Information technology as a social revolution

elective courses

Ability to work with a scientific text in English

Classroom

During the classes, we will discuss the social consequences of the development and dissemination of new information technologies. The information revolution that we are currently experiencing has led to the creation of an "infosphere" - an information resource that exceeds the processing capacity of the human mind. The amount of information produced today in a year exceeds the amount of information generated by all of humanity since the invention of tools for collecting and processing information (writing) to the present day. These processes have a profound and not fully recognized impact on the very foundations of modern societies. The classes will be devoted to the analysis of selected aspects of social changes caused by a profound change in communication technologies.

The amount of information generated and currently accumulated by humanity is incomparably greater than the scale we have dealt with in the past. Estimates from more than two decades ago indicate that humanity accumulated about 12 exabytes of data throughout its history, until the advent of commercially available personal computers (roughly equivalent to a 50,000-year DVD-quality movie). At the same time, printed, film, magnetic and optical media produced in 2002 alone contained 5 exabytes of data. This corresponds to 37 thousand. new libraries the size of the Library of Congress.

The rapid outbreak of the global information society, after several millennia of relatively more peaceful development, created new and difficult challenges that were largely unpredictable a few decades ago. ICT has made the creation, management and use of information, communications and computing resources critical, not only for our understanding of and our interactions with the world, but also for our self-image and our identity. In other words, computer science and ICT brought about the fourth - after Copernican, Newtonian and Freudian - revolution.

We are currently experiencing a revolution of dislocation and reassessment of our nature and role in the universe. Our view of the ultimate nature of reality, i.e. our metaphysics, changes from materialistic, in which physical objects and processes play a key role, to information, in which information is the basic building block of the world.

ICT actually creates the new information environment in which future generations will live. As a consequence of such changes in our ordinary environment, they create an infosphere that is increasingly synchronized (in time), delocalized (in space) and correlated (in interactions). Previous revolutions (especially agricultural and industrial) resulted in macroscopic changes in our structures and social environments.

During the course, we will try to answer the questions that the macroscopic changes bring about by the information revolution.

Brown, I., and Marsden, C. T. 2013. Regulating Code: Good Governance and Better Regulation in the Information Age. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Caldarelli, G., and Catanzaro, M. 2012. Networks: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Floridi, Luciano, ed. 2003. The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Computing and Information. Oxford, New York: Blackwell.

Floridi, Luciano, ed. 2010a. The Cambridge Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Floridi, Luciano. 2010b. Information: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Floridi, Luciano. 2011. The Philosophy of Information. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Floridi, Luciano. 2013. The Ethics of Information. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Floridi, Luciano. 2014a. The Fourth Revolution – How the Infosphere is Reshaping Human Reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Floridi, Luciano, ed. 2014b. The Onlife Manifesto - Being Human in a Hyperconnected Era. New York: Springer.

Floridi, Luciano, ed. 2016. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Information. London: Routledge.

Gleick, J. 2011. The information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. London: Fourth Estate.

Palfrey, J., and Gasser, U. 2008. Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives. New York: Basic Books.

Poe, Marshall T. 2011. A History of Communications: Media and Society from the Evolution of Speech to the Internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Weinberger, D. 2011. Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren’t the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room. New York: Basic Books.

K_W03 Has in-depth knowledge about social structures and selected social institutions as well as their interrelations

K_W04 Is reflective and critical of the problem of social differentiation and inequalities

K_W05 Has in-depth knowledge about the types of social ties and mechanisms supporting collective governance

K_W06 Has in-depth knowledge about cultural diversity and its transformations, cultural identity, and intercultural interaction and communication

K_W08 Is aware of the importance of a reflective and critical approach to the results of social research, analyses and research procedures

K_W11 Has in-depth knowledge of norms and rules governing social structures and institutions

K_W13 Is reflective and critical in interpreting the processes occurring in Polish as well as global society and their consequences for social attitudes and institutions

K_U09 Can relate an academic text to the problems of social life and its empirical studies

K_K04 Can argue a thesis using scientific evidence

K_K09 Is open to various theoretical and methodological perspectives of social research

individual or group presentation (depending on the size of the group)