%0 Book %D 2013 %T The Philosophy of Information; An Introduction %A Phyllis Illari %A Eric Kerr %A Orlin Vakarelov %A Mariarosaria Taddeo %A Hector Zenil %A Federica Russo %A Federico Gobbo %A Matteo Turilli %A Carson Grubaugh %A Giuseppe Primiero %A Andrew Iliadis %A Christoph Schulz %A Patrick Allo %A Bert Baumgaertner %A Simon D’Alfonso %A Nir Fresco %X
In April 2010, Bill Gates gave a talk at MIT in which he asked: ‘are the brightest minds working on the most important problems?’ Gates meant improving the lives of the poorest; improving education, health, and nutrition. We could easily add improving peaceful interactions, human rights, environmental conditions, living standards and so on. Philosophy of Information (PI) proponents think that Gates has a point - but this doesn’t mean we should all give up philosophy. Philosophy can be part of this project, because philosophy understood as conceptual design forges and refines the new ideas, theories, and perspectives that we need to understand and address these important problems that press us so urgently. Of course, this naturally invites us to wonder which ideas, theories, and perspectives philosophers should be designing now.
In our global information society, many crucial challenges are linked to information and communication technologies: the constant search for novel solutions and improvements demands, in turn, changing conceptual resources to understand and cope with them. Rapid technological development now pervades communication, education, work, entertainment, industrial production and business, healthcare, social relations and armed conflicts. There is a rich mine of philosophical work to do on the new concepts created right here, right now.
Philosophy 'done informationally' has been around a long time, but PI as a discipline is quite new. PI takes age-old philosophical debates and engages them with up-to-the minute conceptual issues generated by our everchanging, information-laden world. This alters the philosophical debates, and makes them interesting to many more people - including many philosophically-minded people who aren’t subscribing philosophers.