Philosophy and Computing: An Introduction

by Floridi,Luciano

• ISBN13: 9780415180252
• ISBN10: 0415180252
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 1999-09-09
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This accessible book explores the development, history and future of Information and Communication Technology using examples from philosophy. Luciano Floridi offers both an introduction to these technologies and a philosophical analysis of the problems they pose. The book examines a wide range of areas of technology, including the digital revolution, the Web and Internet, Artificial Intelligence and CD-ROMS. We see how the relationship between philosophy and computing provokes many crucial philosophical questions. Ultimately,Philosophy and Computingoutlines what the future philosophy of information will need to undertake.

Author Biography

Luciano Floridi is research fellow at Wolfson College and Lecturer in philosophy at Jesus College, Oxford University

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Divide et computa: philosophy and the digital environment	1	(19)
The digital revolution	1	(3)
The four areas of the digital revolution	4	(5)
From the analogue to the digital: the new physics of knowledge	9	(5)
The digitisation of the infosphere: three steps	14	(1)
The relations between philosophy and computing	15	(5)
The digital workshop	20	(36)
From the laboratory to the house	20	(1)
What is a computer?	21	(26)
Programming languages and software	47	(3)
Types of commercial computers	50	(1)
The personal computer	51	(5)
A revolution called Internet	56	(32)
The Internet as a basic technological change	56	(5)
What is the Internet?	61	(6)
What can the Internet be used for?	67	(12)
The future of the human encyclopaedia in the third age of IT: Frankenstein or Pygmalion?	79	(9)
The digital domain: infosphere, databases and hypertexts	88	(44)
The Paradox of the growth of knowledge: from the chicken and the egg to the needle in a haystack	88	(9)
``Everything must be transformed into an Encyclopaedia'' (Novalis)	97	(2)
What is a database system?	99	(3)
Types of database systems	102	(4)
Data, information and knowledge: an erotetic approach	106	(2)
The hyperbolic space of the infosphere and the fifth element	108	(2)
The aesthetic and the ontological interpretation of databases	110	(1)
Ideometry	111	(2)
The commodification of information and the growth of the infosphere	113	(1)
Rich and poor in the information economy	114	(2)
ICT practical problems and computer ethics	116	(1)
Textual analysis: a constructionist approach	116	(1)
Hypertext as information retrieval system	117	(13)
Conclusion: a Renaissance mind?	130	(2)
Artificial intelligence: a light approach	132	(92)
GOFAI	132	(2)
Turing's Test	134	(2)
Four limits of Turing's Test	136	(6)
The application-areas of AI	142	(4)
The conditions of possibility of AI and the paradox of GOFAI	146	(2)
From GOFAI to LAI	148	(2)
The Cartesian nature of LAI	150	(1)
Deep Blue: a Cartesian computer	151	(3)
The success of LAI	154	(61)
The limits of LAI	215	(3)
Conclusion	218	(6)
Notes	224	(3)
Bibliography	227	(11)
Index	238