PLEASE PUBLICISE
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The seventh Whitehead lecture of the spring term 2009  will be given by Prof. Luciano Floridi from the Department of Philosophy, University of Hertfordshire, UK., at 4 pm on Wednesday 25th February and will be entitled "Ethics after the Fourth Revolution". An abstract for the lecture and short biography for the speaker are appended below.

The lecture will take place @4pm in the Ben Pimlott lecture theatre at Goldsmiths College .

Everyone is very welcome to attend the lecture and a drinks reception afterwards.

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25 February 2009
Ethics after the Fourth Revolution

Prof. Luciano Floridi
Research Chair in Philosophy of Information Department of Philosophy, University of Hertfordshire

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have profoundly altered many aspects of life, including the nature of education, communication, human relations, entertainment, work, health care, business, industrial production, and conflicts. Therefore, they have had aprofound and widespread impact on our moral lives and hence on contemporary ethical debates. Privacy, ownership, freedom of speech, trust, responsibility, technological determinism, the digital divide, pornography online are only some of the pressing issues that characterise the ethical discourse in information societies. They are the subject of information ethics, a new ethical theory that investigates the transformations brought about by ICTs and their implications for the future of human life and society, for the evolution of moral values and rights, and for the evaluation of agents’ behaviours. In this lecture, I outline the nature and scope of information ethics and show how it should be considered a new way of approaching the moral discourse.

Luciano Floridi (www.philosophyofinformation.net) is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire, where he holds the Research Chair in Philosophy of Information, and Fellow of St Cross College, University of Oxford. He is the founder of Oxford Information Ethics research Group, and best known for his work on the philosophy of information and information ethics. He is currently President of the International Association for Computing And Philosophy (www.ia-cap.org) and Gauss Professor of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen. His forthcoming books are: The Philosophy of Information (Oxford University Press); Information, a volume for the Very Short Introductions series (Oxford University Press); and the Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics (Cambridge University Press).