The large project that Luciano Floridi has taken on is an approach to information science (computer science, computation) from the perspective of philosophy. He has written a great deal about this, notably in his book The philosophy of information [1], which I find to be stimulating and challenging.

In the lecture considered here, he lays out a broad agenda, including time, space, human nature, and ethics as topics appropriate to consider anew in the Information Age, and then proceeds to deal with interesting aspects of each of them. Starting with three ethical questions--Who should I be? What should I do? Why should I do it?--Floridi presents brief treatments of time, space, human nature, and ethics within the larger framework of the philosophical approach. These ideas are important considerations in a world of rapid change; for example, he points out that by 2020, direct human communication will be negligible relative to machine-to-machine communication. Further, he observes that in this context--he refers to an age of artefacts--it is possible that nonbiological entities could be targets of moral respect.

The material is clearly presented in the lecture, and Floridi’s arguments are easy to follow. He is articulate and convincing. This lecture stands on its own as an interesting piece, but is also a good way into the larger body of Floridi’s work.