45° Mercoledì di Nexa - The Onlife Initiative: Rethinking Public Spaces in the Digital Transition

Nicole Dewandre

(European Commission)

Luciano Floridi

(University of Hertfordshire)

Ugo Pagallo

(Università degli studi di Torino)

Mercoledì 12 settembre 2012, ore 17.00 – 19.00

Centro Nexa su Internet & Società
Politecnico di Torino, via Boggio 65/a, Torino (1° piano)

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Let’s call digital transition the societal process arising from the deployment and uptake of ICTs. Indeed, with the current multiplication of devices, sensors, robots, and applications, and these emerging technologies, we have entered a new phase of the information age, a phase where the hybridization between bits and other forms of reality is so deep that it radically changes the human condition in at least four ways:

– by blurring of the distinction between reality and virtuality;
– by blurring of the distinction between human/machine/nature;
– by reversing from scarcity to abundance, when it comes to information;
– by reversing from the primacy of entities over interactions to the primacy of interactions over entities.

As part of the Digital Futures project launched by the Directorate General Information Society and Media, with a view to inspire future strategic choices of both the DG INFSO and the European Commission, the Onlife Initiative intends to explore the extent to which the digital transition impacts societal expectations towards policy making.

The speakers of the meeting will be Nicole De Wandre (European Commission), Luciano Floridi (University of Hertfordshire) and Ugo Pagallo (Nexa Faculty Fellow). Besides, on Tuesday, September 11th, prof. Floridi will present his book “La rivoluzione dell’informazione” at Feltrinelli, Piazza CLN (Turin). More information is available at the Codice Edizione website. On Thursday, September 13th, prof. Floridi will hold a seminar entitled “Norms as Multiagent Systems and the Problem of their Design” at ISI Foundation.

Biografie

Nicole Dewandre is advisor for societal issues in the Directorate General Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT). She studied applied physics, engineering and economics at the University of Louvain, operations research at the University of California (Berkeley) and philosophy at the Free University of Brussels (ULB). She entered the European Commission in 1983, working as a scientific officer in the Directorate General for Research, in the field of prospective, linking societal concerns with technology policy until 1986. She became a member of the Central Advisory Group and then the Forward Study Unit, dealing with strategic analysis of research and industrial policy for the President of the Commission (1986-1992). In 1993, she supported the Belgian Presidency of the European Union in the areas of industry, energy, and consumer policies. Back in DG Research (94), she has been developing the “Women and Science” activities (97-03) and she has contributed to the opening of the EU research policy to STS and civil society(04-06), before being in charge of the “sustainable development” unit that has been put in place in DG Research between 2007 and 2010.

Luciano Floridi is Professor in Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire, where he holds the Chair in Philosophy of Information and the UNESCO Chair in Information and Computer Ethics. Floridi is Fellow of St Cross College at Oxford University. He is considered the founder of the Philosophy of Information. In 2009 he was the first philosopher to be nominated Gauss Professor by the Academy of Sciences of Gottingen. His two most recent books are “The Philosophy of Information” (Oxford University Press, 2011) and “Information – A Very Short Introduction” (Oxford University Press, 2010).

Ugo Pagallo is Full Professor in Philosophy of Law at the University of Torino, Law School, since 2000, Faculty at the Center for Transnational Legal Studies (CTLS) in London, U.K., Visiting Professor of Comparative Privacy Law at Georgetown Law School in Washington, D.C., and Faculty Fellow at the Nexa Center for Internet & Society at Politecnico di Torino. He is editor of the Digitalica series published by Giappichelli in Turin and co-editor of the AICOL series by Springer Since 2008 member of the Programme Committee of ETHICOMP. In addition to numerous essays in scholarly journals like Journal of Business Ethics, AI & Society, Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, Hobbes Studies, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, Apuntes filosóficos, and so forth, he is the author of eight monographs. His main interests are AI & Law, Network theory, Robotics, and Information Technology Law (specially data protection law and copyright).