RE: Thoughts/comments on "Philosophical Engineering: Toward a Philosophy of the Web"

Hi folks, it seems to me as an outside observer of this fascinating
conversation that you are in danger of building structures on dangerous uses
of terminology.  Information is a difficult concept, and certainly not
restricted to the web.  For example, Floridi’s Theory of Information Ethics
treats all beings as “informational objects” in a very useful way, and it
seems to me anything perceived has informational properties.  To use
“information objects” as a defining characteristic of web entities or even
web experience is therefore suspect.  Furthermore, it strikes me that this
is defining web entities in terms of their material nature, when we’d be
better searching for functional characteristics as these do not depend on
specific technical protocols, digital substrates, etc, and thus are more
future-proof.

On the other hand, it seems to me there is no real issue with what
http://times.com represents.  This is a URL, which has a precise technical
meaning and can be taken to represent the files forming the website without
worrying about what constitutes a website, and clearly does not represent
any other ontological type of being, such as the organisation.  That is not
to say that the URL may not become associated with other experiences or
entities in the minds of individuals, but those are not properties of the
URL.  I think it’s very important to be 100% clear about technical terms,
such as URL’s, which have very specific meanings.  We may wish to discuss
the manner in which people (mis)use them for other purposes, such as
referencing the organisation, but we need to understand such usages have no
impact on the precise and prior technical meanings.

 

 

Regards,

Brandt Dainow

http://nuim.academia.edu/BrandtDainow

 

 

 

 

From: aamonnz@gmail.com [mailto:aamonnz@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Alexandre
Monnin
Sent: 31 December 2013 15:14
To: Michael Brunnbauer
Cc: public-philoweb@w3.org
Subject: Fwd: Thoughts/comments on "Philosophical Engineering: Toward a
Philosophy of the Web"

 

Hi again Michael, 


Le Tue, 31 Dec 2013 15:02:10 +0100, Michael Brunnbauer <brunni@netestate.de>
a écrit:


> Hello Alexandre,


>
> On Tue, Dec 31, 2013 at 01:46:23PM +0100, Alexandre Monnin wrote:
>> True, just like more or less than 25% of Wikipedia edits are generated 
>> by
>> bots. I've co-written a piece myself about the evolution of the Web that
>> might be somehow relevant for this discussion: 
>> http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-859/
>

> Thanks. I will read that.


>
>> > It is difficult for me to see a *qualitative* difference between the 
>> pre
>> > Web
>> > state and now. What is so special about the Web ?
>>
>> See above.
>>
>> Also, I think the more philosophical papers tried to address this issue 
>> ;)
>> My answer had to do with the very notion of "resources" and the details
>> behind the making of the Web, drawing from Brian Cantwell Smith to state
>> that to account for the Web, on needs to reopen questions pertaining to
>> ontology, intentionality, etc.
>

> The following question came to my mind when reading your essay: What is
> the fundamental difference between "The New York Times" and 
> http://times.com/ ?
> I can walk to a kiosk at any time and say "Give me the New York Times".

Interesting, you're not the first person to raise this question. 

I think the comparison is often drawn with regards to the idea of the
physical realization of information objects (whatever that means!). In that
case, you can say that an information object is realized just as the URI
identifying a resource is dereferenced to an Http representation. 

But the comparison fails to grasp important aspects of objects in general -
not just information objects. 

http://times.com/ might refer to the institution that is the Times, or the
newspaper, or its online version, or just the website (but then again, what
exactly is a website now? Certainly not something that can ever be realized
with paper...), etc. All of which might have different identity conditions.
That why the question of individuation, for me, is at the heart of the Web. 

Also, since most objects are extended over time, you only access slices of
them ("representations" if you will :) ) - whatever these objects are, not
just the so-called "information objects". Hence, the issue raised by the Web
is a very generic one, albeit tied to a very specific architecture. That is
where the (main) difference lies in my opinion. 


I might go on and on but I'll leave it here. :) 


>> That would be my answer but Harry has another one for instance, more
>> related to the extended-mind hypothesis.
>

> I also could not see a fundamental change in Harrys example. We've had 
> maps
> for some time and those maps were updated. That more people can do this 
> now
> in a shorter timeframe does not strike me as qualitative change.


>
>> It seemed to me that chapter 8 made a nice link between the Web and the
>> Semantic Web thanks to a renewed notion of content negotiation - an 
>> idea I
>> am in deep agreement with.
>

> I really liked that essay - it resonated much with my mind. I just 
> wondered
> at the implicitness the Semantic Web was presented as next step in mind
> extension. Maybe we will one day learn important Web ontologies in 
> school and
> use compact URIs like words :-) Or maybe the Semantic Web is simply not 
> well
> suited or flexible enough for the human mind and other technologies will 
> be
> used to "extend" it. The Semantic Web has its use cases anyway.

Yes, and they're not necessarily those found in academic textbooks. I guess
acknowledging this would prove helpful for the entire semweb community!

Maybe we won't live see the advent of "The Semantic Web" in the future and
it'll remain behind the scene but extant, just as it somehow remains
implicit in the essay? :)



>> That's why we might want to specify next what we talk about we we say 
>> "the
>> Web" (not unlike what happens when we say "society"). I'm more 
>> interested
>> in the architecture of the Web and its potentialities for instance but
>> others might want to put forward other aspects.
>

> True :-)

:)

> Regards,

Best!
A.


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