Creating a conceptual framework for the use of digital technologies
Submitting Institution
University of HertfordshireUnit of Assessment
PhilosophySummary Impact Type
SocietalResearch Subject Area(s)
Philosophy and Religious Studies: Applied Ethics, Philosophy
Summary of the impact
Between 2010 and 2012, Professor Luciano Floridi transferred knowledge
about epistemological issues in the philosophy of information to Sogeti,
an international information technology consultancy; and, via Sogeti, to
technology and business leaders in Europe and beyond, influencing their
planning for and adaptation to technological change. In the realm of
public policy, Floridi developed guidelines and protocols surrounding
ethical problems concerning digital and online information. He chaired a
European Commission group whose `manifesto' forms part of the EU's Digital
Futures initiative; influenced thinking around IP and international trade
agreements; and contributed to a UNESCO action plan on ensuring equitable
access to information.
Underpinning research
Professor Floridi, who held the UNESCO Chair in Information and Computer
Ethics at the university from 2007 to 2013 before moving to the University
of Oxford, undertakes research in the philosophy of information.
The information revolution has been changing the world profoundly,
irreversibly, and at a breathtaking pace, making the creation, management,
and utilisation of information vital issues. It has brought enormous
benefits and opportunities, but also greatly outpaced our understanding of
its foundations and consequences, and raised conceptual issues that are
rapidly expanding, evolving, and becoming increasingly serious. Philosophy
faces the challenge of providing a foundational treatment of the concepts
and phenomena underlying the information revolution, in order to foster
our understanding and guide the responsible construction of our
information society.
This challenge is met by the philosophy of information, which
investigates the conceptual nature and basic principles of information,
including its ethical consequences. It is a thriving new area of research,
at the crossroads of epistemology, metaphysics, logic, philosophy of
science, semantics, and ethics, and Floridi has worked on developing it as
an independent area of research since the late 1990s. The general view
orienting his work is that information is a concept as fundamental and
important as truth, meaning, knowledge, Being, and so equally worthy of
autonomous, philosophical investigation. However, despite its importance,
our understanding of `information' is comparatively impoverished.
Floridi's research on the nature, dynamics, and uses of information has
led to a quadrilogy entitled The Foundations of the Philosophy of
Information. The first two volumes, on the philosophy and the ethics
of information respectively, were published in 2011 and 2013.
Specific research with external partners has also fed into the impacts
described in section 4. This has revolved around fostering the critical
understanding of ICT-related phenomena among ICT companies, especially
Sogeti (an international information technology consultancy) and Google.
Sogeti/VINT
In 2011 and 2012 two projects, `The App Effect' and `Big Data', involved
collaboration with an international team of technology and behavioural
experts at the Global Research Institute for the Analysis of New
Technologies (VINT), founded by Sogeti. The main finding arising from `The
App Effect' was the identification of new media addiction and the blurring
of any distinction between information-related behaviour and regular
behaviour as two major behavioural changes that will have a profound
effect on the way organisations need to operate. The `Big Data' project
resulted in analysis of data discovery as the next phase of business
intelligence, seen as a combination of heuristics in business operations
combined with a significantly better performance through information
management (interactive visualisation, exploration, planning and
execution). These two projects led to further research, currently on the
social impact of the `Internet of Things'.
Google
Floridi's knowledge transfer project `Information Quality Standards and
their Challenges' began in December 2011 (scheduled to complete in
November 2013). Google's interest lay in achieving a precise understanding
of information quality standards, and constructing a conceptual framework
for analysing and evaluating these standards. Overall, the project aimed
to help Google identify and engineer information systems that balance the
benefit of high information quality with the cost of providing it.
References to the research
Key Publications
Books
1) Floridi, L. The Ethics of Information (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2013). ISBN 978-0-19-964132-1
2) Floridi, L. The Philosophy of Information (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011). ISBN 978-0-19-923238-3
Peer-reviewed articles
3) Floridi, L. `Turing's Three Philosophical Lessons and the Philosophy
of Information', Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A,
370, 2012, 3536-3542. doi: 10.1098/rsta.2011.0325
4) Floridi, L. `Semantic Information and the Network Theory of Account',
Synthese, 184.3, 2012, 431-454. doi: 10.1007/s11229-010-9821-4
5) Floridi, L. `Network Ethics: Information and Business Ethics in a
Networked Society', Journal of Business Ethics, 90.4, 2010,
649-659. doi: 10.1007/s10551-010-0598-7
6) Floridi, L. `Understanding Epistemic Relevance', Erkenntnis,
2008, 69.1, 69-92. doi: 10.1007/s10670-007-9087-5
Selected Peer-reviewed Funding
2011-13 AHRC Knowledge Transfer grant with Google UK, `Information
Quality Standards and their Challenges', £166,000.
2010-12 AHRC, `The Construction of Personal Identities Online', £165,521.
Selected Recent Awards
2013: Weizenbaum Award.
2012: Covey Prize, awarded by the International Association for Computing
and Philosophy.
2009: Elected to a Fellowship of the Society for the Study of Artificial
Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour.
Details of the impact
Since 2008, Floridi has been engaged in several high-impact projects at
the crossroads of philosophy, computer science, information science, and
information and communication technologies. The impact has occurred
outside academia in two areas: 1) fostering the critical understanding of
ICT-related phenomena among ICT companies; and 2) shaping policy agendas
at European and UN level on the ethical foundation for advanced
information societies.
ICT and Commerce
Sogeti is an international information technology consultancy with global
reach, connecting 20,000 professionals in 15 countries. The director of
its Research Institute for Analysis of New Technologies (VINT) reports
that Floridi's contribution to the `The App Effect' (2011) and `Big Data'
(2012) projects greatly assisted understandings of how modern information
technologies shape society, culture and business, and that his ideas fed
into the strategies of European and American organisations.
Sogeti further recognises that his work on the philosophy and ethics of
information, in addressing questions of how government and commerce should
strategise their responses to rapid technological change, has `influenced
the influencers', to the extent that members of the International
Executive Council (a community of CEOs and CIOs of 80 companies worldwide)
approach ICT challenges differently. Specifically, the director pinpoints
the effect of Floridi's work on 1) a group of 350 technology leaders
working in various industries across Belgium and Luxembourg; and 2) the
VINT/New Technologies community in the Netherlands, which consists of 900
technology leaders. His insights allowed these two groups to consider how
technology changes organisational environments, and they have consequently
been able to place their activities and research on a firm theoretical
basis.
ICT and Public Policy
The following examples outline the influence on public policy of
Floridi's information ethics research.
EU Policy Makers: The Onlife Initiative
In 2011, Floridi was asked by the European Commission's
Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology to
chair a thirteen-member group on `Concept Re-engineering: The Onlife
Experience'. This group was one element of the EU's Digital Futures
initiative, which sought to anticipate issues and generate ideas for
policy making in the digital realm. The group formally presented its
report, `The Onlife Manifesto: Being Human in a Hyperconnected Era', in
Brussels on 8 February 2013, and has since taken the Onlife Initiative
discussion to other centres and events in Greece, France, Italy, Canada,
Holland and Portugal.
The report, which discusses how `the deployment of information and
communication technologies (ICTs) and their uptake by society affect
radically the human condition, insofar as it modifies our relationships to
ourselves, to others and to the world' (Sect. 5, Ref. 4, p. 2), is also a
critical element in implementing `Horizon2020'. According to the European
Commission's website, Horizon2020 is `a Europe 2020 flagship initiative
aimed at securing Europe's global competitiveness. Running from 2014 to
2020 . . . [this] new programme for research and innovation is part of the
drive to create new growth and jobs in Europe.'
European Centre for International Political Economy
From late 2011, Floridi began informing the work of the European Centre
for International Political Economy (ECIPE), a research institute on
international economy and global trade. ECIPE's director has said that,
prior to working with Floridi, there had been no consideration given to
connections between political economy and ethics, but that his
organisation had since begun looking at the ethical evaluation of
international trade agreements on Intellectual Property Rights. In the
context of the Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement (ACTA), `the framework and
contributions by Floridi has been accepted by all disciplines, political
groupings and interests, and thereby contributing towards discussion on a
future model for internet and enforcement of intellectual property between
previously irreconcilable parties'. He also said that, overall, Floridi's
research `is leading to a reorientation in the broader sphere of our
understanding of the impact of ICT on market regulation and assessment of
international agreements. This will have repercussions for political,
social and economic interventions for a range of ICT-related issues, in
which we face new difficulties or simply unprecedented novelties.'
UNESCO Policy Makers
Working with UNESCO's intergovernmental Information for All Programme
(IFAP), Floridi made a substantial contribution to UNESCO's draft Code of
Ethics for the Information Society (2010) (Ref. 6, p. 2), which was
concerned with ensuring equitable access to information. The proposed code
was debated at UNESCO's 36th General Conference in 2011, with member
states suggesting that the document be referred to as `guidelines' or a
`set of principles' (Ref. 7, p. 2). Ultimately, the draft code was used as
the basis of an action plan, adopted by the Executive Board in November
2012, to address ethical issues surrounding the information society (Ref.
8).
Sources to corroborate the impact
ICT and Commerce
1) `Big Data and Their Problem', video presentation by Luciano Floridi at
the VINT Symposium 2012. <http://vint.sogeti.com/?s=floridi>
ICT and Public Policy
Onlife Initiative
2) Details of the Onlife Initiative can be found at:
<https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/onlife-initiative>
3) The report `The Onlife Initiative' (incorporating the `Onlife
Manifesto') is available from:
<https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/sites/digital-agenda/files/Onlife_Initiative.pdf>
4) `The EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation', European
Commission website, Research and Innovation: Horizon 2020.
<http://ec.europa.eu/research/horizon2020/index_en.cfm?pg=h2020>)
ECIPE
5) Luciano Floridi, `ACTA — The Ethical Analysis of a Failure, and its
Lessons', ECIPE Occasional Paper No. 04/2012, (2012). Available from the
ECIPE website:
<www.ecipe.org/publications/acta-ethical-analysis-failure-and-its-lessons/>
UNESCO/Information for All Programme
6) `Draft Code of Ethics for the Information Society',
IFAP-2010/COUNCIL.VI/5, 25 February 2010, presented at the
Intergovernmental Council for the Information for All Programme (Sixth
session), UNESCO House, Paris, 29-30 March 2010. Available at:
<http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001871/187196e.pdf>
7) `Report for the 19th Meeting of the IFAP Bureau', UNESCO IFAP
Intergovernmental Council Working Group on Information Ethics, 17 January
2012. Available at:
<www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/ifap/meetings/bureau/Working%20Group%20on%20Information%20Ethics%20Report%20for%20the%2019th%20Meeting%20of%20the%20IFAP%20Bureau.pdf>
8) `190 EX/5 Part I: Item 5 of the Provisional Agenda', UNESCO Executive
Board, 190th Session, 14 September 2012. <http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002173/217316e.pdf>
Institutional Corroboration
Representatives of three organisations mentioned in Section 4 can
corroborate relevant aspects of the impact. Further details are supplied
separately.