Onlife

What would the Olympic Games be without Information Technology (IT)? Not just because we can sit in front of a digital screen and replay our favourite finals, or check immediately on Wikipedia how many people live in Jamaica. The way in which IT enables one to measure and compute tiny portions of time and space has allowed some sports to survive and even flourish. It would be hard to understand what fencing or the 100 metres would look like, if we were unable to analyse fractions of a second as significant magnitudes, or if inches could not be magnified into huge gaps. IT permeates sport, from initial training through performance to final enjoyment; so, even those activities that seem IT-free, from golf to sailing, are deeply indebted to the information revolution. Indeed, some sports have embraced IT with gusto, if some initial reluctance. Wimbledon is now more interesting and fairer because we can all witness whether the ball really failed to touch the white line, and take that into ...

This article (which explains the methodology that I have employed in most of my recent research), is forthcoming in Minds and Machines . To read the preprint , you may click on the title of this blog. Here is the abstract: The use of “levels of abstraction” in philosophical analysis ( levelism ) has recently come under attack. In this paper, I argue that a refined version of epistemological levelism should be retained as a fundamental method, called the method of levels of abstraction . After a brief introduction, in section “Some Definitions and Preliminary Examples” the nature and applicability of the epistemological method of levels of abstraction is clarified. In section “A Classic Application of the Method of Abstraction”, the philosophical fruitfulness of the new method is shown by using Kant’s classic discussion of the “ antinomies of pure reason” as an example. In section “The Philosophy of the Method of Abstraction”, the method is further specified and supported by distingu...

if you read French Patrick Peccatte has posted an interesting article about the Philosophy of Information and and photography theory on his blog: http://blog.tuquoque.com/post/2008/08/05/Notes-sur-la-structure-informationnelle-de-la-photographie