Books

Books : reviews

Luciano Floridi.
Philosophy and Computing: an introduction.
Routledge. 1999

Luciano Floridi.
The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Computing and Information.
Blackwell. 2004

This Guide provides an ambitious, state-of-the-art survey of the themes, problems, arguments, and theories constituting the innovative field of the philosophy of computing and information. Written by an international group of leading experts, the 26 newly commissioned chapters present a complete, systematic, and critical introduction to a wide range of topics, including computer ethics, internet culture, digital art, cybernetics, and hypertext theory.

Combining careful scholarship and lucid exposition, each chapter serves as a self-standing introduction to its topic. Supporting online resources – including an exhaustive glossary of technical terms, expanded further reading sections, and a wideranging introduction explaining the nature of the new informational paradigm in philosophy – can be found at http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pci.

The Guide offers students a first foundation for understanding the philosophy of computing and information. It will also engage those general readers who are curious about the new computational and informational turn in philosophy, and researchers interested in broadening their experience.

Luciano Floridi.
Information: a very short introduction.
OUP. 2010

Information pours into our lives through television, radio, books, and the Internet. Some say we suffer from ‘infoglut’. But what is information?

The concept is a profound one, rooted in mathematics, yet vital to our everyday lives: DNA provides the information to create us; we learn through information fed to us; we relate to each other through information transfer—gossip, lectures, reading.

Luciano Floridi, the founder of the philosophy of information, provides a fascinating and inspirational introduction to this most fundamental of ideas. Cutting across various subjects, he reflects upon its implications on all aspects of our everyday lives from mathematics and genetics, to its social meaning and value, and its ethical implications relating to ownership, privacy, and accessibility.

Luciano Floridi.
The Philosophy of Information.
OUP. 2011

Luciano Flonidi presents a book that will set the agenda for the philosophy of information. PI is the philosophical field concerned with (1) the critical investigation of the conceptual nature and basic principles of information, including its dynamics, utilization, and sciences, and (2) the elaboration and application of information-theoretic and computational methodologies to philosophical problems. This book lays down, for the first time, the conceptual foundations for this new area of research. It does so systematically, by pursuing three goals. Its metatheoretical goal is to describe what the philosophy of information is, its problems, approaches, and methods. Its introductory goal is to help the reader to gain a better grasp of the complex and multifarious nature of the various concepts and phenomena related to information. Its analytic goal is to answer several key theoretical questions of great philosophical interest, arising from the investigation of semantic information.