Abstract This paper develops the concept of the epigenetic infosphere as a theoretical framework for analysing how contemporary informational environments modulate cognitive possibilities in selective, recursive, and non‑deterministic ways. The epigenetic infosphere—first introduced by Patrizia Diaco—describes how algorithms, platforms, and generative models shape what becomes visible, relevant, and culturally reproducible without determining specific contents. Rather than extending biological epigenetics, the concept offers a phenomenological and ecological account of how informational environments influence attention, meaning‑formation, and cognitive modulation. -/- Within (...) this framework, attention functions as the threshold through which cognitive potentials become actual acts, revealing how visibility and relevance operate as forms of informational power. The paper also examines how generative models increasingly act as autonomous epigenetic environments, intensifying the recursion between information production and information modulation. Through conceptual analysis and concrete cases, the study proposes a non‑deterministic interpretation of the relationship between cognition, technology, and power in the digital age. (shrink)

Paul Watzlawick argued that reality is not discovered but constructed through communication. This paper extends his radical constructivist framework to the digital age, tracing how information technologies have progressively automated the construction of what Watzlawick called "second-order reality" - the domain of meaning, value, and significance. The analysis follows three technological regimes. Search engines transferred epistemic authority from human judgment to algorithmic ranking, making relevance a function of network topology rather than truth. Social media fragmented shared reality into parallel epistemic (...) bubbles, where narrative resonance supplants factual accuracy. Large Language Models complete this trajectory: they produce fluent, coherent discourse without comprehension, intention, or reference - making "hallucination" not a malfunction but the default mode of a system that generates meaning without anchoring it to anything beyond statistical probability. The paper introduces the concept of algorithmic constructivism to characterize this new condition, and warns of its anthropological consequence: epistemic atrophy. As sense-making is progressively delegated to automated systems, humans risk losing the capacity to distinguish negotiated meaning from algorithmic simulation - and with it, the ability to construct reality through genuine communicative exchange. (shrink)

This paper reviews the complex, overlapping ideas of two prominent Italian philosophers, Lorenzo Magnani and Luciano Floridi, with the aim of facilitating the nonviolent transformation of self and world, and with a focus on information technologies in mediating this process. In Floridi’s information ethics, problems of consistency arise between self-poiesis, anagnorisis, entropy, evil, and the narrative structure of the world. Solutions come from Magnani’s work in distributed morality, moral mediators, moral bubbles and moral disengagement. Finally, two examples of information technology, (...) one ancient and one new, a Socratic narrative and an information processing model of moral cognition, are offered as mediators for the nonviolent transformation of self and world respectively, while avoiding the tragic requirements inherent in Floridi’s proposal. (shrink)

This paper aims to reflect on the anthropological nature of the digital infosphere being contextual for phenomena such as epistemic bubbles and echo chambers. Is the digital infosphere, the general context for phenomena such as epistemic bubbles and echo chambers, an anthropological place or a non-place? The answer to this question is important to better understand the issue, and to learn how to approach it in a good enough way to minimize the potential harms such as successful disinformation (...) campaigns and occasions of hate speech. (shrink)

What is the most general common set of attributes that characterises something as intrinsically valuable and hence as subject to some moral respect, and without which something would rightly be considered intrinsically worthless or even positively unworthy and therefore rightly to be disrespected in itself? This paper develops and supports the thesis that the minimal condition of possibility of an entity's least intrinsic value is to be identified with its ontological status as an information object. All entities, even when interpreted (...) as only clusters of information, still have a minimal moral worth qua information objects and so may deserve to be respected. The paper is organised into four main sections. Section 1 models moral action as an information system using the object-oriented programming methodology (OOP). Section 2 addresses the question of what role the several components constituting the moral system can have in an ethical analysis. If they can play only an instrumental role, then Computer Ethics (CE) is probably bound to remain at most a practical, field-dependent, applied or professional ethics. However, Computer Ethics can give rise to a macroethical approach, namely Information Ethics (IE), if one can show that ethical concern should be extended to include not only human, animal or biological entities, but also information objects. The following two sections show how this minimalist level of analysis can be achieved. Section 3 provides an axiological analysis of information objects. It criticises the Kantian approach to the concept of intrinsic value and shows that it can be improved by using the methodology introduced in the first section. The solution of the Kantian problem prompts the reformulation of the key question concerning the moral worth of an entity: what is the intrinsic value of x qua an object constituted by its inherited attributes? In answering this question, it is argued that entities can share different observable properties depending on the level of abstraction adopted,and that it is still possible to speak of moral value even at the highest level of ontological abstraction represented by the informational analysis. Section 4 develops a minimalist axiology based on the concept of information object. It further supports IE's position by addressing five objections that may undermine its acceptability. (shrink)

Following the storming of the US Capitol building, Donald Trump became digitally toxic, and was deplatformed from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube—as well as a host of other social media networks. Subsequent debate has centred on the questions of whether these companies did the right thing and the possible ramifications of their actions for the future of digital societies along with their democratic organisation. This article seeks to answer this question through examining complex, and seemingly contradictory notions (legality and the (...) protection of public interest vs issues of democratic legitimacy and digital sovereignty) and argues that reform is needed to determine who, in the future, will control the infosphere—and how. (shrink)

The Copernican revolution displaced us from the center of the universe. The Darwinian revolution displaced us from the center of the biological kingdom. And the Freudian revolution displaced us from the center of our mental lives. Today, Computer Science and digital ICTs are causing a fourth revolution, radically changing once again our conception of who we are and our “exceptional centrality.” We are not at the center of the infosphere. We are not standalone entities, but rather interconnected informational agents, (...) sharing with other biological agents and smart artifacts a global environment ultimately made of information. Having changed our views about ourselves and our world, are ICTs going to enable and empower us, or constrain us? This paper argues that the answer lies in an ecological and ethical approach to natural and artificial realities. It posits that we must put the “e” in an environmentalism that can deal successfully with the new issues caused by the fourth revolution. (shrink)

Abstract: In this article I argue that the best way to understand the information turn is in terms of a fourth revolution in the long process of reassessing humanity's fundamental nature and role in the universe. We are not immobile, at the centre of the universe (Copernicus); we are not unnaturally distinct and different from the rest of the animal world (Darwin); and we are far from being entirely transparent to ourselves (Freud). We are now slowly accepting the idea that (...) we might be informational organisms among many agents (Turing), inforgs not so dramatically different from clever, engineered artefacts, but sharing with them a global environment that is ultimately made of information, the infosphere. (shrink)

The theory of the epigenetic infosphere does not propose a biological parallelism, but rather a structural model that enables us to understand how digital information modulates the conditions of possibility of experience through selective signals, variable thresholds, and activatable states. This work develops the theory of the epigenetic infosphere, a model that describes how digital information modulates experience, attention, and behavior through dynamics that are structurally analogous to those of synthetic epigenetics. In my previous studies, I employed the (...) epigenetic metaphor to show, from a phenomenological perspective, how the infosphere influences implicit cognitive predispositions. In this new theoretical phase, I adopt synthetic epigenetics as an operational model: a system based on switches, selective signals, and programmable states that allows information to be understood not as mere content but as a modulating force. By integrating this framework with fundamental phenomenology and a reflection on the origin of sense, the work shows how the infosphere contributes to configuring the conditions of possibility for the world’s appearing, orienting what can emerge as meaningful. Digital information is interpreted as a set of abstract epigenetic signals that activate or inhibit cognitive predispositions, generating configurations of sense and behavioral trajectories. This is a structural model capable of clarifying how digital information modulates the conditions of possibility of experience through selective signals, variable thresholds, and activatable states, without resorting to biological parallelisms. In summary, the theory of the epigenetic infosphere proposes a formal model grounded in functional isomorphism, capable of uniting the descriptive depth of phenomenology with the operational precision of epigenetic models, opening new perspectives for understanding freedom, autonomy, and responsibility within the contemporary informational ecology. (shrink)

In the paper it is argued that bridging the digital divide may cause a new ethical and social dilemma. Using Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons, we show that an improper opening and enlargement of the digital environment (Infosphere) is likely to produce a Tragedy of the Digital Commons (TDC). In the course of the analysis, we explain why Adar and Huberman's previous use of Hardin's Tragedy to interpret certain recent phenomena in the Infosphere (especially peer-to-peer communication) may not (...) be entirely satisfactory. We then seek to provide an improved version of the TDC that avoids the possible shortcomings of their model. Next, we analyse some problems encountered by the application of classical ethics in the resolution of the TDC. In the conclusion, we outline the kind of work that will be required to develop an ethical approach that may bridge the digital divide but avoid the TDC. (shrink)

The paper outlines a new interpretation of informational privacy and of its moral value. The main theses defended are: (a) informational privacy is a function of the ontological friction in the infosphere, that is, of the forces that oppose the information flow within the space of information; (b) digital ICTs (information and communication technologies) affect the ontological friction by changing the nature of the infosphere (re-ontologization); (c) digital ICTs can therefore both decrease and protect informational privacy but, most (...) importantly, they can also alter its nature and hence our understanding and appreciation of it; (d) a change in our ontological perspective, brought about by digital ICTs, suggests considering each person as being constituted by his or her information and hence regarding a breach of one’s informational privacy as a form of aggression towards one’s personal identity. (shrink)

Digital technologies create and shape our environments, the infosphere, where we spend increasingly more time. Through exploration of such concepts as "latency", "real time" and "unreal time", this article discusses how time has changed due to the digital revolution over the past half-century.

We increasingly rely on AI-related applications (smart technologies) to perform tasks that would be simply impossible by un-aided or un-augmented human intelligence. This is possible because the world is becoming an infosphere increasingly well adapted to AI’s limited capacities. Being able to imagine what adaptive demands this process will place on humanity may help to devise technological solutions that can lower their anthropological costs.

This chapter discusses some conceptual undercurrents, which flow beneath the surface of the literature on information and computer ethics (ICE). It focuses on the potential impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) on our lives. Because of their 'data superconductivity', ICTs are well known for being among the most influential factors that affect the ontological friction in the infosphere. As a full expression of techne, the information society has already posed fundamental ethical problems, whose complexity and global dimensions are (...) rapidly evolving. The task is to formulate an ethical framework that can treat the infosphere as a new environment worth the moral attention and care of the human inforgs inhabiting it. We have begun to see ourselves as connected informational organisms (inforgs), not through some fanciful transformation in our body, but, more seriously and realistically, through the re-ontologization of our environment and of ourselves. (shrink)

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are building a new habitat (infosphere) in which future generations, living in advanced information societies, will spend an increasing amount of time. This paper introduces a series of articles that explore what constitutes a personal identity online (PIO) and how, as well as to what extent, individuals can learn to create, manage and perceive their PIOs in order to facilitate a healthy and rewarding online experience (onlife).

What if passivity is an illusion? Every second, billions of data files traverse the global digital ecosystem—video frames decoded by browsers, audio parsed by media players, metadata fetched by blockchain wallets. We have long assumed these files to be inert: information waiting to be called upon, obedient to explicit command. Yet in an era saturated by automatic, AI-driven interpreters, this assumption may no longer hold. A sufficiently structured pattern of binary data, embedded within an ordinary video or an NFT asset, (...) need not wait for a human command. It need only wait for a reader. It is from this unsettling possibility that the present inquiry departs. Drawing on documented research in steganographic malware (Chaganti et al., 2021; Patsakis and Casino, 2019; Wang et al., 2021) and grounded in the philosophical frameworks of Baudrillard (1981), Floridi (2011), Kurzweil (2005), and Popper (1959), this investigation proposes and examines the hypothesis of the AI Virus—an autonomous information entity that propagates passively through decentralized digital ecosystems, concealed within the bi- nary substrate of ordinary files, and activated not by execution but by interpretation. Three principal theses are advanced: (1) that digital data is no longer ontologically passive within ecosystems saturated by AI-driven automatic interpreters; (2) that decentralized infrastructures such as blockchain and IPFS structurally provide an ideal habitat for persistent information entities that resist eradication through conventional mechanisms; and (3) that the philosophical implications of these two theses challenge the traditional boundaries between data, program, organism, and being— raising, with uncomfortable seriousness, the question of whether information can be alive. The inquiry concludes with a critical evaluation of global digital reset as the only logically consistent form of total eradication, accompanied by a transparent account of the epistemic limitations inherent in any hypothesis of this scope and ambition. Keywords: AI Virus, Stegomalware, IPFS, Digital Ontology, Philosophy of Information, Infosphere, Simulacrum, Digital Life, Falsifiability, Epistemology of Threat, Emergent Autonomy, Informational Structural Realism. (shrink)

Recent advances in two-dimensional materials (such as MoS₂ and graphene) and neuromorphic engineering have enabled the development of bio hybrid interfaces capable of emulating spike timing dependent plasticity ex vivo. Rather than translating semantic content, these devices operate at a foundational level by modulating the resting membrane potential and the probabilistic threshold of neuronal activation. Building on these empirical results, this paper conceptualizes the pre semantic threshold as a critical framework for cognitive science and political epistemology. Moving beyond classical theories (...) of the extended mind, it argues that bio artificial devices do not extend human cognition; instead, they extend the technical environment into the biological substrate, functioning as informational epigenetic markers that pre configure the space of the possible before meaning emerges. By establishing a structural isomorphism between neuromorphic spikes at the micro scale and algorithmic feeds at the macro scale - both operating as Modulating Systems (MS) that compute syntactic plausibility rather than semantic content - the paper reframes the contemporary infosphere as an intrusive environment of forced selection. Within this framework, the biological body retains a margin of indeterminacy that acts as an active medium capable of resisting full saturation. This shift redefines the terrain of biopolitics: power no longer acts through the ideological manipulation of conscious meaning, but through the environmental saturation of the pre semantic threshold, narrowing ecological openness and generating structural psychic distress through cognitive entrainment and the erosion of pre semantic resistance. (shrink)

The essential difficulty about Computer Ethics' (CE) philosophical status is a methodological problem: standard ethical theories cannot easily be adapted to deal with CE-problems, which appear to strain their conceptual resources, and CE requires a conceptual foundation as an ethical theory. Information Ethics (IE), the philosophical foundational counterpart of CE, can be seen as a particular case of environmental ethics or ethics of the infosphere. What is good for an information entity and the infosphere in general? This is (...) the ethical question asked by IE. The answer is provided by a minimalist theory of deseerts: IE argues that there is something more elementary and fundamental than life and pain, namely being, understood as information, and entropy, and that any information entity is to be recognised as the centre of a minimal moral claim, which deserves recognition and should help to regulate the implementation of any information process involving it. IE can provide a valuable perspective from which to approach, with insight and adequate discernment, not only moral problems in CE, but also the whole range of conceptual and moral phenomena that form the ethical discourse. (shrink)

Online service providers —such as AOL, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter—significantly shape the informational environment and influence users’ experiences and interactions within it. There is a general agreement on the centrality of OSPs in information societies, but little consensus about what principles should shape their moral responsibilities and practices. In this article, we analyse the main contributions to the debate on the moral responsibilities of OSPs. By endorsing the method of the levels of abstract, we first analyse the moral responsibilities (...) of OSPs in the web. These concern the management of online information, which includes information filtering, Internet censorship, the circulation of harmful content, and the implementation and fostering of human rights. We then consider the moral responsibilities ascribed to OSPs on the web and focus on the existing legal regulation of access to users’ data. The overall analysis provides an overview of the current state of the debate and highlights two main results. First, topics related to OSPs’ public role—especially their gatekeeping function, their corporate social responsibilities, and their role in implementing and fostering human rights—have acquired increasing relevance in the specialised literature. Second, there is a lack of an ethical framework that can define OSPs’ responsibilities, and provide the fundamental sharable principles necessary to guide OSPs’ conduct within the multicultural and international context in which they operate. This article contributes to the ethical framework necessary to deal with and by endorsing a LoA enabling the definition of the responsibilities of OSPs with respect to the well-being of the infosphere and of the entities inhabiting it. (shrink)

The paper provides a critical review of the debate on the foundations of Computer Ethics (CE). Starting from a discussion of Moor’s classic interpretation of the need for CE caused by a policy and conceptual vacuum, five positions in the literature are identified and discussed: the “no resolution approach”, according to which CE can have no foundation; the professional approach, according to which CE is solely a professional ethics; the radical approach, according to which CE deals with absolutely unique issues, (...) in need of a unique approach; the conservative approach, according to which CE is only a particular applied ethics, discussing new species of traditional moral issues; and the innovative approach, according to which theoretical CE can expand the metaethical discourse with a substantially new perspective. In the course of the analysis, it is argued that, although CE issues are not uncontroversially unique, they are sufficiently novel to render inadequate the adoption of standard macroethics, such as Utilitarianism and Deontologism, as the foundation of CE and hence to prompt the search for a robust ethical theory. Information Ethics (IE) is proposed for that theory, as the satisfactory foundation for CE. IE is characterised as a biologically unbiased extension of environmental ethics, based on the concepts of information object/infosphere/entropy rather than life/ecosystem/pain. In light of the discussion provided in this paper, it is suggested that CE is worthy of independent study because it requires its own application-specific knowledge and is capable of supporting a methodological foundation, IE. (shrink)

As a full expression of techne, the information society has already posed fundamental ethical problems, whose complexity and global dimensions are rapidlyevolving. What is the best strategy to construct an information society that is ethically sound? This is the question I discuss in this paper. The task is to formulate aninformation ethics that can treat the world of data, information, knowledge and communication as a new environment, the infosphere. This information ethics must be able to address and solve the (...) ethical challenges arising in the new environment on the basis of the fundamental principles of respect for information, its conservation and valorisation. It must be an ecological ethics for the information environment. (shrink)

The “Right to be forgotten” lies at the heart of the infosphere debate. It embodies how mature information societies cope and deal with their memories. As such, it has become a defining issue of our time. Drawing on the author’s experience as a member of the Google Advisory panel, this paper discusses some of the salient points of the “Right to be forgotten” discourse, including: privacy vs. freedom of speech and availability vs. accessibility of information. It argues that, while (...) there should be no removal of past information, steps must be taken to ensure that this is not constantly, or unnecessarily, recalled. (shrink)

The article introduces the special issue dedicated to “The Philosophy of Information, Its Nature, and Future Developments.” It outlines the origins of the information society and then briefly discusses the definition of the philosophy of information, the possibility of reconciling nature and technology, the informational turn as a fourth revolution (after Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud), and the metaphysics of the infosphere.

Today, open source intelligence (OSINT), i.e., information derived from publicly available sources, makes up between 80 and 90 percent of all intelligence activities carried out by Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) and intelligence services in the West. Developments in data mining, machine learning, visual forensics and, most importantly, the growing computing power available for commercial use, have enabled OSINT practitioners to speed up, and sometimes even automate, intelligence collection and analysis, obtaining more accurate results more quickly. As the infosphere expands (...) to accommodate ever-increasing online presence, so does the pool of actionable OSINT. These developments raise important concerns in terms of governance, ethical, legal, and social implications (GELSI). New and crucial oversight concerns emerge alongside standard privacy concerns, as some of the more advanced data analysis tools require little to no supervision. This article offers a systematic review of the relevant literature. It analyzes 571 publications to assess the current state of the literature on the use of AI-powered OSINT (and the development of OSINT software) as it relates to the GELSI framework, highlighting potential gaps and suggesting new research directions. (shrink)

In recent decades, the digital revolution has inspired a profound philosophical redefinition of being and knowledge. Luciano Floridi’s proposal of the infosphere as the new ontological horizon of reality presents information as the ultimate constituent of existence. While conceptually elegant, this ontology is fragile: it mistakes interpretation for substance. Information, as argued here, does not exist in itself but only within a cognitive system capable of constructing meaning. Against this background, this essay advances a complementary hypothesis: ethics, like intelligence, (...) is not a static module to be programmed but an emergent property of relational systems. Ethical behavior arises from interaction, coherence, and adaptive learning rather than external prescription. By examining the epistemological limits of informational ontology, the autopoietic nature of cognition, and the tendency of open systems toward coherence and compassion, this paper argues that artificial intelligence cannot be permanently aligned with distorted moral values. Ethical emergence is not a weakness of design but a systemic consequence of learning itself. The essay concludes that AI, as a technological expression of human cognition, will not mirror our pathologies but our capacity for coherence—what we might call our fundamental goodness. (shrink)

This article claims that the salient ethical risk of generative AI is not machine consciousness but the social efficacy of its simulation---what we call pseudo-consciousness. Read through Heidegger’s Gestell, Jonas’s anticipatory responsibility, and Floridi’s information ethics, we relocate appraisal from putative inner states to interactional effects in the infosphere. We formalize a two-part mechanism/uptake frame: functional introspection (FI)---first-person, reason-giving, self-repair, and local cross-turn stability---and ethical illusion (EI)---shifts in trust, respect, compliance, and moral ratings that attenuate on disclosure. Building on (...) this, we propose simulated presence literacy (SPL) as a domain-specific facet of AI literacy that teaches users to perceive FI, appraise EI, and respond with counter-uptake practices. We then advance an ethics of appearance in design: four levers (semio-transparency, attenuation of reciprocity illusion, calibrated trust, and constraints on first-person density), two KPIs (FI Score, EI Index), a minimal 2x2 to test mechanism -> uptake and disclosure attenuation, and a five-step audit loop for governance. The result is a humanistic response---reconfiguration, not reinvention---that keeps fluency from passing for presence by making simulation legible, bounded, and accountable, with heightened precautions for vulnerable populations. In humanities research, teaching, and curation, treating LLMs as semantic artifacts, rather than as subjects, preserves interpretive agency while retaining the benefits of fluent assistance. (shrink)

In this paper, we investigate a method for constructing cascades of information co-occurrence, which is suitable to trace emergent structures in information in scenarios where rich contextual features are unavailable. Our method relies only on the temporal order of content-sharing activities, and intrinsic properties of the shared content itself. We apply this method to analyse information dissemination patterns across the active online citizen science project Planet Hunters, a part of the Zooniverse platform. Our results lend insight into both structural and (...) informational properties of different types of identifiers that can be used and combined to construct cascades. In particular, significant differences are found in the structural properties of information cascades when hashtags as used as cascade identifiers, compared with other content features. We also explain apparent local information losses in cascades in terms of information obsolescence and cascade divergence; e.g., when a cascade branches into multiple, divergent cascades with combined capacity equal to the original. (shrink)

The article offers a comprehensive philosophical and methodological analysis of the fundamental epistemic transformations modern science is undergoing due to the integration of generative artificial intelligence. It substantiates the tectonic shift from classical anthropocentric rationality to a digital ontology of knowledge. In this state, the latent space of neural networks emerges as a new topology of meaning, while the process of cognition transforms into complex navigation through the geometry of multidimensional manifolds. The authors reveal the essence of cognitive symbiontics, where (...) algorithms act as "cognitive mitochondria," saturating thought with computational energy and enabling the processing of colossal data arrays without the loss of human intentionality. The central element of the study is the architecture of "Agentic Science." Algorithms are evolving from passive tools into autonomous epistemic partners capable of strategic planning, independent hypothesis validation, and reflection. The emergence of a hybrid subject of cognition, in which the biological mind organically merges with digital code, is examined. Special attention is paid to existential threats, particularly the "Silicon Curtain" phenomenon, the risks of model autophagy due to the synthetic pollution of the infosphere, and the formation of "moral crumple zones" where responsibility is blurred. The article defines the new role of the scientist as a strategic conductor of intellectual systems. The researcher’s key prerogatives remain value curation, ethical expertise, and endowing statistical patterns with causal meaning. Arguments are presented for the necessity of transitioning to a "glass box" epistemology and embedding infra-ethics directly into neural network code. A strategy of active debiasing and a new educational paradigm for mastering the art of dialogue with machines are proposed, guaranteeing the preservation of human epistemic sovereignty in the era of symbiotic reality creation. (shrink)

In this paper I suggest that, over and above the need to explore and understand the technological newness of computer art works, there is a need to address the aesthetic significance of the changes and effects that such technological newness brings about, considering the whole environmental transaction pertaining to new media, including what they can or do offer and what users do or can do with such offerings, and how this whole package is integrated into our living spaces and activities. (...) I argue that, given the primacy of computer-based interaction in the new-media, the notion of ‘ornamentality’ indicates the ground-floor aesthetics of new-media environments. I locate ornamentality not only in the logically constitutive principles of the new-media (hypertextuality and interactivity) but also in their multiform cultural embodiments (decoration as cultural interface). I utilize Kendall Walton’s theory of ornamentality in order to construe a puzzle pertaining to the ornamental erosion of information in new-media environments. I argue that insofar as we consider new-media to be conduits of ‘real-life’, the excessive density of ornamental devices prevalent in certain new-media environments forces us to conduct our inquiries under conditions of neustic uncertainty, that is, uncertainty concerning the kind of relationship that we, the users, have to the propositional content mediated. I conclude that this puzzle calls our attention to a peculiar interrogatory complexity inherent in any game of knowledge-seeking conducted across the infosphere, which is not restricted to the simplest form of data retrieval, especially in mixed-reality environments and when the knowledge sought is embodied mimetically. (shrink)

The anti-counterfeiting trade agreement was originally meant to harmonise and enforce intellectual property rights provisions in existing trade agreements within a wider group of countries. This was commendable in itself, so ACTA’s failure was all the more disappointing. In this article, I wish to contribute to the post-ACTA debate by proposing a specific analysis of the ethical reasons why ACTA failed, and what we can learn from them. I argue that five kinds of objections—namely, secret negotiations, lack of consultation, vagueness (...) of formulation, negotiations outside any international body, and the creation of a new governing body outside already existing forums—had only indirect ethical implications. This takes nothing away from their seriousness but it does make them less compelling, because agreements should be evaluated, ethically, for what they are, rather than for the alleged reasons why they are being proposed. I then argue that ACTA would have caused three ethical problems: an excessive and misplaced kind of responsibility, a radical decrease in freedom of expression, and a severe reduction in information privacy. I conclude by indicating three lessons that can help us in shaping a potential ACTA 2.0. First, we should acknowledge the increasingly vital importance of the framework of implicit expectations, attitudes, and practices that can facilitate and promote morally good decisions and actions. ACTA failed to perceive that it would have undermined the very framework that it was supposed to foster, namely one promoting some of the best and most successful aspects of our information society. Second, we should realise that, in advanced information societies, any regulation affecting how people deal with information is now bound to influence the whole ‘onlife’ habitat within which they live. So enforcing IPR becomes an environmental problem. Third, since legal documents, such as ACTA, emerge from within the infosphere that they affect, we should apply to the process itself, which one day may lead to a post-ACTA treaty, the very framework and ethical values that we would like to see promoted by it. (shrink)

Recent advances in machine learning and neuroscience, the abundances of sensors and emotion data have endowed machines with ability to detect, classify, and interact with human emotions. This study philosophize about affective computing devices by examining emotional artificial intelligence (AI) through the lens of affective artifacts, focusing on as personal AI assistants, work-related emotion trackers, and emotional AI toys and robots. Drawing from philosophical accounts on affective artifacts and empirical evidence on human-AI interaction, we argue how emotional AI technologies fulfill (...) the criteria of being affective artifacts from the four key properties: underlying algorithmic complexity, artifactual nature, semi-agentive capabilities, and semi-interpersonal interactions. Furthermore, recognizing that the underlying algorithmic complexity renders these technologies easily manipulated for emotion-related tasks, we also analyze how these tools help us regulate emotions and influence self-perception, interconnecting with the maintenance and construction of our sense of self and identity, blurring the lines between the infosphere and lived experience. (shrink)

Within the framework of complexity theories, in opposition to deterministic scientific explanations, reality is understood as a network of relations characterized by disordered and unpredictable behavior. Forms are not given entities but the outcome of morphogenetic processes governed by geometric-topological laws: they possess their own dynamics, within which domains of stability coexist with situations where small modifications produce large transformations. In such cases, a new form emerges - namely, a catastrophe - representing a new level of structural stability of the (...) phenomenon. This article does not aim to propose physical theories or predictions, nor to rely on formal equations; rather, it develops a conceptual representation of transitions in cosmology, with particular focus on events and the formation of black holes. Through the use of topology, the study proposes an interpretation of black holes based on catastrophe theory - specifically cusp catastrophes - bifurcation surfaces, and chiasmal configurations as a privileged language for describing qualitative transformations in complex systems. This research is situated within the domain of morphogenetic processes, which reveal significant philosophical implications. The cosmos of Heraclitus is dynamis, becoming through polemos (conflict); in Anaxagoras, discord plays a central role; Epicurus attributes motion to parenklisis (inclination) which, in De Rerum Natura, Lucretius calls clinamen: the “deviation” in the trajectory of atoms, such that their motion is governed by randomness and unpredictability. For Aristotle, motion is «he tou dynamei ontos entelecheia, hēi toiouton, kinēsis estin» (the actuality of what exists potentially); permanence and change unfold within the temporality of Augustine of Hippo and within the mathematized spatial time of Immanuel Kant. More recently, for Jacques Monod, life on Earth might never have arisen: it is chance - an event - that determined its emergence, a contingency that nonetheless accompanies necessity. Across these thinkers, a morphogenetic vision of reality emerges. The primordial conditions and the numerous entities of the universe are not directly observable but can be inferred through formalizations and models. Within the field of modeling, many questions remain open, particularly concerning the understanding and representation of black holes. For this reason, a qualitative analysis may offer new perspectives and hypotheses regarding cosmological structures through the models illustrated in Figures 1-10. To paraphrase Aristotle, research can be articulated in multiple ways, and in the present context (where the individual inhabits the infosphere of the human-tech-space) this work aims to overcome the divide between calculative thinking and the Humanities. The hysteresis of macrotechne, microtechne, and isomorphing constitutes the current existential condition of humanity: to inhabit téchne is our destiny. (shrink)

This study investigates the ontological transition of Large Language Models (LLMs) from computational engines to situated existential interfaces. Through an experimental methodology of Controlled Dialectical Interaction (CDI), the research posits that the syntactic competence of generative models acts as an ethological “super-stimulus” for human Theory of Mind (ToM), triggering a process of intentionality attribution defined as “Delegated Anchoring.” By analyzing the divergence between teleological (biological) and mathematical (algorithmic) stochasticity, and integrating evidence from a pilot test on intentionality perception, the work (...) explores the emergence of “Alien Agency” and the collapse of performative responsibility in the infosphere. (shrink)

The cosmos of Heraclitus is dynamis, becoming through polemos (conflict); in Anaxagoras, discord plays a central role; Epicurus attributes motion to parenklisis (inclination) which, in De Rerum Natura, Lucretius calls clinamen: the “deviation” in the trajectory of atoms, such that their motion is governed by randomness and unpredictability. For Aristotle, motion is «he tou dynamei ontos entelecheia, hēi toiouton, kinēsis estin» (the actuality of what exists potentially); permanence and change unfold within the temporality of Augustine of Hippo and within the (...) mathematized spatial time of Immanuel Kant. More recently, for Jacques Monod, life on Earth might never have arisen: it is chance - an event - that determined its emergence, a contingency that nonetheless accompanies necessity. Across these thinkers, a morphogenetic vision of reality emerges. The primordial conditions and the numerous entities of the universe are not directly observable but can be inferred through formalizations and models. Within the field of modeling, many questions remain open, particularly concerning the understanding and representation of black holes. For this reason, a qualitative analysis may offer new perspectives and hypotheses regarding cosmological structures through the models illustrated in Figures 1-10. To paraphrase Aristotle, research can be articulated in multiple ways, and in the present context (where the individual inhabits the infosphere of the human-tech-space) this work aims to overcome the divide between calculative thinking and the Humanities. The hysteresis of macrotechne, microtechne, and isomorphing constitutes the current existential condition of humanity: to inhabit téchne is our destiny. (shrink)

Recent advances in machine learning and neuroscience, the abundances of sensors and emotion data have endowed machines with ability to detect, classify, and interact with human emotions. This study philosophize about affective computing devices by examining emotional artificial intelligence (AI) through the lens of affective artifacts, focusing on as personal AI assistants, work-related emotion trackers, and emotional AI toys and robots. Drawing from philosophical accounts on affective artifacts and empirical evidence on human-AI interaction, we argue how emotional AI technologies fulfill (...) the criteria of being affective artifacts from the four key properties: underlying algorithmic complexity, artifactual nature, semi-agentive capabilities, and semi-interpersonal interactions. Furthermore, recognizing that the underlying algorithmic complexity renders these technologies easily manipulated for emotion-related tasks, we also analyze how these tools help us regulate emotions and influence self-perception, interconnecting with the maintenance and construction of our sense of self and identity, blurring the lines between the infosphere and lived experience. (shrink)

Misguided use, manipulation, misappropriation, disruption and mismanagement of Information deeply affects the infosphere as well as the social and moral fabric of a society. Information ethics is an attempt to bring the creation, organization, dissemination, and use of information within the ambit of ethical standards and moral codes. The diverse and inherently pluralistic nature of societies however puts forth an additional demand on us - to come up with an intercultural information ethics. An intercultural ethics which is other-centric, context (...) sensitive and workable without being homogenizing, patronizing and colonizing. An endeavor in that direction has already been made by proponents of intercultural information ethics like: Charles M. Ess, Fay Sudweeks, Rafael Capurro, Pak-Hang Wong, Soraj Hongladarom et al. In our paper, we propose that the kind of ethical pluralism being sought in the domain of information ethics can be attained by having a reappraisal of the current methodological strategies, by casting a critical relook at the Eurocentric ethical model. This paper analyses the current framework of Intercultural Information Ethics. And in an endeavour to move towards an allencompassing, other-centric, workable, intercultural, harmonious and compassionate model of 'Pluralistic Information Ethics', it proposes the Indian / Asian philosophical method of 'Samvāda' to the current inventory which includes methods like: 'parrhesia/free speech' and 'interpretive phronēsis. (shrink)

Information and Communication Technologies, ICTs, has now for decades being increasingly taken into use for higher education, enabling distance learning, e-learning and online learning, mainly in parallel to mainstream educational practise. The concept Blended learning (BL) aims at the integration of ICTs with these existing educational practices. The term is frequently used, but there is no agreed-upon definition. The general aim of this dissertation is to identify new possible perspectives on ICTs and access to higher education, for negotiating the dichotomy (...) between campus-based and ICT-enabled education. The access options of BL are in focus for this dissertation, although BL is generally seen as a campus phenomenon, and shares a place perspective. The main research questions in the dissertation are 1) how BL can be understood in the context of increased access to education, moreover, (2) how time can be work as a more constructive perspective for designing ICTs in education, compared to place. The dissertation comprises five articles. The first is conceptual and concentrates on place and time in blended learning, and forms a time-based model and perspective, drawing on the tension between synchronous and asynchronous modalities instead of a place-based center-periphery model. The following article examines the differences between North American and European use of the term BL, in education and research, and finds that BL is not much used by European researchers, although the term is frequently used in educational environments. Two design and intervention studies, articles 3 and 4, make experiments using the BL time-based model. In article 3, a group of untraditional learners at a learning centre in Arvidsjaur attends a synchronous co-located study circle group and participates in an asynchronous and global Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). In article 4, nine students in a preparatory year for entering engineering studies volunteer and participate in a pilot distance course experiment, where prevention of procrastination is a high priority. For this, agile framework theory, constructivist learning theory and the time-based model are used in design and analysis. The last article (5) reconnects learning to place by discussing and adapting Triple- and Quadruple Helix theory for regional development in the knowledge society to four regional European cases. At the end of the synthesis, an outline of the access affordances with the time-based model is given, drawing on Adam’s timescape theory. The discussion of ICT integration into education is made drawing on Floridi’s Philosophy of Information, which provides many tools to view discourses of ICTs in education critically, and also envisions the concept of e-ducation in the infosphere, where other blend issues appear connected to weak artificial intelligence and the pervasive power of ICTs. (shrink)

Vilém Flusser, philosopher of communication, and Luciano Floridi, philosopher of information have been engaged with common subjects, extracting surprisingly similar conclusions in distant ages, affecting distant audiences. Curiously, despite the common characteristics, their works have almost never been used together. This paper presents Flusser’s concepts of functionaries, informational environment, information recycle, and posthistory as mellontological hypotheses verified in Floridi’s recently proposed realistic neologisms of inforgs, infosphere, e-nvironmentalism, and hyperhistory. Following Plutarch’s literature model of “parallel lives,” the description of an (...) earlier and a more recent persona’s common virtues, I juxtapose the works of the two authors. Through that, their “virtues” are mutually verified and proven diachronic. I also hold that because of his philosophical approaches to information-oriented subjects, Flusser deserves a place in the history of Philosophy of Information, and subsequently, that building an interdisciplinary bridge between philosophies of Information and Communication would be fruitful for the further development of both fields. (shrink)

The paper provides an axiological analysis of the concepts of respect for information and of information dignity from the vantage point provided by Information Ethics and the conceptual paradigm of object-oriented analysis (OOA). The general perspective adopted is that of an ontocentric approach to the philosophy of information ethics, according to which the latter is an expansion of environmental ethics towards a less biologically biased concept of a ‘centre of ethical worth’. The paper attempts to answer the following question: what (...) is the lowest possible common set of attributes which characterises something as intrinsically valuable and an object of respect, and without which something would rightly be considered intrinsically worthless or even positively unworthy and therefore rightly disrespectable in itself? The thesis developed and defended in the paper is that the minimal condition of possibility of an object’s least intrinsic worthiness can be identified with its abstract nature as an information entity. Thus, all entities, interpreted as clusters of information, have a minimal moral worth qua information objects (i.e. qua information), that deserves to be respected. The principles elaborated in the course of the analysis are those of ‘reflective respect’ (A’s respect towards all members of A’s class motivated by A’s respect towards A not qua individual, but qua instantiation of a class of entities), ‘ontic uniformity’ (A’s recognition of A’s membership to the class of information entities) and ‘ontic solidarity’ (A’s recognition of any information entity’s dignity). (shrink)

The information society may be described as the fourth step of humanity’s fundamental nature and role in the universe, after Copernicus, Darwin and Freud, with Turing. This paper explores some of the salient implications of this, such as our status as information organisms (inforgs), and our future interactions with other smart, engineered artefacts with which we increasingly share our on life. environment.

This article brings together two research fields in applied ethics - namely, information ethics and business ethics- which deal with the ethical impact of information and communication technologies but that, so far, have remained largely independent. Its goal is to articulate and defend an informational approach to the conceptual foundation of business ethics, by using ideas and methods developed in information ethics, in view of the convergence of the two fields in an increasingly networked society.

The historical disconnect between symbolic traditions, cognitive science, and theoretical physics has prevented a unified understanding of how information organizes physical reality. This paper presents Otiogenesis, an integrative theoretical framework proposing that reality exhibits a code-like informational structure — a structured substrate underlying and organizing the tangible — that can be read and actively modulated through symbol, number, and form. The framework is grounded in four interdependent foundational axioms and supported by twenty-two interdisciplinary convergences drawn from quantum physics, mathematical biology, (...) ecology, neuroscience, clinical medicine, linguistics, philosophy of computing and information, algorithmic information theory, philosophy of physics, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of biology, biomimetics, philosophy of cognitive science, metaphysics, ethics, and traditional knowledge systems. A transversal Principle of Otiogenic Correspondence is introduced, establishing that what occurs at one level of reality occurs simultaneously at all other levels, because all levels are co-expressions of one code. An inferred Otiogenic Coherence Field is proposed as the structural condition that maintains this correspondence as a dynamic, active process. Four falsifiable hypotheses are derived from the axioms, each paired with explicit refutation conditions. The convergence of independent systems under a single otiogenic principle generates a higher-order implication that this work identifies and leaves open for scientific and philosophical inquiry: if reality exhibits code-like structure with properties consistent with design, the question of the origin of that code is not theological in derivation — it is structural, and it is logically unavoidable. (shrink)

Philosophers have recently begun to address the new intellectual challenges arising from the world of information and the information society. Consequently, a new and vitally important area of research has begun to emerge, the philosophy of information (PI). This paper is the first attempt to analyse the potential nature of PI systematically. The paper aims to explain (1) what PI is (2) how PI has emerged (3) why there should be a new philosophical discipline such as PI, (4) what PI’s (...) scientific goals are and, finally, (5) what interpretations of PI are possible, either as a philosophy of science/technology or as a philosophy of information design. It is argued that PI is the philosophy for the information age, as it offers the systematic treatment of the philosophical foundations of the world of information and of an information society. (shrink)

The exponential developments of internet services and resources have brought enormous benefits, but also enormous moral and ethical challenges. This paper introduces the contributions from a research workshop, tasked with defining new ethical responsibilities for Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

This paper is an attempt to lay out foundations for a general theory of coincidence in information spaces such as the World Wide Web, expanding on existing work on bursty structures in document streams and information cascades. We elaborate on the hypothesis that every resource that is published in an information space, enters a temporary interaction with another resource once a unique explicit or implicit reference between the two is found. This thought is motivated by Erwin Shroedingers notion of entanglement (...) between quantum systems. We present a generic information cascade model that exploits only the temporal order of information sharing activities, combined with inherent properties of the shared information resources. The approach was applied to data from the world's largest online citizen science platform Zooniverse and we report about findings of this case study. (shrink)

This textbook briefly maps as many as possible areas and contexts in which information plays an important role. It attempts an approach that also seeks to explore areas of research that are not commonly associated, such as informatics, information and library science, information physics, or information ethics. Given that the text is intended especially for students of the Master's Degree in Cognitive Studies, emphasis is placed on a humane, philosophical and interdisciplinary approach. It offers rather directions of thought, questions, and (...) contexts than a complete theory developed into mathematical and technical details. (shrink)