INFORMATION

We live an information soaked existence information pours into our lives through television radio books and of course the Internet Some say we suffer from infoglut But what is information The concept of information is a profound one rooted in mathematics central to whole branches of science yet with implications on every aspect of our everyday lives DNA provides the information to create us we learn through the information fed to us we relate to each other through information transfer gossip lectures reading Information is not only a mathematically powerful concept but its critical role in society raises wider ethical issues who owns information Who controls its dissemination Who has access to information Luciano Floridi a philosopher of information cuts across many subjects from a brief look at the mathematical roots of information its definition and measurement in bits to its role in genetics we are information and its social meaning and value He ends by considering the ethics of information including issues of ownership privacy and accessibility copyright and open source For those unfamiliar with its precise meaning and wide applicability as a philosophical concept information may seem a bland or mundane topic