Towards a Philosophy of the Web (PhD defense at Sorbonne)

Dear all,

I'm happy to announce that I will be defending my PhD thesis on the  
philosophy of the Web in Sorbonne on April 8 :


Towards a Philosophy of the Web. The Web as Philosophy becoming artefact  
(between URIs, tags, ontologies and resources).

For those in Paris, that will take place salle Louis Liard :




Here's the summary :
:


The aim of this thesis is to account for the importance of the Web from a  
philosophical point of view. In a twofold fashion: as an object for  
research that, in the wake of the Semantic Web and Webarch, in different  
ways, is obviously consonant with many classical issues in metaphysics and  
the philosophy of language. From this perspective, we study some of its  
main building blocks (URI, resources, tags, etc.). Along with this aspect,  
we underline its importance as regards what’s becoming of philosophy  
itself. This is all the more important since the task at hand demanded  
that we did not project philosophical categories a priori and lend  
ourselves to commit the “inscription error” acutely described by Brian  
Cantwell Smith, by resorting to a form of philosophia perennis.  
Conversely, we tried to focus our attention on Web architects themselves  
in order to bring their empirical metaphysics to the forefront, observing  
the controversies to which it lent itself. By acknowledging the «  
ontogonic » scope of such a practice as « philosophical engineering », an  
expression coined by no other than Tim Berners-Lee himself, understood as  
the production of new distinctions and entities like resources in a world  
that unfolds, we were made to ponder broader topics like the nature of  
objectivation. In the end, this gave rise to political concerns in line  
with the establishment of a shared world, in which the Web is heavily  
involved.



And the jury :

M. Bruno Bachimont (Directeur à la Recherche, UTC, rapporteur)
M. Brian Cantwell Smith (Professeur, Université de Toronto, examinateur)
Mme Christiane Chauviré (Professeure Emérite, Paris 1, directrice)
M. Fabien Gandon (Chargé de Recherche, Inria Sophia Antipolis, examinateur)
M. Antoine Hennion (Directeur de Recherche, Mines ParisTech, rapporteur)
Mme Sandra Laugier (Professeure, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne,  
examinatrice)
M. Richard Rogers (Professeur, Université d’Amsterdam, examinateur)

All the best,
Alexandre Monnin.

-- 

Responsable Recherche Web et Métadonnées à l'Institut de Recherche et  
d'Innovation du Centre Pompidou (IRI)
Doctorant en philosophie à Paris 1 (PHICO, EXeCO)
Collaborateur extérieur chez Inria - Projet DBpedia Francophone et  
SemanticPedia (Membre associé de l'EPI Wimmics, Centre de Recherche de  
Sophia-Antipolis)
Chercheur associé au CNAM (équipe Dicen-idf)

Co-chair du W3C Community Group "Philosophy of the Web"  
http://www.w3.org/community/philoweb/
Responsable du séminaire "Digital Studies & Metada Studies", 2012-2013  
(Ministère de la Culture, IRI)
Co-organisateur des "Rencontres du Web de données" au Centre Pompidou
Membre du comité de rédaction de la revue Implications Philosophiques

Twitter : @aamonnz & @PhiloWeb
Philosophy of the Web, http://web-and-philosophy.org/
PhiloWeb on Dailymotion, http://www.dailymotion.com/PhiloWeb
Philosophy and Web discussion list @INRIA,  
https://lists-sop.inria.fr/sympa/info/philoweb