we lose? Join Luciano Floridi, John Donoghue, Gary Small and Rosalind Picard for a thought-provoking program about thinking."

PHEADE 2010 - The Engineered Singularity

2010-06-03T08:45:00.000Z

The 2nd PHEADE International Conference under the theme: THE ENGINEERED SINGULARITY

October 26-28 (30) 2010, Suceava & Cernovtsy (Romania & Ukraine)

Keynote speakers: Marcelo Dascal (Tel Aviv ) Luciano FLORIDI (Hertfordshire and Oxford) Lorenzo MAGNANI (Pavia)

From the website:

“The Singularity is the technological creation of smarter-than-human intelligence” (SIAI = the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence).
The Engineered Singularity is subject for: metaphysics, philosophy of engineering, philosophy of technology, philosophy of the artificial intelligence,
philosophy of computing, philosophy of mind, theology, technoetics, neurobiology (of wisdom), psychology of the artificial intelligence, a.o.
They will all claim the right to debate around the near arrival of the Singularity.
Some of the most renowned international researchers of these fields will share and debate their ideas on the Engineering of the Singularity during PHEADE’10.

Police investigate Habbo Hotel virtual furniture theft

2010-06-02T08:35:00.001Z

It would be nice to have a better ontology of the virtual.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/mobile/technology/10207486.stm

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2010-06-01T12:01:00.000Z

Philosophy & Technology
ISSN: 2210-5433
website: http://www.springer.com/13347
submission: http://www.editorialmanager.com/phte/

Philosophy & Technology Best Paper Prizes

Every year, Philosophy & Technology offers up to two prizes, worth € 500 each (€ 250 in cash and € 250 in books published by Springer), awarded to the authors of unpublished research papers that make an outstanding contribution to the field of philosophy and technology broadly conceived. The winning papers are published in Philosophy & Technology. All shortlisted authors are invited to submit their papers for publication in the journal.

The papers are judged in November each year, using the criteria of clarity of presentation, novelty of contents, and potential impact.

All nominations received are assessed by the Editorial Board.

Nominations must be submitted by email to the editorial assistant, Mrs Penny Driscoll (p.j.driscoll2@herts.ac.uk). Each nomination must include the paper (formatted according to the standards of the journal), one letter of support explaining (in no more than 1000 words) how it meets the criteria listed above, and a brief cv of the author(s). Please indicate in the subject of the email: “Submission for Philosophy & Technology Best Paper Prize”.

Authors are welcome to nominate their own papers.

Submissions for Best Paper Prizes are always welcome. The 1st of November is the closing date for each year competition.

For further information, please contact the editorial assistant, Penny Driscoll (p.j.driscoll2@herts.ac.uk).

Floridi's Open Problems in Philosophy of Information, Ten Years After

2010-05-31T08:43:00.000Z

Special Issue "What Is Information?"
A special issue of Information (ISSN 2078-2489).

Type of Paper: Article
Title: Floridi's Open Problems in Philosophy of Information, Ten Years After
Authors: Gordana Dodig Crnkovic and Wolfgang Hofkirchner; E-Mails: gordana.dodig-crnkovic@mdh.se; wolfgang.hofkirchner@sbg.ac.at
Abstract: In his article Open Problems in the Philosophy of Information (Metaphilosophy 2004, 35:Issue 4), based on the Herbert A. Simon Lecture in Computing and Philosophy given at Carnegie Mellon University in 2001, Luciano Floridi presented a research programme for the Philosophy of Information in form of the following eighteen open problems: P.1: What is information?; P.2: What are the dynamics of information?; P.3: Is a grand unified theory of information possible?; P.4: How can data acquire their meaning?; P.5: How can meaningful data acquire their truth values?; P.6: Can information explain truth?; P.7: Can information explain meaning?; P.8: Can (forms of) cognition C be fully and satisfactorily analyzed in terms of (forms of) information processing IP at some level of abstraction LoA?; P.9: Can (forms of) natural intelligence NI be fully and satisfactorily analyzed in terms of (forms of) information processing IP at some level of abstraction LoA (Dennett, 1994)?; P.10: Can (forms of) natural intelligence be fully and satisfactorily implemented non-biologically (Turing’s problem)?; P.11: Can an informational approach solve the mind-body problem?; P.12: If information cannot be transcended but can only be checked against further information; if it is information all the way up and all the way down; what does this tell us about our knowledge of the world?; P.13: Should epistemology be based on a theory of information?; P.14: Is science reducible to information modeling?; P.15: What is the ontological status of information?; P.16: Can information be naturalized?; P.17: Can nature be informationalized (Wheeler, 1990)?; P.18: Does computer ethics have a philosophical foundation?; We revisit Floridi’s programme in order to see what happened since then, highlighting some of the major advances, commenting on unsolved problems and rendering the new landscape of the Philosophy of Information emerging at present.

Philosophy & Technology

2010-05-30T14:39:00.003Z

Philosophy & Technology

ISSN: 2210-5433

website: http://www.springer.com/13347

submission: http://www.editorialmanager.com/phte/

Description

Technologies have been changing the world for a long time, at an increasing pace, with ever expanding scope and unprecedented impact. They profoundly affect human life and are radically modifying not only how we interact with, shape, and make sense of our world, but also how we look at ourselves and understand our position and responsibilities in the universe. Technologies have brought enormous benefits and opportunities, but they have also raised new and pressing challenges, whose complexity and global dimensions are rapidly expanding and evolving.

Philosophy & Technology addresses such challenges, in order to improve our critical understanding of the conceptual nature and practical consequences of technologies, and hence provide the conceptual foundations for their fruitful and sustainable developments. The journal aims to publish the best research produced in all areas where philosophy and technology meet. It welcomes high-quality submissions, regardless of the tradition, school of thought or disciplinary background from which they derive. The editorial board reflects this approach in its composition and its world-wide membership.

The range of coverage is very broad and interdisciplinary. It includes classic problems in philosophy of technology and original approaches to them, theories of technology, methods and concepts in technology, as well as theoretical topics and topics dealing with practical problems concerning the nature, the development and the implications of technologies. Particular attention is paid to new areas of philosophical interest – such as nanotechnologies, medical, genetic and biotechnologies, neurotechnologies, information and communication technologies, AI and robotics, or the philosophy of engineering – and the philosophical discussion of issues such as environmental risks, globalization, security, or biological enhancements. The journal encourages submissions on the applications of philosophy of technology to other disciplines, such as computer science, cognitive science, jurisprudence, social studies of science, and the social sciences.

The journal presents philosophical research in a way that is free from unnecessary technicalities, yet faithful to its technological contents. Its aim is not only to identify, explain and discuss problems, but also to suggest interpretations and constructive solutions. It considers the historical and social dimensions of technologies as a valuable context for understanding current philosophical issues arising from them.

The journal is aimed at a broad readership, drawn not only from philosophy but also from the theoretical and the applied sciences, the humanities, professional organisations, R&D institutions, and policy-making sectors in political institutions and in business and industry.

Editorial Board
Editor-in-Chief
Luciano Floridi, University of Hertfordshire, UK and University of Oxford, UK

Editorial Assistant
Penny Driscoll, University of Hertfordshire, UK

Executive Editorial Board
Adam Briggle, University of North Texas, USA
Steve Clarke, University of Oxford, UK
Inmaculada de Melo-Martin, Weil Cornell Medical College, USA
Søren Riis, Roskilde University, Denmark
Federica Russo, University of Kent, UK
Evan Selinger, Rochester Institute of Technology, USA
Pieter E. Vermaas, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

Scientific Editorial Board
Albert Borgmann, University of Montana, USA
Philip Brey, University of Twente, The Netherlands
Ruth Chadwick, Cardiff University, Wales, UK
Hasok Chang, University College London, UK
Andy Clark, University of Edinburgh, UK
William H. Dutton, University of Oxford, UK
Charles Ess, Aarhus University, Denmark
Andrew Feenberg, Simon Fraser University, Canada
David E. Goldberg, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
Sven Ove Hansson, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
Eric Higgs, University of Victoria, Canada
Jeroen van den Hoven, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Don Ihde, Stoney Brook University, NY, USA
Peter Kroes, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Gang Liu, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China
Donald A MacKenzie, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Diane Michelfelder, Macalester College, USA
Carl Mitcham, Colorado School of Mines, USA
Junichi Murata, University of Tokyo, Japan
Joseph C. Pitt, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, USA
Julian Savulescu , University of Oxford, UK
P.K. Shetty, National Institute of Advanced Studies, India
Mary Tiles, University of Hawaii, USA
Sherry Turkle, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Peter-Paul Verbeek, University of Twente and Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Langdon Winner, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA
Stephen Woolgar, University of Oxford, UK
Guosheng Wu, Peking University, China

Scope and types of publications
Philosophy & Technology publishes:

research articles, presenting original results (usually no longer than 10,000 words);
target articles with invited, short commentaries, directing attention to interesting, new theoretical ideas. Target articles are selected by the editorial board among the research articles accepted for publication. Commentaries may include revised reviews of the original submission;
review articles (usually no longer than 10,000 words), which comprehensively synthesise and critically assess recent, original works or a selected collection of thematically related books, in important areas of research in philosophy of technology;
commentaries, brief (maximum 2,000 words) articles that comment on articles published previously; book symposia, in which up to four commentators are invited to debate an influential book with the author, who answers with a concluding reply (total length usually no longer than 10,000 words). A symposium might revisit a book and its impact a decade or more after its appearance;
special issues, in which an expert collaborates with the journal as a guest editor, in order to identify an interesting topic in philosophy of technology, and interacts with the selected contributors, being in charge of a whole issue of the journal. The journal strongly encourages submissions of collections of high-quality papers on well-defined topics presented at academic meetings (e.g. a workshop, a conference, or a symposium). It invites potential guest-editors, who might be interested in collecting and editing such special issue, to contact the Assistant Editor as early as possible in order to discuss the feasibility of the project;
focused debates, collecting submissions and invited articles around a particular theme, as part of a normal issue of the journal.

Authors wishing to submit a reply article, or a proposal for a review article, a book symposium, a special issue or a focused debate, are invited to contact the Assistant Editor for further information, Mrs Penny Driscoll, p.j.driscoll2@herts.ac.uk

Review of Information - A Very Short Introduction

2010-05-29T13:22:00.000Z

Groundbreaking and visionary, but very short indeed, May 28, 2010

By Irfan A. Alvi

This review is from: Information: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (Paperback) Leaving aside the possibility of minds, souls, and the like, people used to think that the ultimate "stuff" of the universe is matter. Then thermodynamics matured during the 19th century, culminating with Einstein's theoretical demonstration that matter can be converted to energy, thus rendering energy apparently even more fundamental than matter. Now, as a result of multiple streams of developments during the 20th century, we live in an age when information is increasingly being viewed as the true ultimate stuff. This is at once both immensely stimulating and perplexing: stimulating because the concept of information has far greater interdisciplinary unifying power than any concept which came before, but perplexing because the concept of information is very abstract and thus elusively slippery.

In this book, Luciano Floridi clearly makes an earnest effort to navigate the difficult terrain presented by the manifold concept of information, and I think he does commendably well. The flow of the book makes sense. He sets the stage by describing how information-saturated our lives have become, to the point where we can be described as "inforgs" living in an "infosphere." He then looks at the concept of information by progressing through increasingly wider contexts: information as data, the mathematical theory of communication of data, semantic aspects of information, physical information (laws of thermodynamics, Maxwell's demon, etc.), biological information (a nicely nuanced discussion), economic information (emphasizing game theory and also touching on Bayes' theorem), a rather creative effort (even if not quite convincing) to reformulate ethical theory from an informational perspective, and finally an epilogue arguing for both the necessity and possibility of merging the natural and manmade worlds.

This broad scope properly reflects most of the key contempary perspectives on information. The follow-up question is whether this breadth comes at the expense of depth, and I think the answer is both yes and no. On one hand, Floridi writes at a fairly high level and thus manages to pack in a good bit of detail; this demands significant concentration by the reader and will make the book hard to follow for readers without at least a little background in the topics discussed. But on the other hand, I did find that the majority of the topics cried out for a much deeper treatment, to the extent that it was sometimes difficult to clearly grasp Floridi's key points because his discussion was simply too brief. In that sense, the book whets the appetite rather than serving up a full meal, so I'm tempted to deduct a star. But it can be argued that the book has fulfilled its mandate of providing a "very short introduction," so let's be generous and stick with 5 stars.

Since this book does a good job of introducing a fundamentally important topic in a groundbreaking and visionary way, and since I don't know of any better book for that purpose, I highly recommend it.

First human 'infected with computer virus'

2010-05-26T19:50:00.002Z

Some hype, but still interesting.

Web science institute funding halted by new government

2010-05-25T12:59:00.001Z

Probably a wise decision.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/mobile/technology/10152929.stm

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Mistakes in silicon chips to help boost computer power

2010-05-25T11:32:00.001Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/mobile/technology/10134655.stm

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Web 2.0 contre Web sémantique : un point de vue philosophique

2010-05-24T14:38:00.002Z

Web 2.0 contre Web sémantique : un point de vue philosophique

Patrick Pecatte a traduit l'étonnant article du philosophe de l'information italien Luciano Floridi qui explique pourquoi le web sémantique risque d'être un échec alors que le web 2.0 risque de continuer à être un succès car il s'appui sur les seuls moteurs sémantiques disponibles à ce jour : les hommes !

Kindling for the bonfire of book ownership

2010-05-23T15:21:00.002Z

Word of Mouse
Posted By TPM On May 21, 2010 (7:25 am) In Columns, Podcasts

Luciano Floridi gathers kindling for the bonfire of book ownership

Luciano Floridi

On December 26, Amazon released the following statement: “On Christmas Day, for the first time ever, customers purchased more Kindle books than physical books”. As sceptics have noticed, Christmas is hardly the time when you buy a bestseller online, whereas last December 25 was the D-day when armies of Kindles, which had lain camouflaged under the trees for a while, snapped into action and led their happy owners to purchase some of the 390,000 electronic titles available from Amazon. Further doubts on the actual success of the Kindle are raised by Amazon’s secrecy about how many it has actually sold (1.5 million is a recent estimate).

And yet, that press release leaves one wondering whether some symbolic threshold between the analogue and the digital might have been overstepped. Recall that the Kindle is not alone: there are many other dedicated e-book devices – including Barnes & Noble nook (with a catalogue of 1m books) and Sony’s reader – which are serious competitors but also allies in the mutual guerrilla campaign against traditional books. The usual rumours about the possibly moribund state of the old printing medium have started spreading again. Apple, it is argued, will hit the final blow with its tablet, the iPad. The lesson of disposable and electric shaving razors comfortably sharing the skin of millions of people seems to have gone astray.

On January 1, Microsoft’s Windows Azure went into production. Azure is Microsoft’s platform for cloud computing. In cloud computing, applications do not run locally and data are not stored in your computer, but everything happens online, through remote data centres. As any user of Google docs has experienced, when you use cloud applications you log in, customize them, and start using them, saving their outputs in the online space, which is then accessible elsewhere.

Cloud computing represents the coming of age of the Turing machines we invented more than half a century ago. Today, we are gradually accepting the fact that computers are their best friends. They do not need us, we should not be in the loop, and cloud computing is the first, graceful step out of it. This sort of unmanned computing enables digital resources to be monitored and managed more efficiently and cost-effectively because independently of their users and consumers, who have better things to worry about. Conceptually, this means decoupling the intelligent manipulation of data and information from the algorithmic and physical substratum that make it possible.

The Kindle and Azure have much in common. The more we live and interact in the infosphere the less necessary and reasonable it becomes to own and directly administer physical chunks of it, being these shelves of printed paper, CDs, DVDs or jukeboxes of hard disks. Amazon, unsurprisingly, is one of the biggest players in cloud computing. In 2005, it realised that its data centres were largely underused in off-peak-times and so it started to sell its computing services on the basis of a utility business model.

The Kindle and Azure also share a problem. We might call it digital enclosure. In British history, enclosure refers to the seizure of common land and change to private property. The process began in the 14th century and became widespread in the 15th and 16th centuries. It represented the end of the old system of arable farming in open fields and the rise of fewer, richer landowners. The infosphere is running a comparable risk. Amazon has applied many “enclosure” strategies for the Kindle. For example, only recently an Israeli hacker claimed to have broken the copyright protection on Amazon’s Kindle software for PCs, to allow e-books to be transferred as pdf files to any other device. Likewise, one of the major problems with cloud computing is that companies will always be tempted to lock you in, so that, once your data are stored in, or your applications have been developed for, a specific cloud, it becomes very hard to move them elsewhere.

The future lies in a seamless, integrated infosphere. E-books and cloud computing are two good steps towards it. But we need to ensure that their digital enclosures are only temporary measures which, although useful to promote them, do not turn into failures and undermine their value.

Luciano Floridi holds the Research Chair in Philosophy of Information at the University of Hertfordshire and is president of the International Association for Computing and Philosophy.

Article taken from TPM: The Philosophers' Magazine - http://www.philosophypress.co.uk
URL to article: http://www.philosophypress.co.uk/?p=1259

Google launches smart TV service

2010-05-23T13:29:00.001Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/mobile/technology/10132877.stm

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Emerging Ethical Issues of Life in Virtual Worlds, edited by Charles Wankel and Shaun Malleck

2010-05-22T10:45:00.000Z

An attempt at charting some of the pressing ethical issues that affect our lives online. As the title indicates, the focus is on virtual worlds, especially Second Life and games such as World of Warcraft, not on social environments such as Facebook.

Chapter 4 contains an essay by Andrew A. Adams on virtual sex with child avatars.

The issue discussed is interesting because it provides a concrete case of what I would call "victimless victimization".

The assumption is that the children abused are entirely virtual, that is, they are digital artifacts with no relation to any real individual, not even indirect (e.g. avatars based on photographs). The assumption is reasonable. Besides, it would be pointless to argue that the immorality of the the whole experience lies in the risk that real children might be involved. If they are, as victims, perpetrators or even mere viewers, then we are dealing with a different problem.

A consequentialist approach can hardly argue for the immorality of victimless victimization. Actually, it should probably be in favour, given the pleasures enjoyed by the adults involved. There is little difference between virtual pornography and virtual killing. As Adams rightly concludes: "From a utilitarian perspective, therefore, we must currently conclude that there is no significant normative basis on which to judge the practice of sexual ageplay to be unethical".

It is unclear what a deontological approach might suggest, since no humans are being used, either as ends of means.

A virtue-ethic line of reasoning seems more promissing: such practices tend to build the wrong sort of characters and definitely not the right sort of citizen or social beings. But then, it depends on whether the adults indulging in such behaviours are actually resisting much worse temptations. If indulging in virtual pedophilia is the best one can do, that's not great, but it's much better than the alternative and it might show the exercise of some moral restrain.

Personally, I would take a more environmental approach. Insofar as virtual child pornography and virtual pedophilia in general does not affect the environment negatively, it seems morally neutral. It might be revolting to most, but that is a matter of taste.

If no real child is abused, harmed or involved in any way,
if the adults are not affected (or even affected positively, to the extent that the practice might reduce the incidents of sexual violence and abuse in real life), and
if the fabric of human relations and society is left untouched (e.g. real pedophilia and child pornography is not made more acceptable, grooming is not made easier etc.),
then virtual child pornography is no different from other harmless sex fantasies in which adults may indulge in private.

The question is not whether the whole phenomenon should be condemned and made illegal. In a free society, people should be allowed to express their harmless inclinations, no matter how disturbing to other members, and virtual worlds are a great place where to allow the expression of our less acceptable desires.

The question is whether and how far the iffs listed above are satisfied and what reassurances we might have that they are. It is tis moral risk that might be under discussion, not the practice in itself. If the iffs are satisfied, and they are in full, then, legally and morally, let people do what they wish, there seems to be nothing intrinsically wrong with virtual pornography, whether it involves under age avatars or not.

Of course, one may rightly wonder whether those adults should be doing something else instead with their time and energy. This is a moral issue, but a different one.Would it be morally better if they could do something else? Something morally good, instead of something that is, at best, morally neutral? Probably. Unfortunately, this is a comparative question that friends of Lolitas will find almost impossible to entertain.

Interview on the philosophy of information

2010-05-21T08:00:00.001Z

This is a long interview, in Italian, on the philosophy of information, for Il Sole 24 Ore.

The Constitution of Selves, by Marya Schechtman

2010-05-20T15:00:00.001Z

This is an excellent book, especially the second part, where the author concentrates on the characterization of the self. Clear, well-argued, it supports, convincingly, a narrative interpretation of the self.

An important problem that remains unsolved, and which affects all narrative approaches, is what gives to the self its unity. Stories are kept together by some plot and a narrator that unfolds it. It we are narrative work in progress, who is doing the story-telling? Not an easy problem to tackle. Kant thought that such unity had to be presupposed to make sense of the coherence of our perception of the world, but could not be subject to any further clarification.

Second International Workshop on the Philosophy of Information

2010-05-19T23:33:00.001Z

Second International Workshop on the Philosophy of Information May 20-21, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey.

The annual workshop on the philosophy of information is organized by the research group on Philosophy of Information (GPI) of the University of Hertfordshire and the Information Ethics Research Group (IEG) of the University of Oxford.

The first workshop was held in November 2007 at the University of Oxford. The second one will take place May 20-21 in Ankara, Turkey, hosted by the Philosophy Department of Bilkent University. The third will be held in November 2010 at the Center for Logic and Philosophy Science of Brussels Free University.

The annual workshop series aims to provide an informal environment in which scholars working on the Philosophy of Information can share their works in progress without any time constraint. The main topic of the second workshop is the formal and ethical aspects of the philosophy of information.

The program is here.

Process Theories: Crossdisciplinary Studies in Dynamic Categories

2010-05-19T15:56:00.041Z

Much, if not most, ontology is based on objects, entities, things, that is, static structures as primitives. It seems strange, once you realise the crucial importance of processes and events, that is, dynamic structures. Yet dynamic- or process-friendly philosophy has hardly ever been mainstream. If you are looking for an interesting alternative, you might be interested in reading Process Theories.

The book, edited by Johanna Seibt, collects papers from the meeting "Processes: Analysis and Applications of Dynamic Categories, 2002). It contains many intersting essays. I would recommend in particular:

The introduction
J. Seibt, Free Process Theory: Towards a Typology of Occurrings
M. H. Bickhard, Process and Emergence: Normative Function and Representation
W. Christensen, Self-directedness: a process Approach to Cognition

NYT: The Future of E-Reading With t

2010-05-19T12:11:00.001Z

http://mobile.nytimes.com/article;jsessionid=940F707A6DEB88B237CF11692C491CF6.w6?a=594467&f=104

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Intropy

2010-05-18T14:55:00.000Z

Intropy
http://www.intropy.co.uk/
A blog dedicated to the belief that a better understanding of information is needed to understand anything and everything.

BBC News - LHC particle search 'nearing', says physicist

2010-05-18T09:40:00.001Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/mobile/sci/tech/8685541.stm

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Review of Information A Very Short Introduction

2010-05-18T08:58:00.001Z

Information: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (Paperback)
Review, by Lee J. Whittington

Sat in a small office for a seminar on modal logic, my then logic tutor told me that "if you read something once and do not understand, it is your fault. If you read something twice and do not understand, it is the authors fault". This is something to be kept in mind when reading this book.

The title should not fool the reader. This is not "Information for Dummies". The book can be technical and difficult requiring occasional reflective breaks. Unlike some of the other VSI series, to understand the book properly will take more than three or four hours.

However, this is where Prof. Floridi comes into his own. Using many elegant metaphors, analogies and examples, Floridi provides some of the intuitive first steps required to understand what would be baffling concepts. My favourite metaphor is that used for understanding quantum superposition, whereby we are asked to think of a Escher painting. The use of a simple example (John and his blinking car battery light) pervades the book which helps the reader grasp the interconnectedness of the various uses of information, which may otherwise simply look like equivocations.

The philosophy in the book is distributed throughout, but culminates in the final two chapters. It is somewhat a shame that more of the philosophy of information and information could not be covered, but then 1. The book would not be a short introduction and 2. The book would not be a way into the subject but on the subject. I find some of Floridi's ethical moves profound and others a little harder to swallow, not because they are implausible, but because they are novel enough to invoke at least some scepticism.

Information: A Very Short Introduction is not an easy book, but an extremely rewarding one if you are at least willing to blame yourself for not understanding everything the first time your eyes glean the text.

The Paradox of Inference and the Non-Triviality of Analytic Information

2010-05-18T08:32:00.001Z

Marie Duží
Department of Computer Science FEI, VSB-Technical University Ostrava, Czech Republic

Abstract
The classical theory of semantic information (ESI), as formulated by Bar-Hillel and Carnap in 1952, does not give a satisfactory account of the problem of what information, if any, analytically and/or logically true sentences have to offer. According to ESI, analytically true sentences lack informational content, and any two analytically equivalent sentences convey the same piece of information. This problem is connected with Cohen and Nagel’s paradox of inference: Since the conclusion of a valid argument is contained in the premises, it fails to provide any novel information. Again, ESI does not give a satisfactory account of the paradox. In this paper I propose a solution based on the distinction between empirical information and analytic information. Declarative sentences are informative due to their meanings. I construe meanings as structured hyperintensions, modelled in Transparent Intensional Logic as so-called constructions. These are abstract, algorithmically structured procedures whose constituents are sub-procedures. My main thesis is that constructions are the vehicles of information. Hence, although analytically true sentences provide no empirical information about the state of the world, they convey analytic information, in the shape of constructions prescribing how to arrive at the truths in question. Moreover, even though analytically equivalent sentences have equal empirical content, their analytic content may be different. Finally, though the empirical content of the conclusion of a valid argument is contained in the premises, its analytic content may be different from the analytic content of the premises and thus convey a new piece of information.

Review of "information - A Very Short Introduction"

2010-05-16T08:58:00.000Z

Et cetera: Steven Poole's non-fiction choice

On information, trade and brands

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Steven Poole
The Guardian, Saturday 15 May 2010
Article history

Information: A Very Short Introduction, by Luciano Floridi (Oxford, £7.99)

We live, or so we are told, in an "information economy", so we had better be sure what we mean when we say "information". Floridi's splendidly pellucid text lays out the meanings of information in the mathematical theory of communication, computing, thermodynamics, biology, and economics, offering thoughtful examples and helpful warnings against loose talk – as when he enumerates a list of commonly used verbs that do not describe what genes do with information (they don't "send", "contain", "describe", "carry", or "encode" it).

Having completed his task of scrupulous exegesis, Floridi argues in favour of a global "information ethics", under which "informational systems" in general are the fundamental units of moral agency rather than (just) living beings, and "evil" appears to be defined as increasing the entropy of the "infosphere". This approach promises at least some piquant redescriptions of problems and a new angle on planetary ecology, though some details remain to be filled in. If the term didn't carry such negative connotations, I would be tempted to call Floridi's book a shining example of infotainment. But it does, so I won't.

Luciano Floridi and the philosophy of information

2010-04-20T22:22:00.000Z

Metaphilosophy, Volume 41 Issue 3 (April 2010)

Special Issue: Luciano Floridi and the philosophy of information
Guest Editor: Patrick Allo

Introduction

PUTTING INFORMATION FIRST: LUCIANO FLORIDI AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF INFORMATION (p 247-254)
PATRICK ALLO
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9973.2010.01646.x

Knowledge

THE VALUE OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE PURSUIT OF SURVIVAL (p 255-278)
SHERRILYN ROUSH
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9973.2010.01635.x

KNOWLEDGE TRANSMISSIBILITY AND PLURALISTIC IGNORANCE: A FIRST STAB (p 279-291)
VINCENT F. HENDRICKS
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9973.2010.01640.x

Agency

MEETING FLORIDI'S CHALLENGE TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FROM THE KNOWLEDGE-GAME TEST FOR SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS (p 292-312)
SELMER BRINGSJORD
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9973.2010.01639.x

Semantic Information
INFORMATION WITHOUT TRUTH (p 313-330)
ANDREA SCARANTINO, GUALTIERO PICCININI
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9973.2010.01632.x

INFORMATION AND KNOWLEDGE À LA FLORIDI (p 331-344)
FRED ADAMS
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9973.2010.01630.x

Methodology

ABSTRACTION, LAW, AND FREEDOM IN COMPUTER SCIENCE (p 345-364)
TIMOTHY COLBURN, GARY SHUTE
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9973.2010.01631.x

Metaphysics

STRUCTURALISM AND INFORMATION (p 365-379)
OTÁVIO BUENO
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9973.2010.01641.x

Ethics

WHY INFORMATION ETHICS MUST BEGIN WITH VIRTUE ETHICS (p 380-401)
RICHARD VOLKMAN
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9973.2010.01638.x

Replies

THE PHILOSOPHY OF INFORMATION: TEN YEARS LATER (p 402-419)
LUCIANO FLORIDI
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9973.2010.01647.x

Epilogue

PHILOSOPHY IN THE INFORMATION AGE (p 420-442)
TERRELL WARD BYNUM
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9973.2010.01651.x

Postdoctoral Marie Curie Fellowship in philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire, UK

2010-03-22T10:27:00.000Z

PLEASE FORWARD TO ANY INTERESTED PARTY

Dear Colleague,

the new deadline for applications to the European postdoctoral Marie Curie Fellowships is approaching. Researchers who

have completed their PhD (but NOT in the UK)
are fluent in English
are keen on spending two years of postdoctoral studies at the University of Hertfordshire in the UK
would like to work on a project related to the philosophy, logic, epistemology, metaphysics or ethics of information, broadly conceived
would like to join the research group in the philosophy of information at the University of Hertfordshire
have not recently spent more than one year in the UK for academic reasons

are very welcome to send their CVs and an initial expression of interest (all in English) to Mrs Penny Driscoll, p.j.driscoll2@herts.ac.uk

All my best regards,

Luciano Floridi

2010-03-22T10:24:00.000Z

After many years of good service, things have become more cumbersome at Blogger.
FTP publishing will no longer be available after 01 May 2010. I need to decide whether to migrate to a better service. Watch this space.
cheers
Luciano

This blog has moved

2010-03-22T10:18:00.001Z

This blog is now located at http://thephilosophyofinformation.blogspot.com/.
You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here.

For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to
http://thephilosophyofinformation.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default.

Call for Chapter Abstracts for the Book Luciano Floridi`s Philosophy of Technology: Critical Reflections

2010-02-11T09:09:00.003Z

Call for Chapter Abstracts for the Book

Luciano Floridi`s Philosophy of Technology: Critical Reflections

Publisher: Springer (Philosophy of Engineering and Technology Book Series) Book Series Editor in Chief: Vermaas, P. The Volume Editor: Ibo van de Poel

Guest Editor for the volume: Hilmi Demir.

Chapter submissions until June 15, 2010 to hilmi@bilkent.edu.tr

The collected volume focuses on Luciano Floridi`s Philosophy of Technology and will explore both the philosophical and empirical aspects of his theory. Here is a sample of the issues that we intend to cover within the framework of the collected volume.

1. The nature of information
2. Ethics and Information Technology
3. Knowledge and Technology
4. The notion of `being informed` and its formal analysis
5. Floridi`s notion of `Levels of Abstraction`
6. Philosophy of Computing and AI
7. Philosophy of Technology and Education
8. Floridi`s notion of `infosphere`
9. Cognitive Technology and `inforgs`
10. The informational turn as a fourth revolution after the Copernican, the Darwinian and the Freudian revolutions.
11. Online identity and Floridi`s informational structural realism.

Chapters should normally be between 7000 and 10000 words in length, although longer chapters, of up to 15000 words, might also be accepted for publication.

Sincerely,
Hilmi Demir
Guest Editor

Legal Deposit Act

2010-01-08T09:13:00.000Z

This is a short interview for The Oxford Student on Brittain's Department for Culture, Media and Sport's recent proposal on the implementation of the 2003 Legal Deposit Act as regards websites (http://www.culture.gov.uk/images/consultations/Digital_legal_deposit.pdf).

Tendai Musakwa:
In the proposal, the department suggests deposit libraries such as the Bodleian be legally empowered to archive freely available websites to document Britain's history.
1. What is your view on allowing deposit libraries to archive websites?

Luciano Floridi:
It is an excellent and timely idea. The online and digital nature of most of our data means that we can easily rewrite, lose or erase vast amounts of irreplaceable information. We need to use our technologies at their best in order to cope with their forgetful memories.

Tendai Musakwa:
2. The British Library has expressed dismay at the delay in implementing website deposit regulations since the 2003 act, warning that earlier versions of websites are usually deleted such that the UK has lost millions of pages recording events such as the MPs' expenses scandal, the release of the Lockerbie bomber and the Iraq war because the websites were not archived. In your view, is there an urgent need to implement regulations on e-deposit?

Luciano Floridi:
Absolutely. The Museum of the Moving Image, for example, has a very valuable record of the web-based campaigns for the 2008 Presidential Election in the US (http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/). Without such projects, future generations will have limited access to their historical past, cultural heritage and hence self-understanding.

Tendai Musakwa:
3. What are the potential implications of implementing the 2003 Legal Deposit Act as regards the archiving of websites on intellectual life and the UK's cultural heritage?

Luciano Floridi:
I'd like to select two in particular. We need to ensure that the archiving is fair, because what will not be archived might disappear forever; and that the accumulation of memories will not be a burden for the future, because, sometimes, forgiving requires a bit of forgetting. We should beware of what we wish to remember, because it might be a way of keeping our wounds forever open.

Barwise Prize

2010-01-03T20:16:00.000Z

I have delivered the Barwise Lecture at the APA Meeting on the 29th of December 2009 in NY.

This is the prize.

Two Philosophers of the Information Age

2009-12-19T10:23:00.000Z

THE FUTURE OF PHILOSOPHY: METAPHILOSOPHICAL DIRECTIONS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY.

A Symposium Marking the 40th Anniversary of the Founding of the Journal Metaphilosophy. FRIDAY 11 DECEMBER, Institute of Philosophy, School of Avanced Studies, London.

Terrell Ward Bynum's lecture: Two Philosophers of the Information Age: Robert Wiener and Luciano Floridi.

New introduction to information and computer ethics

2009-12-18T09:50:00.001Z

The Cambridge Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics
Edited by Luciano Floridi

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have profoundly changed many aspects of life, including the nature of entertainment, work, communication, education, healthcare, industrial production and business, social relations and conflicts. They have had a radical and widespread impact on our moral lives and hence on contemporary ethical debates. The Cambridge Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics provides an ambitious and authoritative introduction to the field, with discussions of a range of topics including privacy, ownership, freedom of speech, responsibility, technological determinism, the digital divide, cyber warfare, and online pornography. It offers an accessible and thoughtful survey of the transformations brought about by ICTs and their implications for the future of human life and society, for the evaluation of behaviour, and for the evolution of moral values and rights. It will be a valuable book for all who are interested in the ethical aspects of the information society in which we live.

Preface Luciano Floridi

Part I. Introduction and Background
1. Ethics after the information revolution, Luciano Floridi
2. The historical roots of information and computer ethics, Terrell Ward Bynum

Part II. Ethical Approaches
3. Values in technology and disclosive computer ethics, Phil Brey
4. The use of normative theories in computer ethics, Jeroen van den Hoven
5. Information ethics, Luciano Floridi

Part III. Ethical Issues in the Information Society
6. Social issues in computer ethics, Bernd Carsten Stahl
7. Rights and computer ethics, John Sullins
8. Conflict, security and computer ethics, John Arquilla
9. Personal values and computer ethics, Alison Adam
10. Global information and computer ethics, Charles Ess and May Thorseth
11. Computer ethics and applied contexts, John Weckert and Adam Henschke

Part IV. Ethical Issues in Artificial Contexts
12. The ethics of IT artefacts, Vincent Wiegel
13. Artificial life, artificial agents, virtual realities: technologies of autonomous agency, Colin Allen
14. On new technologies, Steve Clarke

Part V. Metaethics
15. The foundationalist debate in computer ethics, Herman Tavani

Epilogue
The ethics of the information society in a globalised world, Luciano Floridi

If you are interested in understanding what information is

2009-12-16T14:40:00.002Z

Information: A Very Short Introduction
Luciano Floridi
Very Short Introductions
152 pages | 15 black and white line drawings | 174x111mm
978-0-19-955137-8 | Paperback | February 2010
Price: £7.99

Explores a concept central to modern science and society, from thermodynamics and DNA to our use of the mobile phone and the Internet.
Considers concepts such as 'Infoglut' (too much information to process) and the emergence of an information society.
Addresses the meaning and value of information in science, sociology, and philosophy.
Raises the broader social and ethical issues relating to privacy, accessibility, and ownership of information.

We live an information-soaked existence - information pours into our lives through television, radio, books, and of course, the Internet. Some say we suffer from 'infoglut'. But what is information? The concept of 'information' is a profound one, rooted in mathematics, central to whole branches of science, yet with implications on every aspect of our everyday lives: DNA provides the information to create us; we learn through the information fed to us; we relate to each other through information transfer - gossip, lectures, reading. Information is not only a mathematically powerful concept, but its critical role in society raises wider ethical issues: who owns information? Who controls its dissemination? Who has access to information? Luciano Floridi, a philosopher of information, cuts across many subjects, from a brief look at the mathematical roots of information - its definition and measurement in 'bits'- to its role in genetics (we are information), and its social meaning and value. He ends by considering the ethics of information, including issues of ownership, privacy, and accessibility; copyright and open source.For those unfamiliar with its precise meaning and wide applicability as a philosophical concept, 'information' may seem a bland or mundane topic. Those who have studied some science or philosophy or sociology will already be aware of its centrality and richness. But for all readers, whether from the humanities or sciences, Floridi gives a fascinating and inspirational introduction to this most fundamental of ideas.

Readership: General readers and students of science, sociology/communication, computing, information processing and philosophy.

Introduction

1: The information revolution

2: The language of information

3: Mathematical information

4: Semantic information

5: Physical information
6: Biological information
7: Economic information
8: The ethics of information
Conclusion
References

CFP - Towards a Comprehensive Intelligence Test (TCIT) - Reconsidering the Turing Test for the 21st Century Symposium

2009-11-13T14:44:00.000Z

Call for Paper

Towards a Comprehensive Intelligence Test (TCIT)

Reconsidering the Turing Test for the 21st Century Symposium

http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~aayesh/TuringTestRevisited/

At AISB2010 Convention

Leicester, UK

29th March – 1st April 2010

2010 marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of Turing’s paper, in which he outlined his test for machine intelligence. Turing suggested that the possibility of genuine machine thought should be replaced by a simple behaviour-based process in which a human interrogator converses blindly with a machine and another human. Although the precise nature of the test has been debated, the standard interpretation is that if, after five minutes interaction, the interrogator cannot reliably tell which respondent is the human and which the machine then the machine can be qualified as a 'thinking machine'. Through the years, this test has become synonymous as 'the benchmark' for Artificial Intelligence in popular culture. However, new advances in cognitive sciences and consciousness studies suggest it may be useful to revisit this test. The aim of this symposium is to reconsider the Turing Test in the light of current advances in Artificial Intelligence, cognitive systems, and other competitions that provide insights into different types of intelligence, with the goal of outlining a new test - or suite of tests - that may more usefully be employed to evaluate 'machine intelligence' at the dawn of the 21st century.

DEADLINES

Submission deadline for all formats: 11 January 2010

Late and by arrangement submissions deadline (e.g. competitions): 20 January 2010

Acceptance notification: 11 February 2010

Camera ready copies: 1 March 2010

Convention: 29 March - 1 April 2010

Submission is through easychair web site:

http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=tcit2010

FORMATS

Full research papers: up to 10 pages

Short Position papers: up to 4 pages

Posters: a single sheet, preferably A1 or A2 size.

System Demonstrations: descriptive A4 sheet and software.

Competition proposal: up to 2 pages, this should go beyond an extended abstract and specify the competition goals and give its operational details.

Competition performance report: up to 2 pages.

Running a competition for demonstration: this is by arrangement only. Please contact the symposium chair (Aladdin Ayesh: aayesh@dmu.ac.uk) to agree on details.

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Aladdin Ayesh (De Montfort,Symposium Chair)

Mark Bishop (Goldsmith College, London)

Luciano Floridi (Hertfordshire/Oxford)

Kevin Warwick (Reading)

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Selmer Bringsjord (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

Bernd Carsten Stahl (De Montfort)

James Moor (Dartmouth College)

John Preston (Reading)

Ray Tuner (Essex)

Robb Wilcox (NRG)

La révolution numérique considérée comme une quatrième révolution

2009-11-03T14:19:00.000Z

Patrick Peccatte La révolution numérique considérée comme une quatrième révolution, par Luciano Floridi
http://blog.tuquoque.com/post/2009/11/03/revolution-numerique-quatrieme-revolution

How information becomes knowledge

2009-11-01T12:06:00.001Z

Semantic Information and The Network Theory of Account (forthcoming in Synthese)

The article addresses the problem of how semantic information can be upgraded to knowledge. The introductory section explains the technical terminology and the relevant background. Section two argues that, for semantic information to be upgraded to knowledge, it is necessary and sufficient to be embedded in a network of questions and answers that correctly accounts for it. Section three shows that an information flow network of type A fulfils such a requirement, by warranting that the erotetic deficit, characterising the target semantic information t by default, is correctly satisfied by the information flow of correct answers provided by an informational source s. Section four illustrates some of the major advantages of such a Network Theory of Account (NTA) and clears the ground of a few potential difficulties. Section five clarifies why NTA and an informational analysis of knowledge, according to which knowledge is accounted semantic information, is not subject to Gettier-type counterexamples. A concluding section briefly summarises the results obtained.

Simulations and Their Philosophical Implications

2009-10-13T17:01:00.000Z

NACAP 2010 @ Carnegie Mellon University - July 24-26, 2010

Simulations and Their Philosophical Implications

Call for Papers/Proposals

Deadline: February 1st 2010 (firm)

In honor of the 60th Anniversary of the publication of Alan Turing’s groundbreaking article, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” we are centering the 2010 NACAP Conference on simulations and their philosophical implications.

Since the inception of the computer, simulations have become ubiquitous tools of the trade in a wide range of disciplines from astrophysics to sociology, machine learning to logic. When experiments aren’t possible for a variety of reasons (e.g., financial, ethical, lack of a subject pool), researchers have increasingly turned to simulations to test theories, comb through data, make predictions or otherwise take knowledge in new directions. This conference will explore the philosophical implications of this increasing reliance on simulation as it applies to the broader scope of topics studied by our association.

To this end, we are interested in receiving submissions that explore themes in the intersection of philosophy and computing insofar as they involve, for instance:

Evolutionary game theory
Machine learning
Cognitive science
Political science and sociology
Molecular biology
The uses of simulation in the physical sciences
Automated theorem proving
Validating models with simulations

Individual submissions might address a range of subtopics, including the epistemic legitimacy of simulations, theoretical analyses of simulation, the implications of computer simulations for issues in the philosophy of mind, etc. We also welcome submissions not directly on the conference theme, though first preference will go to those that fit within the broad parameters outlined here.

We welcome submissions for papers, panels and demonstrations of computing and philosophy applications. Papers and demonstrations will be allotted 40 minutes, including time for commentary and questions (25 minutes for presentation, 5 for commentary and 10 for Q&A). 120-minute slots are available for panels and can be divided as the panelists see fit.

For papers, please limit submission length to 3,000 words, keeping in mind that the IACAP discourages participants from reading their papers to the audience. (Many presenters prepare slides using PowerPoint or some other software package. However, these need not be submitted with your original paper.) Include also a 250-word abstract.

The IACAP discourages "show-and-tell" demonstrations, but welcomes submissions that show a new and interesting application of computers to philosophy. Submissions in this category should consist of a 1,500-word abstract outlining what is innovative about the application and the questions pertinent to philosophy that your demonstration will raise.

For panels, please submit a 1,000-word summary of the panel as a whole, along with 300 to 500-word abstracts for each of its various components.

The conference will be accepting electronic submissions appropriately prepared for blind review on or before February 1st, 2010. Additional details will be sent in a separate CFP sometime in early December, 2009. They will also be posted to the IACAP website at http://ia-cap.org (follow the appropriate conference link) and mailed to the IACAP-announce mailing list. (See http://ia-cap.org/mailinglist.php to join.)

Arsenic and e-Health

2009-10-11T18:20:00.001Z

Monsieur Homais is one of the less likable characters in Madame Bovary. The deceitful pharmacist fakes a deep friendship for Charles Bovary. In fact, he constantly undermines his reputation with his patients, thus contributing to Charles’ ruin.

Monsieur Homais is not merely wicked. A smart man, he has been convicted in the past for practicing medicine without a license and so he worries, very reasonably, that Charles might denounce him to the authorities for the illicit business of health advice and personal consultations that he keeps organising in his pharmacy.

The ultimate success of the pharmacist's dodgy schemes is not surprising. Those were the days when blacksmiths and barbers could regularly act as dentists and surgeons (after all, Charles is not a doctor either, but only a “health officer”); patients and doctors had to meet face to face in order to interact; and access to health information was the privilege of a few. Mail and telegraph messages were of course commonly available, but neither allowed real-time conversations. Madame Bovary was serialised in 1856, exactly twenty years before Bell was awarded a patent for the electric telephone by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Once ICT (information and communication technologies) of all kinds began to make possible quick consultations and rapid responses, being “on call” acquired a new meaning, telemedicine was born, and the Monsieur Homaiss around the world started to find it increasingly harder to make a living.

Today, we ordinarily speak of e-Health or Health 2.0 as the most recent development in healthcare practices, which are increasingly patient-centred, not just patient-oriented.

Definitions vary, but put simply e-Health is the answer to “what have computer scientists ever done for our health?”. From the empowerment of individuals, who regularly access health-related information on the web, to specialised applications for monitoring populations of patients through their mobile phone, e-Health is a macroscopic phenomenon, which is fast spreading and has immense potentialities.

Two conferences recently organised in the Netherlands – the Second Health 2.0 Conference and the First International E-Mental Health Summit – well illustrate the exponential growth of e-Health and its popularity.

Behind the success of ICT-based medicine and well-being lie two phenomena and two trends.

The first phenomenon may be labelled “the transparent body”. By measuring, monitoring and managing our bodies ever more deeply, accurately and non-invasively, ICT have made us more easily explorable, have increased the scope of possible interactions from without and from within our bodies (e.g. nanotechnology), and made the boundaries between body and environment increasingly porous (e.g. fMRI). We were black boxes, we are quickly becoming white boxes through which anyone can see.

The second phenomenon is that of “the shared body”. “My” body can now be easily seen as a “type” of body, thus easing the shift from “my health conditions” to “health conditions I share with others”. And it is more and more natural to consider oneself not only the source of information (what I tell the doctor) or the owner of information about oneself (my Google health profile), but also a channel to transfer DNA information and corresponding biological features between past and future generations (see 23andme).

The correlated trends are a democratization of health information, which is available, accessible to, and owned by more citizens of any modern Yonville than ever before.

And the socialisation of health conditions: you only need to check “multiple sclerosis” on YouTube, for example, to appreciate how easily and significantly can ICT shape and transform our sense of belonging to a community.

By 2018, the world population will consist of more people over 65 than children under 5, for the first time in the history of humanity. We are getting older, more educated and wealthier, so e-Health can only become an increasingly common, daily experience, one of the pillars of future medical care, and obviously a multi-billion-dollar business, some of which will inevitably be dodgy. Which of course leads us back to Monsieur Homais.

Emma learns from him how to acquire the arsenic with which she will commit suicide. During her horrible agony, her husband desperately “tried to look up his medical dictionary, but could not read it”. Nowadays you only need the usual Wikipedia. Just check under Arsenic poisoning. You will find there both diagnosis and treatment.

How to see a masterpiece: Bach, Toccata and Fugue in D minor, organ

2009-10-07T12:27:00.000Z

Google Acquisitions and Investments

2009-10-04T10:57:00.002Z

http://www.meettheboss.com/google-acquisitions-and-investments.html

5th Annual Digital Assembly Conference

2009-10-04T09:56:00.002Z

5th Annual Digital Assembly Conference, Futures of Digital Studies 2010.
University of Florida, February 25-27
For more information please visit http://www.english.ufl.edu/da/

The Body as Interface

2009-10-02T13:10:00.002Z

Victory at Bletchley Park Day

2009-09-29T22:07:00.000Z

`Victory at Bletchley Park Day' - Bletchley Park to receive Heritage
Lottery Fund development grant.
http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/news/docview.rhtm/592098

Project 10 to the 100th

2009-09-26T14:55:00.000Z

Q: What is Project 10¹⁰⁰? A: Project 10¹⁰⁰ (pronounced "Project 10 to the 100th") is a call for ideas to change the world, in the hope of helping as many people as possible.
Q: Why is Google doing this? A: The short answer is that we think helping people is a good thing, and empowering people to help others is an even better thing. Here's the long answer.
Q: How many ideas are you funding? A: We have committed $10 million to fund up to five ideas selected by our advisory board.

2012 - The Alan Turing Year

2009-09-25T19:30:00.000Z

The Alan Turing Year webpage at http://www.turingcentenary.eu/ has been updated.

The future of interfaces?

2009-09-22T10:35:00.002Z

UNESCO Chair in Information and Computer Ethics

2009-09-21T11:59:00.000Z

UNESCO has established its first Chair in Information and Computer Ethics. More news from AlphaGalileo

BBC - Digital Revolution (Working Title) - Digital Revolution

2009-09-21T11:55:00.000Z

BBC - Digital Revolution (Working Title) - Digital Revolution

http://www.bbc.co.uk/digitalrevolution/

An open and collaborative documentary on the way the web is changing the world.

Two new elected fellows of the AISB

2009-08-11T08:47:00.002Z

Founded in 1964, the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour (AISB) is the oldest artificial intelligence society in the world.

This year, AISB eleted two new fellows: Professor Michael Wooldridge, Department of Computer Science, University of Liverpool, for his research on multiagent systems, and your blogger, for his research on the philosophy of information.

Computers and logic

2009-07-17T09:47:00.002Z

Computers are logical, or at least that’s what we hope. It is a relief to know that the receivers of so much attention, from so many people, and for such long hours are dependable systems, with no inclinations, temperament, or minds of their own.

People, on the other hand, are crazy, or so we often suspect. They buy lottery tickets aware of the odds, smoke despite being literate, and believe that black cats could seriously damage their health. This is perhaps why we use computers to try to inculcate some logic in their heads. There is, however, a catch. You would not use a washing machine to teach your nephew how to clean his t-shirt. Likewise, our computers do very weird things in order to see that 5 + 7 = 12. So how can we rely on weird machines to teach logic to crazy minds?

Although not exactly worded in this way, computer-based logic teaching was one of the themes addressed by several papers presented at two conferences recently organised by the International Association for Computing and Philosophy (www.ia-cap.org) at Indiana University and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

The debate is far from new. Forms of e-Learning are almost as old as the first computers. The animosity between supporters and detractors is equally well-known. A perceivable difference between the two conferences was the sense of relaxed interest expressed in Barcelona, as opposed to the pragmatic urgency felt in Bloomington. It is the three digits syndrome. Force people to teach and mark baby logic to hundreds of students every year, and they will soon start looking for some mechanical way of saving time. The risk is that, after a while, one may be adapting the teaching to what can be delivered electronically. So, after a longer while, the question arises: are we computationally pampering our students, teaching them something that hardly resembles the real activities of logicians and mathematicians when they are trying to solve problems and prove theorems?

The question soon leads to a more radical doubt: isn’t any introduction to logic so far from the actual practices to be utterly useless to any serious philosophy student? The question has two answers, none of which attracted much attention during the meetings.

First, we teach logic because this is the language spoken by a large portion of contemporary philosophy. You cannot understand the Tractatus if you have no idea of what a truth table is. This has nothing to do with what logicians and mathematicians write on their blackboards. As in any language learning process, however, computers can be of some help only insofar as they are running seriously interactive programs. Ultimately, conversations with native speakers remain essential.

Second, some teachers seem to think that we teach logic because the formal training will help to regiment the aforementioned crazy minds. This is a mistake that was elegantly made by Gilbert Ryle in his Tarner Lectures (published with the title Dilemmas, 1953). There we find the analogy between formal logic and military drill: “It is not the stereotyped motions of drill, but its standards of perfection of control which are transmitted from the parade-ground to the battlefield... To know how to go through completely stereotyped movements in artificial parade-ground conditions with perfect correctness is to have learned not indeed how to conduct oneself in battle but how rigorously to apply standards of soldierly efficiency even to unrehearsed actions and decisions in novel and nasty situations and in irregular and unfamiliar country.” Apply this to e-Learning and you will have computers training robots.

All this is more dangerous than merely silly. One of the quotes from All Quiet on the Western Front, the film on the horrors of the First World War based on Remarque’s classic novel, tells a different story: “They never taught us anything really useful, like how to light a cigarette in the wind, or make a fire out of wet wood, or bayonet a man in the belly instead of the ribs where it gets jammed”. In this case too, interaction is essential. So the second answer is not brainless drills, but intelligent simulations. But interactions and simulations lead us to the last difficulty: money. Governments easily spend millions of dollars to develop combat interactive scenarios, but they will never finance a logic simulator. Crazy isn’t it?

Metalogic: An Introduction to the Metatheory of Standard First Order Logic

2009-07-17T09:36:00.003Z

An excellent book, old but still very readable and reliable: Metalogic: An Introduction to the Metatheory of Standard First Order Logic.

Highly recommended summer-reading to any philosophy student.

Web 2.0 contre Web sémantique : un point de vue philosophique

2009-07-10T14:13:00.002Z

Very kindly, Patrick Peccatte has just made available his French translation of my article Web 2.0 vs. the Semantic Web: A Philosophical Assessment.
Thank you Patrick!

Advice for a Young Investigator

2009-07-08T20:05:00.002Z

This is a book that any PhD student should read. Really. If you are a philosopher, just bear with Cajals' impatience for the worst side of our discipline, expressed in the initial pages. After all, we have called it upon ourselves. The rest is a pure gem, beautifully written, remarkably insightful and as relevant today as it was at the beginning of last century. The mark of a great mind.

Interview on The Fourth Revolution

2009-06-29T09:07:00.002Z

I just received the podcast of an interview I had with Nigel Warburton, you can listen to it by clicking on the title of this blog or visiting www.philosophybites.com "Luciano Floridi on The Fourth Revolution". It is also available from iTunes.

The supernova effect of Michael Jackson's death

2009-06-28T10:15:00.004Z

The death of a star may create a supernova explosion. A massive shock wave radiates throughout the whole star, which heats up and then explodes. This flash is as bright as a whole galaxy and leaves behind a rapidly spinning neutron star.

The death of Michael Jackson caused a similar supernova effect on the web this week. Initially, when news of his sudden death spread, people at Google thought they were under a cyber attack. You can see why from the graph in this blog.

Millions of people who searched for the star's name on Google News were greeted with an error page: "your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application". Or the impact of a dead star.

Asia-Pacific Computing and Philosophy 2009

2009-06-19T08:24:00.001Z

CALL FOR PAPERS

Asia-Pacific Computing and Philosophy 2009 will be held on October 1st-2nd, 2009 in Tokyo, Japan. The conference will be hosted at the University of Tokyo's Sanjo Conference Hall. Keynotes speeches will be given by Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro (Osaka University) and Professor Shinsuke Shimojo (Caltech). This year AP-CAP 2009 will be held in conjunction with the Devices that Alter Perception workshop, which will form a special track.

The conference invites papers from philosophy, computer science, robotics, and media arts. Practitioners of these and related fields like artificial intelligence, ethics, human-computer interaction, and society-technology studies will debate and demonstrate new research. The conference will foster a scholarly dialogue between designers and

critics of computing systems.

TIMELINE

• July 15th, 2009: Deadline for abstract submission
• August 15th, 2009: Abstract acceptance notification
• September 1st, 2009: Early registration deadline
• September 15th, 2009: Camera-ready papers due
• September 21st, Papers available online
• October 1st-2nd, 2009: AP-CAP 2009 Conference

The call for papers, information for attendees, Word and LaTeX templates, online paper submission form and registration are all hosted at:

http://ia-cap.org/ap-cap09/

Philosophy of Technology - An Introduction

2009-06-08T09:47:00.002Z

A good book, with plenty of information, but...

The writing is not as good as the contents: typos, cut&paste repetitions, redundant bits of information and some awkward sentences make the reader wish the text had been properly copy-edited by the publisher, especially given the fact that this is the second edition. And the philosophy is a bit too light: plenty of notes on a variety of topics, but the material could have been marshalled with a stronger hand.

On the whole, worth reading together with Ferre's textbook.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPUTER GAMES

2009-05-27T10:32:00.002Z

THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPUTER GAMES
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE IN OSLO 2009
August 13-15, 2009

Keynote speakers: Kendall Walton, author of "Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts" (Harvard University Press, 1990), Miguel Sicart, author of "The Ethics of Computer Games" (The MIT Press, 2009) and Grant Tavinor, author of "The Art of Video Games" (Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming in October 2009).

CALL FOR PAPERS

We hereby invite scholars in any field who take a professional interest in the phenomenon of computer games to submit papers to the international conference "The Philosophy of Computer Games 2009", to be held in Oslo, Norway, on August 13-15, 2009.

Accepted papers will have a clear focus on philosophy and philosophical issues in relation to computer games. They will also attempt to use specific examples rather than merely invoke "computer games" in general terms. We invite submissions focusing on, but not limited to, the following three headings:

Fictionality and Interaction

Computer games are often conceived as a setting for fictional narratives, facts, objects and events, although the interactive setting is thought to give fictionality a special character and to be intertwined with non-fictional aspects in various ways. We invite papers on relevant discussions of fictionality, narrative, fictional objects, simulation, virtuality, and kindred cognitive notions like make-believe, pretense, and imagination.

Defining Computer Games

Is it possible to point to some defining characteristic(s) of computer games? We are especially interested in discussions of formal definitions of computer games in terms of characteristics such as rules, play, representation, computation, affordances, interaction, negotiable consequences, and so on. We welcome both constructive and critical discussions, as long as they are directed at clearly articulated proposals.

Ethical and Political Issues

What are the ethical responsibilities of game-makers in relation to individual gamers and society in general? What role, if any, can games serve as a critical cultural corrective in relation to traditional forms of media and communicative practices, for example in economy and politics? Also, what is the nature of the ethical norms that apply within the gaming context, and what are the factors that allow or delimit philosophical justifications of their application there or elsewhere?

Your abstract should not exceed 1000 words. If your submission falls under one of the three headings, please indicate which one. Send your abstract to submissions@gamephilosophy.org. All submitted abstracts will be subject to double blind peer review, and the program committee will

make a final selection of papers for the conference on the basis of this. Full manuscripts must be submitted by August 8, and will be made available on the conference website.

Deadline for submissions is June 1, 2009.
Notification of accepted submissions will be sent out by June 10, 2009.

Olav Asheim
Miguel Sicart
Frans Mäyrä
Patrick Coppock
Sten Ludvigsen
Ole Ertløv Hansen
Stephan Güntzel
Runje Klevjer
John Richard Sageng
Ragnhild Tronstad

The conference is a collaboration between the following institutions:

• Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas at the University of Oslo, Norway
• Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo, Norway
• Digital Games Research Center, University of Potsdam, Germany
• Department of Social, Cognitive and Quantitative Science at the University of Modena & Reggio Emilia, Italy
• Nordic Game Research Network
• Intermedia, University of Oslo, Norway
• Games Research Lab, University of Tampere, Finland
• Center for Computer Games Research at the IT-University of Copenhagen, Denmark
• Philosophical Project Centre (FPS), Oslo, Norway
• Department of Information Science and Media Studies, University of Bergen, Norway

Two books for Oxford University Press

2009-05-24T10:31:00.004Z

I have now completed the two projects for Oxford University Press.

One is a small book, entitled Information, written for OUP popular series Very Short Introductions.

The other is the book I had been writing for ten year: The Philosophy of Information. It will also be published by OUP.

Next project: the other book that complements PoI: Information Ethics. Hopefully it will not take me another decade.

Associate Professor in history and philosophy of mathematics and computer science

2009-05-22T19:15:00.002Z

The Department of Science Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark (http://www.ivs.au.dk) invites applications for a permanent position as Associate Professor beginning January 1, 2010.

The Department of Science Studies forms part of the Faculty of Science, and is responsible for research and education in history and philosophy of science.

The Department seeks a historian or philosopher of mathematics and/or computer science with significant publications and research interest within the fields of history and philosophy of mathematics and computer science broadly conceived.

The requirements for a successful application are an strong record of research and teaching within history and/or philosophy of mathematics and computer science, and the ability to teach in English or Danish. Experience with academic administration and fund raising is desirable.

Duties will include instruction at the undergraduate and postgraduate level within the fields of history and philosophy of mathematics and computer science, preferably including mandatory courses in philosophy of mathematics and computer science for undergraduate students in mathematics and computer science. The Department offers courses in philosophy of science for all science programmes. All courses are based on extensive use of historical and contemporary cases, and faculty members from the Department collaborate on developing the course format.
The new Associate Professor is expected to participate actively in the strategic development of the departments research focus on studies of contemporary science. The Department is interested in developing new teaching initiatives in science studies.

The successful candidate will be expected to participate in all aspects of the Department’s activities and to be present on a daily basis.

Applications must be in English and include a curriculum vitae, a complete list of publications, a statement of future research plans and information about research activities, teaching qualifications and management experience, all in 4 copies (see http://www.nat.au.dk/default.asp?id=7842&la=UK for the recommended level of detail). If the applicant wants other material to be considered in the evaluation (publications and other documentation of research and teaching qualifications, as well as management experience) such material must be clearly specified and must either be enclosed in hardcopy (3 copies) or must be available electronically.

The Faculty refers to the Ministerial Order No. 92 of 15.02.2008 (http://science.au.dk/default.asp?id=7839&la=UK) on the appointment of teaching and research staff at the universities under the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation.

Salary depends on seniority as agreed between the Danish Ministry of Finance and the Confederation of Professional Unions.

Applications should be addressed to The Faculty of Science, Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade, Building 1520, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark, and marked 212/5-292.

The deadline for receipt of all applications is July 1, 2009, at 12,00 noon.

For more information please contact the head of the department Keld Nielsen, Department of Science Studies, Building 1110, CF Moellers Alle, DK-8000 Aarhus C., Denmark; phone +45 8942 3540; e-mail: keld.nielsen@ivs.au.dk, or vice head of department Hanne Andersen, phone +45 8942 3514; e-mail: hanne.andersen@ivs.au.dk

Aarhus University offers a good and inspiring education and research environment for 35,000 students and 8,500 members of staff, who produce academic results of a high international standard. The budgeted turnover for 2009 amounts to EUR 700 million. The university’s strategy and development contract are available at www.au.dk.

*************************
Henrik Kragh Sørensen
Associate professor, PhD
Department of Science Studies
University of Aarhus, Denmark

The Fourth Revolution

2009-05-20T22:13:00.003Z

A one screen summary, just click on the title.
The text, based on my writings, is courtesy of Paul B. Davis.

Philosophy of Technology

2009-05-20T14:11:00.003Z

A very nice book, which I had meant to read since a long time ago. Slightly oldish, it is clear, well written, balanced, accessible and reasonable.

The reasonableness is not to be underestimated. There are plenty of crazy, insane, mad, or otherwise ready for the asylum authors out there who will take the "technological discourse" as an excuse to vent platitudes, dispense oracular wisdom, and mumble non-sensical claims. If it were for them, not only we would still be living in the caves, which might still be an uncomfortably acceptable option, but we would still be listening to the local sibyls and magicians, and this is certainly not an improvement.

Against Readings

2009-05-17T16:32:00.002Z

Inspiring, and it does indeed apply very well to philosophy (as it was suggested by Steve Clark on philos-l): "This is a paper by Mark Edmunson in the Chronicle of Higher Education. It's about literary texts, but with some clear relevance to philosophical texts as well."

One may have reservations: what happens to literature (or indeed philosophy), once you're no longer young? Becoming who you are is an endless work in progress, but the point of the article seems to be that there is a stage when most of this work in progress is actually done and that then is when literature/philosophy can play a role. It seems like a Gaussian: texts begin by being irrelevant and end by being irrelevant, peaking in your youth. This is notthe case, or the common practice of re-reading would be meaningless.

And why listening to the professors, when you can read the masters? It is not true that they own the keys to the warehouse.

AHRC-funded Postdoctoral Research Fellow

2009-05-15T10:13:00.002Z

AHRC-funded Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Department of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Hertfordshire
• Salary: UH6
• Grade: £24,877-£29,704
• Ref Number: EN8899

We invite applications for the position of Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Philosophy, to work on the project “The Construction of Personal Identities Online”.

The position is full-time, fixed term (18 months). The project is funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The principal investigator is Professor Luciano Floridi.

The aim of the project is to investigate the construction of personal identities (PI) when they are digitally mediated, that is, when individuals are embedded in virtual environments that provide unprecedented affordances and different constraints for PI development, as well as innovative opportunities of interactions with other agents, both human and artificial.

For further information about the project, please visit http://www.philosophyofinformation.net/grants/pio/index.html.

You will be based in the Philosophy Department and collaborate full time to the project. You will hold a doctorate or should do so by the starting date, in a relevant discipline such as Philosophy (preferably) or Computer Science. You will have a proven research record in philosophy, preferably some expertise in philosophy of mind or philosophy of AI, very strong IT skills, and an ability to work across disciplines.

For further information about the job description and how to apply, please visit
http://web-apps.herts.ac.uk/uhweb/apps/hr/job-advert.cfm?category=research&type=JD&jobid=EN8899

To apply, please complete an application form, submit your CV and a sample of recent work (preferably a published article).

You should arrange for references from two academic referees and the sample of recent work to be sent to l.floridi@herts.ac.uk

For further information please contact Luciano Floridi

preferably by emailing l.floridi@herts.ac.uk

or by sending ordinary mail to:

Professor Luciano Floridi
Research Chair in Philosophy of Information,
Department of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Hertfordshire
Hatfield
Hertfordshire
AL10 9AB
UK

Cyberwar

2009-05-05T23:34:00.003Z

The story goes that when the Roman horsemen first saw Pyrrhus’ twenty war elephants, at the battle of Heraclea (280 BC), they were so terrorised by these strange creatures, which they have never seen before, that they galloped away and the Roman legions lost the battle. Today, the new elephants are electronic.

The phenomenon might have just begun to emerge in the public debate but, in post-informational societies, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are increasingly shaping armed conflicts. In terms of conventional military operations, ICTs have revolutionized communications, making possible complex new modes of field operations. Of course, ICTs have also made possible the swift analysis of vast amounts of data, enabling the military, intelligence and law enforcement communities to take action in ever more timely and targeted ways. But even more significantly, battles are nowadays fought by highly mobile forces, armed with real-time ICT devices, satellites, battlefield sensors and so forth, as well as thousands of robots. And the growing dependence of societies and their militaries on advanced ICTs has led to strategic cyber-attacks, designed to cause costly and crippling disruptions. Armies of human soldiers may not be needed. Cyber-attacks can be undertaken by nations or networks, or even by very small groups or individuals. ICTs have made asymmetric conflicts easier, and shifted the battleground more than an inch into the infosphere.

The scale of such transformations is staggering. For example, at the beginning of the war in Iraq, U.S. forces had no robotic systems on the ground. However, by 2004, they already deployed 150 robots, in 2005 these were 2,400; and by the end of 2008, about 12,000 robots of nearly two dozen varieties were operating on the ground (source: The New Atlantis, Winter 2009). And on April 26, 2007, Estonia experienced the first case of denial-of-service attack. This is a systematic attempt to make computer resources unavailable, at least temporarily, by forcing vital sites or services to reset or consume their resources or by disrupting their communications so that they can no longer function properly.

ICT-mediated modes of conflict pose a variety of ethical problems, for war-fighting militaries in the field, for intelligence gathering services, for policy makers and for ethicists. They tend to erase the threshold between reality and simulation, between life and play, and between conventional conflicts, insurgences or terrorist actions. A troubling perspective is that ICTs might make unconventional conflicts more acceptable ethically, by stressing the less deadly outcome of military operations in cyberspace. This might of course be utterly illusory: messing with ICT-infrastructures of hospitals and airports may easily cause the loss of human lives, even if in a less visible and obvious way than bombs do. Yet the impression remains that we might be allegedly moving towards a more precise, surgical, bloodless way of handling our disagreements.

Clearly, ICTs have caused radical changes both in how societies may come into conflict and how they may manage it. At the same time, there is a policy and a conceptual vacuum. For example, “America's Department of Defence wants to replace a third of its armed vehicles and weaponry with robots by 2015” (source: The Economist, 7 June, 2007), but it still lacks an ethical code for the deployment of these new, semi-autonomous weapons. This is a global issue. The 2002 Prague Summit marked NATO’s first attempt to address cyber-defence activities. Five years later, in 2007, there were already “42 countries working on military robotics, from Iran and China to Belarus and Pakistan” (source: The Wilson Quarterly, Winter 2009), but not even a draft of an international agreement regarding their ethical deployment. There has been very little descriptive and conceptual analysis of such a crucial area in applied ethics, and no attempt to assess the effectiveness of the initial measures that have been taken to deal with the increasing application of ICTs in armed conflicts.

The issue could not be more pressing and there is a much-felt and quickly escalating need to share information and coordinate ethical theorising. The goals should be sharing information and views about the current state of the ethics of e-warfare, developing a comprehensive framework for a clear interpretation of the new aspects of e-war, building a critical consensus about the ethical deployment of e-weapons, and laying down the foundation for an ethical approach to e-warfare.

At a time when there is an exponential growth in R&D concerning ICT-based weapons and strategies, philosophers and ethicists could provide timely advice, by collaborating on the identification, discussion and resolution of the unprecedented ethical difficulties characterizing cyberwar. This is far from being premature. During the civil war, in the battle of Thapsus (46 BC), Julius Caesar’s fifth legion was armed with axes and was ordered to strike at the elephant’s legs of the enemy. The legion withstood the charge, and the elephant became its symbol. Interestingly, nobody at the time could even imagine that there might be an ethical problem in treating animals so cruelly. We should think ahead, because history likes to repeat itself.

The Philosophy of Information, its Nature, and Future Developments

2009-04-29T22:11:00.002Z

The Information Society An International Journal, Volume 25 Issue 3 2009 has just published a special issue on the philosophy of information. Here is the tale of contents:

INTRODUCTION
	The Information Society and Its Philosophy: Introduction to the Special Issue on “The Philosophy of Information, Its Nature, and Future Developments” 153 – 158 Author: Luciano Floridi DOI: 10.1080/01972240902848583
ARTICLES
	Floridi's Philosophy of Information and Information Ethics: Current Perspectives, Future Directions 159 – 168 Author: Charles Ess DOI: 10.1080/01972240902848708
	From the Philosophy of Information to the Philosophy of Information Culture 169 – 174 Authors: Adam Briggle; Carl Mitcham DOI: 10.1080/01972240902848765
	Epistemic Values and Information Management 175 – 189 Authors: Don Fallis; Dennis Whitcomb DOI: 10.1080/01972240902848831
	Developing the Information and Knowledge Agenda in Information Systems: Insights From Philosophy 190 – 197 Authors: Leslie Willcocks; Edgar A. Whitley DOI: 10.1080/01972240902848880

Against Digital Ontology

2009-04-03T18:08:00.003Z

Against Digital Ontology, Synthese, 2009, 168.1, (2009), 151-178.

Abstract

The paper argues that digital ontology (the ultimate nature of reality is digital, and the universe is a computational system equivalent to a Turing Machine) should be carefully distinguished from informational ontology (the ultimate nature of reality is structural), in order to abandon the former and retain only the latter as a promising line of research. Digital vs. analogue is a Boolean dichotomy typical of our computational paradigm, but digital and analogue are only “modes of presentation” of Being (to paraphrase Kant), that is, ways in which reality is experienced or conceptualised by an epistemic agent at a given level of abstraction. A preferable alternative is provided by an informational approach to structural realism, according to which knowledge of the world is knowledge of its structures. The most reasonable ontological commitment turns out to be in favour of an interpretation of reality as the totality of structures dynamically interacting with each other.

The paper is the first part (the pars destruens) of a two-part piece of research. The pars construens, entitled “A Defence of Informational Structural Realism”, is developed in a separate article, also published in this journal.

InterFace 2009:1st National Symposium for Humanities and Technology

2009-04-03T15:02:00.002Z

First Call for Papers

InterFace is a new type of annual event. Part conference, part workshop, part networking opportunity, it will bring together postdocs, early career academics and postgraduate researchers from the fields of Information Technology and the Humanities in order to foster cutting-edge collaboration. As well as having a focus on Digital Humanities, it will also be an important forum for Humanities contributions to Computer Science. The event will furthermore provide a permanent web presence for communication between delegates both during, and following, the conference.

Delegate numbers are limited to 80 (half representing each sector) and all participants will be expected to present a poster or a ‘lightning talk’ (a two minute presentation) as a stimulus for discussion and networking sessions. Delegates can also expect to receive illuminating keynote talks from world-leading experts, presentations on successful interdisciplinary projects, ‘Insider’s Guides’ and workshops. The registration fee for the two-day event is £30. For a full overview of the event, please visit the website.

Paper Submissions:

If you are interested in attending, please submit an original paper, of 1500 words or less, describing an idea or concept you wish to present. Please indicate whether you would prefer to produce a poster or perform a 2-minute lightning talk. Papers must be produced as a PDF or in Microsoft Word (.doc) format and submitted through our EasyChair page:

- Register for an easy chair account:
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/account_apply.cgi
- Log in: https://www.easychair.org/?conf=interface09
- Click New Submission at the top of the page and fill in the form.
Make sure you:
- Select your preference of lightning talk or poster.
- Select whether you are representing humanities or technology.
- Attach and upload your paper.
If you encounter any problems, please e-mail submissions@interface09.org.uk
A number of travel bursaries may be available to successful applicants
- if you would like to be considered for one, please email bursaries@interface09.org.uk and provide grounds for consideration.

Papers should focus on potential (and realistic) areas for collaboration between the Technology and Humanities Sectors, either by addressing particular problems, new developments, or both. Prior work may be presented where relevant but the nature of the paper must be forward-looking. As such, the scope is extremely broad but topics might include:

Technology
* 3D immersive environments
* Pervasive technologies
* Online collaboration
* Natural language processing
* Sensor networks
* The Semantic Web
* Agent based modelling
* Web Science
Humanities
* Spatial cognition
* Text editing and analysis
* New Media
* Linguistics
* Applied sociodynamics & social network analysis
* Archaeological reconstruction
* Information Ethics
* Dynamic logics
* Electronic corpora

Due to the limited number of places, papers will be subject to review by committee in order to maintain quality and a balanced programme. Applicants will be notified by email as to their acceptance. Accepted papers will be published online one week in advance of the conference.

Important Dates:
* Paper Submission Deadline: 1 May 2009
* Acceptances Announced: 18 May 2009
* Conference: 9th-10th July 2009
Confirmed Speakers
Keynote:
* Dame Wendy Hall, University of Southampton,
President of the Association of Computing Machinery
Insider’s Guides:
* Stephen Brown, De Montfort University
Knowledge Media Design
* Ed Parsons
Geospatial Technologist, Google
* Sarah Porter
Head of Innovation, JISC
Project Showcase:
* Mary Orr & Mark Weal, University of Southampton
Digital Flaubert
* Adrian Bell, University of Reading
The Soldier in Later Medieval England
* Kathy Buckner, Napier University
TBC
Workshops:
1) Text Encoding Initiative (TEI)
Arianna Ciula, European Science Foundation & Sebastian Rahtz, Oxford University
2) Visualisation
Facilitator TBC
3) Data Management
Facilitator TBC
4) New Media
Claire Ainsworth & John Copley, University of Southampton
For further information, please visit the conference website or e-mail admin@interface09.org.uk.

The 2009 North American Conference on Computing and Philosophy

2009-04-03T13:12:00.001Z

NA-CAP@IU 2009: Networks and Their Philosophical Implications

June 14th - 16th

At Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana

In recent years, across several different academic disciplines, including biology, computer science, cognitive science, informatics, philosophy and psychology, a shift in the study of complex systems is readily visible. This shift away from a focus on the individual components of a system to the interrelations between them has provided the groundwork for what might broadly be called a "network" perspective, as it has become increasingly clear that simple components can produce astoundingly complex and varied behavior when they work in consort. Evidence for this observation is seen everywhere from biological neural networks, stigmergic systems, and animal behavior to networked computing, social networking, and dynamic systems. This conference will explore the philosophical implications of this network perspective as it applies to the broader scope of topics studied by our association.

Conference highlights include keynote lectures from William Bechtel (University of California, San Diego) and Olaf Sporns (Indiana University), both of whom will speak about new research in biological networks. The conference will additionally feature panel sessions on Logic Pedagogy and Networks and Social Network Effects. The IACAP is also pleased to acknowledge this year's recipient of the Goldberg Graduate Award, Matteo Turilli (University of Oxford) for his paper, "Translating Ethical Requirements into Software Specifications," which he will be presenting at this conference.

Individual conference sessions will be dedicated to:
o Biological and Artificial Networks
o Computation and Representation
o Modeling, Epistemology and Cooperation
o Networks, Networked Computing and Robotics
o Bayesian and Semantic Networks
o Group Cognition, eTrust and Network Neutrality
o Social Networks, Privacy and the Self
Details are available on our Program page.

The International Association for Computing and Philosophy would like to acknowledge the generosity of the Department of Philosophy and the Cognitive Science Program at Indiana University, and the support of the university generally, not only for their financial contributions, but more importantly for their cooperation in helping with the arrangements, their intellectual openness to the study of computing and philosophy, and the willingness of their graduate students and faculty to participate in our conference.

________________________________________

Program Director: Tony Beavers, University of Evansville

Assistant Program Director: Mara Harrell, Carnegie Mellon University

Conference Host: Colin Allen, Indiana University

Logic Pedagogy and Networks Program Chair: Marvin Croy, University of North Carolina, Charlotte

Social Networking Program Chair: Dylan Wittkower, Coastal Carolina University

NA-CAP Director: Selmer Bringsjord, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

NA-CAP Steering Committee:
Don Berkich, Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi
David Stern, University of Iowa
Mara Harrell, Carnegie Mellon University
IACAP President: Luciano Floridi, University of Hertfordshire & University of Oxford

This conference is one of several regional conferences associated with the International Association for Computing and Philosophy. To learn more about the IACAP, including its other conferences and membership details, visit the organization's website at http://ia-cap.org.

Society for Machines and Mentality becomes IACAP SIG

2009-03-12T08:38:00.000Z

The two Executive Committees of the International Association for Computing And Philosophy (IACAP) and of the Society for Machines and Mentality (SFMM) have agreed to transform SFMM into a IACAP Special Interest Group (SIG).

Among the many advantages brought about by the creation of the new SFMM-SIG are: enhanced synergies between the two groups in organising activities and events (e.g. APA meetings) and attracting high-quality research; economic savings; and the transformation of Springer’s Minds and Machines into IACAP official journal.

Old Applications

2009-02-16T12:15:00.002Z

Sometimes the old road should have never been left for the new one. Take the new skype (version 4.x): a disaster, a video-related bug (my guess, it was a problem for version 2.x as well) slowly eats up all your memory until the computer crashes. Second opinion? It's also big and ugly. So better go back to the old 3.8x. You can find it here http://www.oldapps.com/skype.php

Philosophy of Information

The ethics of WikiLeaks

CFP IEEE Technology and Society, special section on "green computing"

Universities giving more in bursaries to poor students

Problemata

The construction of personal identities online

Snapshot of global internet speeds revealed

VC Award 2010

Chinese translation of The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Computing and Information

BBC News - Over 5 billion mobile phone connections worldwide

Ministers turn to Facebook users for cuts suggestions

Three quarters of employers 'require 2:1 degree'

iPhone 4 signal fault leaves Apple 'stunned'

BBC News - Finland makes broadband a 'legal right'

Apple issues advice to avoid iPhone flaw

50 philosophical ideas for the future

NYT: I.B.M.'s Supercomputer to Challenge 'Jeopardy!' Champions

Forth Valley Royal Hospital to use robot 'workers'

Avatar, Personal Identity, and The 4th Revolution

US debates its broadband future

Bill Gates offers $10m fund for mobile banking in Haiti

Clones of bomb-sniffing dog delivered to Jeju police

Wikileaks site unfazed by arrest of US army 'source'

University guide 2011: Philosophy

Cloud Matters: Ethics and Policy in the Digital Age

Interfacing with our machines

Smart clothes offer emotional aid

Bletchley Park WWII archive to go online

PhD Grant. Models and simulations in engineering

Mind And Machine: The Future of Thinking

PHEADE 2010 - The Engineered Singularity

Police investigate Habbo Hotel virtual furniture theft

Floridi's Open Problems in Philosophy of Information, Ten Years After

Philosophy & Technology

Review of Information - A Very Short Introduction

First human 'infected with computer virus'

Web science institute funding halted by new government

Mistakes in silicon chips to help boost computer power

Web 2.0 contre Web sémantique : un point de vue philosophique

Web 2.0 contre Web sémantique : un point de vue philosophique

Kindling for the bonfire of book ownership

Google launches smart TV service

Emerging Ethical Issues of Life in Virtual Worlds, edited by Charles Wankel and Shaun Malleck

Interview on the philosophy of information

The Constitution of Selves, by Marya Schechtman

Second International Workshop on the Philosophy of Information

Process Theories: Crossdisciplinary Studies in Dynamic Categories

NYT: The Future of E-Reading With t

Intropy

BBC News - LHC particle search 'nearing', says physicist

Review of Information A Very Short Introduction

The Paradox of Inference and the Non-Triviality of Analytic Information

Review of "information - A Very Short Introduction"

Luciano Floridi and the philosophy of information

Postdoctoral Marie Curie Fellowship in philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire, UK

This blog has moved

Call for Chapter Abstracts for the Book Luciano Floridi`s Philosophy of Technology: Critical Reflections

Legal Deposit Act

Barwise Prize

Two Philosophers of the Information Age

New introduction to information and computer ethics

If you are interested in understanding what information is

CFP - Towards a Comprehensive Intelligence Test (TCIT) - Reconsidering the Turing Test for the 21st Century Symposium

La révolution numérique considérée comme une quatrième révolution

Patrick Peccatte La révolution numérique considérée comme une quatrième révolution, par Luciano Floridihttp://blog.tuquoque.com/post/2009/11/03/revolution-numerique-quatrieme-revolution

How information becomes knowledge

Simulations and Their Philosophical Implications

Arsenic and e-Health

How to see a masterpiece: Bach, Toccata and Fugue in D minor, organ

Google Acquisitions and Investments

5th Annual Digital Assembly Conference

The Body as Interface

Victory at Bletchley Park Day

Project 10 to the 100th

2012 - The Alan Turing Year

The future of interfaces?

UNESCO Chair in Information and Computer Ethics

BBC - Digital Revolution (Working Title) - Digital Revolution

Two new elected fellows of the AISB

Computers and logic

Patrick Peccatte La révolution numérique considérée comme une quatrième révolution, par Luciano Floridi
http://blog.tuquoque.com/post/2009/11/03/revolution-numerique-quatrieme-revolution