1.
You
were born in Uruguay and
studied in Argentina,
is that right? Tell me, what is it exactly that brought you to Europe and what caused you stayed there?
Yes, I was born in Montevideo
in 1945. I entered the Jesuit
order in Uruguay
in 1963 and left it in 1970. During these eight years I did the usual
Jesuit
studies in Humanities and Philosophy. After the novitiate, I studied
first Humanities
at the Jesuit's college in Padre
Hurtado, in Santiago de Chile. Then I went to the Faculty of
Philosophy and Theology (also called Colegio
Máximo) in San Miguel, near Buenos Aires, which was
part of the Universidad del Salvador, a Jesuit university. There I
obtained a Licentiate in
Philosophy in 1970.
After leaving the Jesuit order, I first worked in the field of
documentation in Buenos Aires and
subsequently
applied for a
scientific exchange programme between Argentina
and Germany.
At that time, the first international data bases were built in fields
such as
atomic energy and medicine. I got the opportunity for a two years
research
residence (1972-1973) at the Zentralstelle für
Atomkernenergie-Dokumentation
(ZAED) in Karlsruhe (Germany), which was a leading institution in the
field of
computerized documentation and later became the basis for the Fachinformationszentrum
Karlsruhe.
During the first year I got a Diploma in Documentation from the
Lehrinstitut
für Dokumentation in Frankfurt am Main.
Due to political instability in Argentina
I remained in Germany
after these two years and worked as a documentalist at ZAED for two
years (1974-1975).
After that I worked for the Federal Plan on Information and
Documentation
(IuD-Programm) for one year. What also caused me to stay here was – my
wife!
2. Originally you studied
philosophy. Why did you choose to devote your life to information
science?
Yes, I studied philosophy in Buenos
Aires, as I
already said, but when I got confronted with the information science
field I
was soon intrigued by the concept of information from a philosophical
perspective. I tried not to divorce my philosophical background from
the
technological field I was dealing with. This is the reason why I asked
Prof.
Norbert Henrichs from Düsseldorf University
who was building the Philosophy
Documentation Center
there, if he would supervise a dissertation dealing with this subject.
He
agreed. It took me some three years to write: "Information. A Contribution
to the Foundation of the Information Concept from an Etymological and
History
of Ideas Perspective" (Munich 1978).
My interest
in information science
was theoretical as well as practical. It gave me the opportunity to
start a
professional career in Germany and at the same time I could connect it
with my
philosophical background. This interrelation became more and more
important in
the following years.
3. In Brno, you held a lecture
about several current problems in information ethics. Which of them is,
in your
point of view, the most important one and why?
My lecture in Brno in June 2009
intended
to give an overview on current research and future trends in
Information
Ethics. I highlighted some forthcoming topics like robotics, e-waste,
ubiquitous computing, surveillance society, convergent technologies and
ICT-Implants and enhancements. All these technologies deal implicitly
or
explicitly with values, attitudes, preferences, social conflicts,
dreams and
anxieties that are in some cases common to everybody, but at the same
time they
are specific or singular not only because human societies have
different
historical experiences, projects, geographical settings etc., but also
because
the interpretation of our being-in-the-world itself has been enriched
during a
long cultural evolution with different views of the world and
ourselves.
Because of
the local and global impact
of ICT I believe that we need philosophical as well as empirical
research in
Intercultural Information Ethics (IIE) that can also be of practical
help when
looking, for instance, for a common ethical and legal basis of the
Internet
particularly with regard to questions of governance and the
environmental
consequences of ICT
4. Your lecture was a minor
part
of your visit in Czech Republic. The major part related to the meeting
of the
EGE (European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies), CZ NEC
(Czech
Bioethical Commission of the Research and Development Council) and NEC
Forum
(Forum of the National Ethics Councils) held under the auspice of the
Czech
Presidency. Can you explain to our readers the objectives of these
meetings and
outline the results of the negotiations?
Concerning the EGE, let me first quote from the
website:
"The Group is a neutral,
independent, pluralist and multidisciplinary
body, composed of fifteen experts appointed by the Commission for their
expertise and personal qualities. The task of the Group is to examine
ethical
questions arising from science and new technologies and on this basis
to issue
Opinions to the European Commission in connection with the preparation
and
implementation of Community legislation or policies. In order to face
the
ethical issues that are arising with the rapid advances in science and
technology, the Members represent a broader range of professional
competences
in different disciples such as, inter alia, biology and genetics,
medicine,
pharmacology, agricultural sciences, ICT, law, ethics, philosophy, and
theology. For every full Opinion to be issued by the Group, a
roundtable is
held before the Opinion is adopted, to which representatives of the
Institutions of the European Union, experts of the fields, parties
representing
different interests, including NGOs, patients and consumer
organisations and
industrial stakeholders, are invited to participate in the
debate."
Similar groups exist in most EU countries and in other nations as well
as in intergovernmental organisations world wide as
well. EGE and NEC meet twice a year in the country that has the EU
Presidency
in order to exchange views and discuss common problems and objectives.
The
meeting in Prague was also a normal monthly EGE meeting. We discussed
matters
of the current Opinion on Synthetic Biology that will be finished by
October
2009.
The agenda
of the EGE/NEC meeting can
be found here.
5. In your lecture, you
mentioned
the term e-waste. Can you explain in detail what it means?
Let me quote
from the Call for
Papers of the next issue of the International
Review of Information Ethics (IRIE)
(Vol. 11, 8/2009):
Network Ecologies. The Ethics of Waste
in the Information Society (Guest Editors: Soenke Zehle, Matthias
Feilhauer):
“The
(emergent) transnational
network of organizing around environmental and social justice issues in
the
global networks of electronics production is arguably the most vital
area of
'network culture' when it comes to broader ecopolitical concerns. Given
the
fetishization of dematerialization-through-technology of an earlier
generation
of cyberlibertarian theorizing, we consider these efforts to have
significance
beyond the already broad array of issues related to the toxicity of
computers
and its implications to workers, users, and the environment.”
In other
words, the local and global
impact of ICT is ambiguous. It is one of the biggest cultural changes
since the
invention of the printing press, but at the same time it is producing
dangerous
toxic waste on a global scale with strong negative impact for humans
and nature
particularly in developing countries due the “export” of e-waste from
developed
countries. Take as an example this Greenpeace
report (in German) about Ghana or also
this
one (in English)as well as several videos on
‘electronic waste’ from India, China and other countries in YouTube.
6. One of today’s main topics
is the
financial meltdown. Is there any connection with information ethics in
the
current set of society’s information ecology?
I think that
there is an obvious
connection between the financial meltdown and ICT since the complexity
and
speed of global capitalism wouldn’t be possible without the Internet.
This is
one more paradox of the information society similar to the one I
pointed to
already concerning e-waste.
We need
better international rules,
institutions and procedures in order to tame digital capitalism, but we
also
need a deeper philosophical understanding of its presuppositions and
hidden
positive as well as negative potentialities. An ethical discourse on
the social
and ecological issues at stake is extremely important in order to
envisage
sustainable scenarios for this century. The major challenges humanity
is facing
are clearly stated in the UN
Millenium goals.
7. As a philosopher you
scrutinized the concept of information. Which features of information
do you
rate as essential for a full understanding of this concept?
There are several concepts of
information in different scientific disciplines some of them related to
its
everyday meaning of ‘communication of new (and relevant) knowledge’
which
includes the process as well as the content itself. Shannon’s concept
of
information was and still is extremely useful in the field of
telecommunication
and electrical engineering but not for social sciences where semantic
and
pragmatic aspects are particularly relevant. The German sociologist
Niklas
Luhmann defines information (“Information”) as the result of a
selection based
on a “meaning offer” (“Mitteilung”). The (psychic or social) system
performing
this selection integrates it within its own framework (“Verstehen”).
This is a
similar perspective as the
one based on hermeneutics, where semantic and pragmatic understanding
is based
on a (tacit) pre-understanding (“Vorverständnis”) that is (partly)
shared by
sender(s) and receiver(s). In both theories information means nothing
that is
being transmitted from A to B. Also in the case of Shannon’s theory,
what is
being transmitted is a message, not information. The relation between
these two
concepts, information and message, seems to me essential. It has been
mostly
overseen.
8. Are
there some ontological consequences of the information concept?
This depends on what is meant by
ontology. As you know, ontology is an important concept in philosophy
since its
very beginning. There is a long and complex history related to ontology
and
metaphysics, where ontology deals with a general theory of being(s)
while
metaphysics deals with specifically with some higher order beings such
as god
or the human soul. Today, the concept of ontology is used in
information and
computer science when dealing with some specific area whose objects are
conceptually identified and clarified. This has been done for a long
time in
the LIS field with regard to classification schemes and thesauri.
Following
Nietzsche’s and
Heidegger’s questioning of Western metaphysics as aiming at fixing one
possible
interpretation of Being – a questioning that was also done by other
philosophical schools in the 20th century – I believe that the concept
of
information and particularly of digital information builds a pervasive
horizon
not only in today’s scientific research, but also in social life. We
believe
that we understand something when we are able to grasp it as a digital
phenomenon.
If we are aware that is one possible interpretation of Being, we have
to do
with a digital ontology. In case we believe that this is the only and
true
possibility for understanding the Being of beings, we create a digital
metaphysics.
The same can be said with regard to
the concept of information, independently of the question concerning
its
(potential) digitization. To understand, for instance, evolution as an
information process, i.e., as a process where forms are produced,
‘in-formed’
and ‘trans-formed’ at different levels is an old philosophical idea
going back
to Plato’s metaphysics whose concept of ‘idea’ is not far away from
what we say
about that evolution is ‘in-formation’. The interrelation between an
objective
and a subjective concept of information was clearly analyzed by the
German
physicist and philosopher Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. It was
Weizsäcker who
gave me first hints for exploring this issue in my PhD.
Your
can find more on this matter in
my 2005 paper: Towards an
ontological foundation of information ethics
9. You give birth to several
new fields of investigation. I think, the least
known of them is angeletics. Can you outline what the subject of
angeletics
deals with?
While exploring the modern uses of
information while writing my PhD I asked myself what could be the
concept(s)
used in ancient Greek and Latin. Weizsäcker put me on the track of
‘eidos’,
‘idea’ and ‘mophe’ that are key concepts of Plato’s and Aristotle’s
philosophy
and of the following history of ideas. On this track I came to the
Latin
concept of ‘informatio’ that proved to be highly relevant for authors
like
Cicero, Augustine or Thomas Aquinas. But I still was not happy with
this
result. The concept of ‘logos’ (language, reason) seemed to me too
broad. I
cannot exactly remember how and why I came to look for the concept of
message
(Greek: ‘angelia’) and messenger (Greek: ‘angelos’) and wrote a short
note on
them in my dissertation.
Later on,
the difference between
information and message became more and more tangible, particularly
trying to
understand Shannon’s theory of message (!) transmission, but also the
broad
impact of digital messages since the rise of the Internet. One
important
difference between these two concepts is that information is a
‘horizontal’
concept based on the autonomy of a subject that asks for it. Message is
something that comes from the other: I receive a message, but I cannot
ask for
it even when I say: ‘please, send me a message’ it is the other who
decides to
do it or not. Message is a ‘vertical’ or ‘heteronomous’ concept.
Another
important aspect is the difference between a ‘medium’ and a
‘messenger’. Both
are related concepts. A subtle analysis is needed in order to work out
their
differences.
Since
1995, when I published my book
“Leben im Informationszeitalter,” I have been writing contributions to
a
message theory or ‘angeletics’ as you can see here. There is
also an impact of this theory in several disciplines and authors
including LIS
as you can see here.
10. You are interested in
information management as well. If knowledge is deeply rooted in humans
and
there is no real knowledge in knowledge systems or books, just data,
can we speak
about a new field or are we dealing just with old, new-like looking
field
hidden under a buzzword title?
Information and knowledge management
are indeed influential labels, not only in LIS, but also in economics.
Companies are being said to be information (and knowledge) processing
systems
no less that society as a whole. There is indeed an inflationary use of
these
concepts in society, as well as in science and nowadays also in
philosophy.
Knowledge stored in books or data banks or the Internet or… is indeed
always potential
knowledge. There is no ‘objective knowledge’ out there like a stone or
a chair
or even a ‘third world’ of ‘objective knowledge’ as proposed by Karl
Popper. If
humans, or any other system capable of interpreting a text would
completely
disappear then libraries or the Internet or… would be strictly speaking
meaningless. In other words, meaning is not a property of something,
but a
second-order category. It is a social construct. I wrote about this in
my book
“Hermeneutik der Fachinformation” that was my ‘Habilitation’ thesis
published
in 1986.
11.
What are you going to work on
next? What is the next project you are going to work on or next problem
you
would like to focus on?
From
a practical, or managerial
point of view I am engaged in several projects dealing with the
creation of
regional research networks on information ethics in Africa, Latin America
and Asia, particularly Japan and China.
The basis for these activities are the International Center for
Information
Ethics (ICIE) as well as
the Steinbeis-Transfer-Institut Information Ethics (STI-IE). I
participate at several
European and international projects on information ethics like, for
instance, ETICA
(Ethical Issues of Emerging ICT Applications.
And I also want to develop angeletics from a philosophical, as well as
from an
empirical perspective. The proceedings of a German speaking symposium
held in
March this year at the Karlsruhe Center for Art and Media will
be published next year. I hope to write
a short contribution, but I am happy that several colleagues have
discovered
the issue and will enrich the discussion further.
Last update: August 22, 2017