Prolegomenon to a Logic for the Information Society

The rapid development of information and communication technologies and their applications has stimulated many definitions of an Information Society (IS), and the related concept of a Knowledge-Based Economy (KBE) from the technological, political and economic standpoints. The ethics proposed for the emerging IS has concentrated on reducing inequalities in access to technological developments.In a key Report, “ICTs and Society”, Hofkirchner et al. (2007) insist that a new evolutionary, descriptive and normative theory “for, about and by means of” the IS is necessary to support emergence of a moral, ecologically and globally sustainable information society - GSIS.This paper proposes a new kind of logic, a non-propositional, dialectic “Logic in Reality” (LIR), applicable to real systems and phenomena, as the “missing ingredient” required for such a theory. LIR provides new interpretations of morality, self-organization, communication and conflict, grounding them in physical reality and an appropriate information theory.As a “logic of transdisciplinarity” in the Paris school acceptation, also directed toward the unity of knowledge, LIR confirms that the techno-social field of study of ICTs and Society is a transdiscipline, with direct implications for sustainable development. LIR moves debate beyond the limits imposed by naïve pragmatism and conservative ideologies and can be an essential component of a critical theory.

Abstract licence: CC BY-NC-ND

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