Onlife

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.

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

Episteme , volume 6, 2009, Pages 25-37 DOI 10.3366/E174236000800052X Preprint available here . The paper develops some of the conclusions, reached in Floridi (2007) , concerning the future developments of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and their impact on our lives. The two main theses supported in that article were that, as the information society develops, the threshold between online and offline is becoming increasingly blurred, and that once there won't be any significant difference, we shall gradually re-conceptualise ourselves not as cyborgs but rather as inforgs, i.e. socially connected, informational organisms. In this paper, I look at the development of the so-called Semantic Web and Web 2.0 from this perspective and try to forecast their future. Regarding the Semantic Web, I argue that it is a clear and well-defined project, which, despite some authoritative views to the contrary, is not a promising reality and will probably fail in the same way AI has...

On Monday, I was waiting for my opponent to show up for a university squash match, but since he was a bit late I thought I could check my email. You cannot imagine my surprise, delight, confusion and useful energy (to which I owe a 3-0) when I read that the American Philosophical Association had select me to receive the Barwise Prize “for significant and sustained contributions to areas relevant to philosophy and computing [...] in recognition of his research on the philosophy of information”. I will receive the award during the APA’s Eastern Meeting in NY in December 2009, when I will deliver the Barwise Lecture. Amazing. Previous winners are: 2007, David Chalmers (Australian National University); 2006, James H. Moor (Dartmouth College); 2005, Hubert Dreyfus (UC Berkeley); 2004, Deborah Johnson (University of Virginia); 2003, Daniel Dennett (Tufts University); 2002, Patrick Suppes (Stanford University). Humbling.

Funded with £165,521 from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), this research, entitled ‘The Construction of Personal Identities Online’, will explore how people reinvent themselves in virtual environments. Information and communication technologies are building a new habitat (infosphere) in which people spend an increasing amount of time and how individuals construct and maintain their personal identities online (PIOs) is a problem of growing and pressing importance. Today, PIOs can be created and developed, as an ongoing work-in-progress, to provide experiential enrichment, expand, improve or even help to repair relationships with others and with the world, or enable imaginative projections (the "being in someone else's shoes" experience), thus fostering tolerance. However, PIOs can also be mis-constructed, stolen, "abused", or lead to psychologically or morally unhealthy lives, causing a loss of engagement with the actual world and rea...

The National Center for Biomedical Ontology seeks applicants for a post-doctoral research position to work on projects relating to applications of ontology in medicine and biology. The successful candidate will work with ontology researchers in the New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences in Buffalo, New York. He or she will have expertise in at least two of the following areas: ontology, logic, philosophy of science, bioinformatics, biology, medicine, computer science. Further details are available from Barry Smith or under posting number 0900040 at http://ubjobs.buffalo.edu .

Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG and Bani present: THE INFLUENCERS Festival of media action and radical entertainment February 5-6-7 2009 Center of Contemporary Culture Barcelona, Spain http://www.theinfluencers.org featuring: BLU, Improv Everywhere, Julius Von Bismarck, Survival Research Labs, Swoon, Wolfgang Staehle, Wu Ming, Ztohoven Welcome to the 5th edition of The Influencers! Curated by Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG and Bani, The Influencers is a cult festival exploring unconventional weapons of mass communication. Over the past six years The Influencers has been defined as a gallery of unclassifiable projects, an investigation on guerrilla communication, a demonstration of present-day science fiction, a talk show you won't see on TV. The Influencers is a three intense days event spent interweaving tales of subversion, manipulation and the transformation of live elements of contemporary culture. See you all in Barcelona! More Info: Cristi...