Infosphere
The term infosphere is a word created from information and biosphere . Just as the biosphere describes the area of our planet in which there is life, the infosphere describes the entire informational environment. It consists of all informational entities , their properties, interactions, processes and mutual relations . In contrast to cyberspace , the infosphere is not limited to the internet . It ranges from alphanumeric texts and multimedia products to statistical data, from mathematical formulas to noises or video clips .
definition
According to Luciano Floridi , the infosphere is the semantic space, consisting of the totality of the “documents”, the “agents” and their “operations”.
Under documents all kinds of data, information and knowledge meant that every semiotic encoded format and implemented without limiting the size of the typology or syntactic structure. Examples include not only digital data, but also oral narration, televised films, printed texts, and the radio programming.
Under agents all types of systems meant that can autonomously interact with a document. Examples of this are a person, an organization or a bot on the Internet. Within the infosphere, agents themselves can be viewed as documents. For example, a Wikipedia user account is both an agent and a document.
Operations are all types of actions, interactions and changes that can be performed by an agent or that can be assigned to a document. An example would be writing a Wikipedia article.
The term infosphere can not only be used for the global, informational environment, but also to describe limited areas such as the information network within a company.
Concept history
The term was already used in 1980 by Alvin Toffler in his book "The Third Wave". In this, the “info-sphere” is the sphere of communication. It is used to produce and distribute information.
From the mid-90s, the term infosphere was introduced by Luciano Floridi to analyze the information society and examine the ethics of the infosphere.
Trivia
In the animated series Futurama (10th episode, 4th season), the giant brains try to save all information from the universe in a gigantic biological database, the infosphere. After saving, the universe should be destroyed so that no new information can arise. In addition, "The Infosphere" is also the name of the English-language wiki page from Futurama.
IBM has developed a platform called "Infosphere" for companies. It offers several information management packages.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Infosphère, une définition French definition of the infosphere by Luciano Floridi, accessed on March 16, 2016
- ^ Alvin Toffler: The Third Wave. , Bantam Books, New York City 1980, ISBN 0-553-24698-4
- ↑ Luciano Floridi: Information ethics: On the philosophical foundation of computer ethics. Ethics and Information Technology 1: 37-56, 1999
- ↑ Futurama Wiki - "Infosphere" accessed on March 16, 2016
- ↑ IBM Platform: Infosphere American IBM website, accessed on March 16, 2016
Further information
- Luciano Floridi: A look into the future impact of ICT on our lives. The Information Society 23 (1): 59-64
- Luciano Floridi: Philosophy and Computing: An Introduction. Routledge Chapman Hall, New York 1999, ISBN 0-415-18024-4
- The politics of the infosphere . accessed on March 17, 2016.
- TELEPOLIS: Protect your infosphere! The subject of "information" in ethics. accessed on March 17, 2016.