Floridi: The philosophy of information – of our time, for our time

The philosophy of information can be described very quickly or we could have a long discussion. Let’s try the quick version. The quick version says: It is the philosophy of our time, for our time. Now there, as you can tell, I’m ready to answer that rather quickly. If we unpack that sentence, it means that philosophy, which is kind of an old lady who has been with us for roughly 25 centuries on this side of the world, every now and then has to renew herself: cope with new problems, tackle new issues, while taking advantage of all the work that has been done in the past. I said it’s an old lady, so she moves slowly. So slowly that some people think she doesn’t move at all, but she does, it’s just that she takes her time.
So the philosophy of information does for the 21st century what other philosophers have done in the past, for say the scientific revolution in the 17th century, or theology and philosophy during the Middle Ages. It looks at problems that are arising from our technologies, we normally call them ICT, information and communication technologies, within a new environment, which we normally describe as an information society, and tries to put conceptual analysis and synthesis around these problems. So this is roughly what the philosophy of information is.