How do new philosophical ideas develop? Their emergence seems to be akin to economic innovation. For when the economist Joseph Schumpeter adapted the idea of “creative destruction” to interpret economic innovation, he might as well have been talking about intellectual development. Philosophy is like the phoenix: it flourishes by constantly regenerating itself, from its own ashes.
Nowadays, the pulling force of our intellectual innovation is represented by the complex world of information, new technologies to manage and interpret it and the new social, cultural and even existential questions that arise from it.
What is developing is really a philosophy of information: a new philosophical discipline that, like other fundamental philosophical areas working on concepts such as knowledge or morality, is interlinked with other ideas.
The philosophy of information may be new and therefore, as an academic discipline, it is only starting to be defined – but it is already all around us.
The growth of the information society has created an “infosphere”, an environment in which millions of people spend their time nowadays.
Perhaps the easiest way to understand it is to think of the internet – millions of people rely upon it for ideas, for news, for entertainment, for community. All of this is information, yet there is little understanding of what “information” actually is.
Of course, the philosophy of information goes far beyond the internet – it covers all types of information, the technology that underpins them and what people do with that information – but that is a useful shorthand.
In recent years, the philosophy of information has gone from strength to strength. Gone are the days when one had to explain what it was and why it mattered. Today, I meet students who refer to the philosophy of information as if it were obvious that this is the topic they study and research, and why it is interesting. They are right.
The number of projects, centres and people developing new ideas in the philosophy of information keeps growing. I am not surprised. It is a popular subject. And I find this reassuring. It means that there is hope.
We are surrounded by fake news, mad politicians and irresponsible demagogues. By misinformation about the future, scaremongering warnings about technological sci-fi scenarios, and ignorance, obscurantism, populism of all kinds. Inequality, intolerance and anti-globalism are turning into anti-cosmopolitanism.
The four pillars of our societies – peace, tolerance, freedom and justice – are constantly challenged by new incarnations of old fascisms and fundamentalisms.
After the Second World War, many new “beginnings” – of widespread education, of better standards of living, of more peaceful cohabitation, of safer, healthier and longer lives, of more democratic systems – made our philosophical culture complacent and disengaged.
At the end of the last century many “ends” – of dictatorship in several countries, of Soviet communism, of apartheid, of the Cold War – made us lower our intellectual guard.
We thought that the Enlightenment’s mission had been accomplished, or was soon going to be. We were wrong. And we have now been knocked down, even in some of the most liberal and democratic corners of the world. We must stand up again and resume the Herculean fight against the hydra of our worst inclinations and temptations.
Clearly we need a massive dose of good philosophy to redress the situation. And we need it now.
But what should philosophy today be if not a philosophy of information? Information societies are being cobbled together without a plan. There is a huge deficit of ideas and values. We are doing things without thinking first – and sometimes without even thinking after.
“Fail fast, fail often” has become a strategy and a social policy. Its costs are immense. And some may even be irreversible.
We need clear, innovative and audacious thinking about all sorts of issues to transform the current, frustrating sickness into a healthy growing pain.
We need philosophy at its best, as conceptual design: to grasp the essence of our current challenges and propose well-informed, cogent solutions.
Examples abound. We need to reinstate a culture of knowledge and polite, informed and tolerant dialogue. We must understand how mature information societies can improve on the Westphalian system of nation states to cope with global challenges that have outstripped any single nation’s reach.
We have to revisit the architecture of human rights, to make privacy, security and freedom of speech compatible with each other within the infosphere.
We should update our views about human nature and dignity in light of new forms of artificial agency. We must create democratic mechanisms to build and maintain pluralistic consensus. Above all we need to think carefully and proactively about what human project we want to pursue. I am sure each reader can easily expand this list.
People often complain that everything is moving too fast to be planned or regulated. But the problem is not the pace of historical changes: if we are going in the right direction we would like to get there as quickly as possible. The real problem is the direction of change. The faster we move into the future the more we need to plan and control very skilfully where we are going.
This is exciting. But there is no time to waste. And we cannot indulge in irrelevant theorising.
Our philosophy of information must include all the informational issues that are shaping our world, our understanding of it and our interactions with it.
But it must be applicable to the real world. Like basic research in medicine, good philosophy is realistic, concrete and translatable into applicable solutions for the real world. It cannot be a mere academic exercise.
The philosophy of information enables humanity to make sense of the world and construct it responsibly. It promises to be one of the most exciting and fruitful areas of philosophical research of our time.
We know that now is the time to take the right direction in building our information societies, their cultures and institutions. Future generations will live within an infosphere that we are shaping today. There won’t be a second chance. We need bold ideas. We must find the courage to philosophise again.
Luciano Floridi is professor of philosophy and ethics of information at the University of Oxford