Philosophy and Computing: An Introduction,9780415180245

Philosophy and Computing: An Introduction

by
ISBN13: 9780415180245
ISBN10: 0415180244
Format: Hardcover
Pub. Date: 1999-11-11
Publisher(s): Routledge
List Price: $183.75

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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

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