Luciano Floridi’s philosophy of information and information ethics: Critical reflections and the state of the art

I describe the emergence of Floridi’s philosophy of information (PI) and information ethics (IE) against the larger backdrop of Information and Computer Ethics (ICE). Among their many strengths, PI and IE offer promising metaphysical and ethical frameworks for a global ICE that holds together globally shared norms with the irreducible differences that define local cultural and ethical traditions. I then review the major defenses and critiques of PI and IE offered by contributors to this special issue, and highlight Floridi’s responses to especially two central problems – the charge of relativism and the meaning of ?entropy’ in IE. These responses, conjoined with several elaborations of PI and IE offered here by diverse contributors, including important connections with the naturalistic philosophies of Spinoza and other major Western and Eastern figures, thus issue in an expanded and more refined version of PI and IE – one still facing important questions as well as possibilities for further development.     

Openness: Don Lamberton’s model of scholarship

Don Lamberton’s research interests were broad. They centred on information and innovation, those elusive drivers of growth and change in the economy, as well as life. Information and innovation require some degree of receptiveness – openness – and Don was always open. His openness permitted me to become his student, as a mid-career practitioner in the film industry. It was, in a sense, his principal teaching. Under his tutelage, I began a reading program that led me a long way from my starting point, and taught me to question views that had seemed settled. Openness, of course, is a fundamental issue in information policy. To what extent should information be proprietary? And when should it be free? These questions were central to my research, which was about copyright and its consequences for authors. The policy tensions in copyright turn exactly on this question of degree of openness. As I studied the question, Don’s example came to matter. I mean the way he personally modelled scholarship: his willingness to listen, his constant sifting, his mode of freely sharing books, data and connections. This was scholarship as openness, and it was persuasive.     

Using Aristotle’s theory of friendship to classify online friendships: a critical counterview

In a special issue of “Ethics and Information Technology” (September 2012), various philosophers have discussed the notion of online friendship. The preferred framework of analysis was Aristotle’s theory of friendship: it was argued that online friendships face many obstacles that hinder them from ever reaching the highest form of Aristotelian friendship. In this article I aim to offer a different perspective by critically analyzing the arguments these philosophers use against online friendship. I begin by isolating the most common arguments these philosophers use against online friendship and proceed to debunk them one by one by pointing out inconsistencies and fallacies in their arguments and, where needed, offering empirical findings from media and communication studies that offer a more nuanced view on online friendships. I conclude my analysis by questioning the correctness of the application of the Aristotelian theory of friendship by the critics of online friendship: in my view, the critics are applying the Aristotelian theory to online friendships in a rather narrow and limited way. Finally, I conclude my thesis by proposing that in the rapidly changing online landscape, a one-size-fits-all application of the Aristotelian theory on friendship is not sufficient to accurately judge the multitude of relationships that can exist online and that the various positive and valuable elements of online friendships should also be acknowledged and analyzed.     

Anatomy of use-inspired researchers: From Pasteur’s Quadrant to Pasteur’s Cube model

Pasteur’s Quadrant model, published by Stokes in 1997, presents a two-dimensional abstract conceptual framework that proved immensely helpful to study and discuss institutional and policy arrangements in science. However, during the last 10 years the PQ model was also applied in a series of large-scale, survey-based studies worldwide to classify individual modern-day researchers according to their research orientation and performance.This paper argues that such applications are inadequate to capture key characteristics of individual researchers, especially those within the heterogeneous ‘Pasteur type’ group who engage in ‘use-inspired’ basic scientific research. Addressing this shortcoming, Pasteur’s Cube (PC) model introduces a new heuristic tool. Departing from a three-dimensional conceptual framework of research-related activities, the model enables a range of typologies to describe and study the large variety of academics at today’s research-intensive universities. The PC model’s analytical robustness was tested empirically in two interrelated ‘proof of concept’ studies: an exploratory survey among 150 European universities and a follow-up case study of Leiden University in the Netherlands. Both studies, collecting data for the years 2010–2015, applied a metrics-based taxonomy to classify individual academic researchers according to four performance categories: scientific publication output, research collaboration with the business sector, patents filings, and being engaging in entrepreneurial activities.The collective results of both studies provide more clarity on relevant subgroups of use-inspired researchers. The PC model can be used to guide empirical, metrics-based investigations of research activities and productivities, applies this approach to two case studies, and demonstrates the utility of the method while also reinforcing and enriching the growing body of literature showing that cross-sectoral and cross-functional research activities are more scientifically productive than research carried out in isolation of the context of use. Introducing the ‘Crossover Collaborator’ subtype helps to explain why Pasteur type researchers tend to outperform other types of researchers in terms of publication output and citation impact.