Information: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short by Luciano Floridi

By Luciano Floridi

We are living in a society that's awash with details, yet few people quite comprehend what details is. during this Very brief advent, one of many world's best professionals at the philosophy of data and on info ethics, Luciano Floridi, bargains an illuminating exploration of knowledge because it pertains to either philosophy and technological know-how. He discusses the roots of the idea that of knowledge in arithmetic and technological know-how, and considers the function of knowledge in numerous fields, together with biology. Floridi additionally discusses ideas akin to "Infoglut" (too a lot info to procedure) and the emergence of a data society, and he addresses the character of data as a verbal exchange procedure and its position as a actual phenomenon. probably extra vital, he explores information's which means and price, and ends via contemplating the wider social and moral concerns with regards to details, together with difficulties surrounding accessibility, privateness, possession, copyright, and open resource. This e-book is helping us comprehend the real that means of the idea that and the way it may be used to appreciate our world.

Show description

Read Online or Download Information: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) PDF

Best social theory books

Exploring Marx's Capital: Philosophical, Economic and Political Dimensions (Historical Materialism Book Series, Volume 14)

David Fernbach (tr. ), Alex Callinicos (Foreword)

This quantity, initially released in French less than the name Que faire du Capital? , deals a brand new interpretation of Marx’s nice paintings. It exhibits how the newness and lasting curiosity of Marx’s conception arises from the truth that, as opposed to the undertaking of a ‘pure’ economics, it truly is formulated in suggestions that experience at the same time an fiscal and a political element, neither of those being separable from the opposite. Jacques Bidet conducts an unparalleled research of Marx’s paintings within the spirit of the background of technology, exploring it as a strategy of theoretical improvement. conventional exegesis reads the successive drafts of Capital as though they have been complementary and jointly illuminated each other. in general, like all scientist, Marx basically wrote a brand new model for you to right the former one. He all started from rules borrowed from Ricardo and Hegel, and among one draft and the following it truly is attainable to work out those being eradicated and restructured. This labour, furthermore, used to be by no means absolutely accomplished. the writer hence re-assesses Marx’s whole process in its set of constitutive different types: worth, industry, labour-power, periods, operating classification, exploitation, construction, fetishism, ideology. He seeks to pin down the problems that those encountered, and the analytical and important worth they nonetheless have this present day. Bidet attaches the best value to Marx’s order of exposition, which assigns each one notion its position within the total approach, and makes the validity of the development depend upon the pertinence of its preliminary presuppositions. this can be fairly the case with the connection among industry mechanism and capitalism – and therefore additionally among the marketplace and socialism.

The Bounds of Reason: Game Theory and the Unification of the Behavioral Sciences (Revised Edition)

Online game idea is imperative to figuring out human habit and appropriate to the entire behavioral sciences—from biology and economics, to anthropology and political technology. besides the fact that, because the Bounds of cause demonstrates, online game thought by myself can't absolutely clarify human habit and will as an alternative supplement different key innovations championed through the behavioral disciplines.

Regionalism and the humanities

Even supposing the framework of regionalist reviews could appear to be crumbling lower than the burden of accelerating globalization, this selection of seventeen essays makes transparent that cultivating regionalism lies on the heart of the humanist activity. With interdisciplinary contributions from poets and fiction writers, literary historians, musicologists, and historians of structure, agriculture, and ladies, this quantity implements the most leading edge and fascinating techniques to the background and price of regionalism as a class for research within the humanities.

Postcolonial Sociology

Postcolonial concept has loved extensive impact within the humanities yet for social technological know-how, and particularly sociology, its implications stay elusive. This specified quantity brings jointly prime sociologists to discover the idea that of 'postcolonial sociology,' with fresh postcolonial readings of canonical thinkers like Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim and Robert Park.

Additional resources for Information: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

Sample text

Suppose the car has a yellow light that, when flashing, indicates that the car checking system is malfunctioning. The fact that the yellow light is on may indicate that the low-battery indicator (the red light flashing) is not working properly, thus undermining the hypothesis that the battery is flat. Information 5. Environmental data/information We are now ready to look at environmental information. Environmental information We speak of environmental information when we wish to stress the possibility that data might be meaningful independently of an intelligent producer/informer.

For example, compact discs are digital because they store sounds by transforming them as series of pits (indentations) and lands (the areas between pits). They encode rather than just record information. Information Everything really moves continuously. But there are many kinds of machine, which can profitably be thought of as being discrete state machines. And there are analogue computers. These perform calculations through the interaction of continuously varying physical phenomena, such as the shadow cast by the gnomon on the dial of a sundial, the approximately regular flow of sand in an hourglass or of water in a water clock, and the mathematically constant swing of a pendulum.

And every word, when [275e] once it is written, is bandied about, alike among those who understand and those who have no interest in it, and it knows not to whom to speak or not to speak; when ill-treated or unjustly reviled it always needs its father to help it; for it has no power to protect or help itself. As Plato well realizes, a unary source answers every question all the time with only one message, not with silence or message, since silence counts as a message, as we saw in Chapter 2. It follows that a completely silent source also qualifies as a unary source.

Download PDF sample

Information: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short by Luciano Floridi
Rated 4.54 of 5 – based on 11 votes