Angeletics

The following paper will trace the recently established field of Information Ethics through it’s various evolutions, from it’s origins in Librarianship to it’s role as a global player in areas as diverse as technology, media, global humanitarianism, and the philosophy of information. The praxis of the field will be outlined for the uninitiated reader, followed by an intimate history of the founding players and their continued contribution to this ever-evolving field. The current evolutions of Information Ethics will then be explored in the context of their application to the viral global phenomena of Intercultural Information Ethics (IIE), and finally, the paper will conclude with projections towards future evolutions in Information Ethics, as well as an exploration of potential definitions for the field.

The attempt to establish a unified taxonomy for the field of Information Ethics is both unattainable and unwarranted. The categorization of Information Ethics as a defined discipline, an applicable practice, a philosophy and a worldview remains constantly in flux due to, what Luciano Floridi terms, ‘philosophical naturalism’. As such, a broadening understanding of the field will only serve to further collapse categorization. The following paper will outline, using a discourse analysis methodology, how the nature of the field of Information Ethics at a foundational level must necessarily defy classification. The assumptions behind the current classifications of the field will be questioned. Beginning with the history of the inception of the field through Librarianship and Cybernetics and questioning the yet unresolved ontological debates between information philosophers such as Rafael Capurro and Floridi, this paper will explicate how any such attempt to develop an agreed upon taxonomy will and should always remain incomplete.

The following review explores Intercultural Information Ethics (IIE) in terms of comparative philosophy, supporting IIE as the most relevant and significant development of the field of Information Ethics (IE). The focus of the review is threefold. First, it will review the core presumption of the field of IIE, that being the demand for an inter- mission in the pursuit of a founding philosophy for IE in order to first address the philosophical biases of IE by western philosophy. Second, a history of the various philosophical streams of IIE will be outlined, including its literature and pioneering contributors. Lastly, a new synthesis of comparative philosophies in IIE will be offered, looking towards a future evolution of the field. Examining the interchange between contemporary information ethicists regarding the discipline of IIE, the review first outlines the previously established presumptions of the field of IIE that posit the need for an IE as grounded in western sensibilities. The author then addresses the implications of the foregoing presumption from several non-western viewpoints, arguing that IIE does in fact find roots in non-western philosophies as established in the concluding synthesis of western and eastern philosophical traditions.

La inclusión del ruido en el horizonte de la estética sonora y el acontecimiento de los Beatles son analizados como emergentes de nuevas formas de subjetivación en curso. Según Attali, la música posee carácter profético. Si recordamos que el "profeta" no es aquel que habla sino, más bien, el que escucha, en el carácter profético atribuído a la música resuenan aquellos capaces de escuchar lo que acontece en la actualidad, es decir, el ahora de nuestro devenir.

Nota: El presente artículo ha sido publicado en "Beyond the limits. Essays for the XXI Century". Publicación a cargo de Maria Conceicao Monteiro, Guillermo Giucci y Neil Besner. Editora da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, 2013.

His interests focus on the nature of information, and of the information sciences, digital literacy, information fl uency and the development of understanding, and documents as information resources in specifi c domains. More at http://theoccasionalinformationist .com. Coetzee Bester studied at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, where he completed studies in anthropology, a postgraduate diploma in tertiary education, and a master's degree in information science (1999). Th e study resulted in an integrated model for management of information in community development projects in Africa. From 1994-199 he served as a member of parliament in South Africa and was a member of the Constitution Writing Assembly that fi nalized the historic Constitution for South Africa. Bester currently serves as the director of the African Center of Excellence for Information Ethics (ACEIE) that is based in the Department of Information Science at the University of Pretoria. His current doctoral research is on a curriculum structure to teach information ethics in Africa. Jared Bielby received a double master's degree at the University of Alberta, Canada, in information science and digital humanities with a thesis route in the fi eld of information ethics. He works as an independent consultant in information ethics and internet governance. He currently serves as co-chair for the International Center for Information Ethics and editor for the International Review of Information Ethics. He is moderator and content writer for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' (IEEE) Collabratec Internet Technology Policy Forum (IEEE-ETAP) and is founder and editor-in-chief of Th e Freelance Netizen. His research and writing looks at the interdisciplinary connections between information & communication technologies (ICTs) and information ethics, digital citizenship and culture. Bielby has written and spoken internationally on subjects of information ethics, internet governance and global citizenship in a digital era .

As Editor-in-Chief at The Freelance Netizen™ online magazine, I edit, peer-review and supervise peer review services for all article and editorial submissions.

The Freelance Netizen™ explores the interdisciplinary connections between Information & Communication Technologies and the history of information culture, civil rights and social action. It critically addresses digital mediums as the intercultural confluence of global dialectics. A typical editorial at TFN magazine might explore the present and future directions of Intercultural Information Ethics and its crossroads with the latest WikiLeaks debate.

TFN magazine provides a crossroads between the academic applications of philosophy, technology and interculture with current events, looking to philosophies of communication and information as a platform for addressing questions of digital ontology. TFN magazine is currently exploring, alongside the International Centre for Information Ethics, applications of global citizenship in a digital era with a specific address of digital citizenship and the netizen.

The objective of TFN magazine is to further expertise in intercultural editing and writing for academic and scholarly communications and current events, both on a local and global scale, by researching and structuring innovative dialogue towards a citizen engagement of Information & Communication Technologies (ICTs) through an understanding of the nature of information.

Jared Bielby,
Editor-in-Chief, TFN
Co-chair, ICIE
Editor, IRIE
www.jaredbielby.com

http://www.thefreelancenetizen.com

Asked to edit and critically review the exchange between philosopher Rafael Capurro and Linda Treude on the concept of information, the below linked document presents the final version of the exchange, including my contributions to copy and content editing as well as bibliographic suggestions from my review. The final version of the document can be accessed at http://www.capurro.de/moraes.html

- Jared Bielby


"The term information is omnipresent in academic research as well as in everyday life. Buzz words such as information society, information age or information overload are floating around everywhere. But what do we mean exactly with 'information' in different contexts?

The philosopher Rafael Capurro dealt with this question in the late 1970's in his PhD thesis on the concept of information. Especially the philosophical community was suffering at that time from a lack of reflection thereupon. Capurro tried to fill this gap. The following remark by the physicist and philosopher Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker (1912-2007) had a particular impact on him.

"Today we are getting accustomed [...] to understand information as something different from matter and consciousness. What we have discovered is an old truth in a new place. It is the Platonic eidos, the Aristotelian form, expressed in words such that also a human being in the 20th century can learn about them."

Weizsäcker’s step back to the history of ideas motivated Capurro also to deal with ethical issues of the information society particularly since the rise of the internet. The handling of digital information requires new cultural skills that are addressed with the term 'information literacy.' In the last ten years many projects in the Library and Information Science field (LIS) include or are even focused on information literacy (IL). In many of these projects there is a pre-understanding that IL has to do with the ability to find, filter, and process digital information. At the same time, there is a gap between this pre-understanding and an the ongoing academic discussion on the concept of information. The following dialogue deals particularly with this gap."

~ Linda Treude

I possess a wide range of experience critiquing and editing academic literature including abstracts, articles, book chapters, proposals and thesis drafts. I have edited ESL work from international scholars and international PhD students from Brazil to Romania to Germany. I am currently Co-editing a Festschrift project from proposal to final manuscript, incorporating input from authors, consultants and reviewers. My editing services include copy editing, content editing, style editing and proof reading. Topics of expertise include, but are not limited to, Humanities Computing, Philosophy, History, Religion, Digital Humanities, Information Ethics, Philosophy of Information, Digital Citizenship, Global Citizenship, and Intercultural Information Ethics. Services available at www.jaredbielby.com

Asked to serve in an ongoing position as Editor for the International Review of Information Ethics, I join a team of seven editors for IRIE. "The IRIE is the official journal of the International Center for Information Ethics (ICIE). It envisions an international as well as intercultural discussion focusing on the ethical impacts of information technology on human practices and thinking, social interaction, other areas of science and research and the society itself."