Conferencia Hyperhistory and the Technological Gambit, Prof. Luciano Floridi

Ponente: Luciano Floridi is Professor of Philosophy and UNESCO Chair in Information and Computer Ethics at the University of Hertfordshire, and Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford.

Sala:15.1.43 (Edificio López Aranguren)

Jueves 21 de febrero, a las 14 hs hs.

Organiza: Prof. Dr. Ilia Galán

Confirmar asistencia por correo electrónico a: mcuellar@pa.uc3m.es

Hyperhistory and the Technological Gambit

Nanotechnology, the Internet of Things, Web 2.0, Semantic Web, Cloud computing, motion-capturing games, smart phones apps, GPS, Augmented Reality, Artificial Companions, drones… is there a unifying perspective from which all these ICT phenomena might be interpreted as aspects of a single, macroscopic trend? Part of the difficulty, in answering this question, is that we are still used to looking at ICTs as tools to interact with the world, when in fact they have become environmental forces, which are creating and shaping our reality, more and more pervasively. To put it briefly, the answer may lie in realising that ICTs are enveloping the world. Consider a dishwasher. We do not build robots that wash dishes like us, we envelop micro-environmentsaround simple robots to fit and exploit at best their limited capacities and still deliver the desired output. Enveloping used to be either a stand-alone phenomenon (the robot comes with the required envelop, like a dishwasher) or implemented within the walls of industrial buildings. Nowadays, enveloping the world is an ordinary, escalating phenomenon, which pervades any aspect of reality and is visible everywhere, on a daily basis. Indeed, some of our pressing challenges, e.g., in cyber-security, e-commerce, or financial markets, arise within highly enveloped environments in which all relevant (and sometimes the only) data available are machine-readable, and decisions as well as actions may be taken automatically, by applications and actuators that can execute commands and output the corresponding procedures in fractions of a second. Enveloping is a robust, cumulative and progressively refining trend: everyday there are more humans online, more documents, more algorithms, more devices that communicate with each other, more sensors, more RFID tags, more satellites, more actuators, more data collected on systems’ transactions, in a word, more enveloping.
Enveloping represents a great opportunity for the future of our information society, but how can we ensure that we shall ripe its benefits? What could we do in order to identify, coordinate and foster the best enveloping trends? How could industry and society partnerships for research and innovation in ICT harness the envelopingprocess successfully? And what are the risks implicit in transforming the world into a progressively ICT-friendly environment? Are our technologies going to enable and empower us, or will they constrain our physical and conceptual spaces and force us to adjust to them because that is the best, or sometimes the only, way to make things work? These are challenging questions, which I hope my talk will contribute to clarify and answer.

Long Version
Luciano Floridi is Professor of Philosophy and UNESCO Chair in Information and Computer Ethics at the University of Hertfordshire, and Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford. His most recent books are: The Philosophy of Information (OUP, 2011), Information – A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2010), and The Cambridge Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics (CUP, 2010). In 2012 he received the both the Covey Award for “outstanding research in Computing and Philosophy” and the Weizenbaum Award, from the International Society for Ethics and Information Technology, for “significant contribution to the field of information and computer ethics, through his research, service, and vision”.

Short Version
Luciano Floridi is Professor of Philosophy and UNESCO Chair in Information and Computer Ethics at the University of Hertfordshire, and Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford.

Very Short Versions
Luciano Floridi, University of Hertfordshire and University of Oxford
Luciano Floridi, Hertfordshire and Oxford