For many years now,
an inescapable fact has been presenting itself to the careful observer :
the Internet, without a shadow of a doubt, has become an integral medium for a fast-growing
number of people. Proof, if needed, of its rising significance, is that once
upon a time, a time not so long ago, a university student could get along very
well without owing a personal computer connected to the worldwide web – something
which nowadays even schoolboys couldn’t do without. This change of setting
accounts for a development originally geared towards knowledge professionals (students,
researchers, etc. whose needs for content availability were then the most
pressing priority) which has since followed various paths in an effort to respond
to the new kinds of expectations engendered by the increased diversity of those
who have made the web their playground in the last few years. As a matter of fact,
new means of sharing knowledge, resources, and information come to light every
single day. In this respect, it suffices to examine only a few of these means to be immediately struck by the surfacing of
new problems loaded with philosophical presuppositions, concepts and references,
suggesting in a yet unseen but nevertheless blatant fashion the possibility of
a philosophical approach to these questions. Possibly for the first time in
history philosophy is at the heart of the now intensifying technological (a
word whose meaning seems even too narrow) debate. Our only goal, in this work
of ours, is to follow this philosophical trail in order to discover the core philosophy
at the heart of the Internet, thus allowing us to appreciate, in return, how
the ideas thus drawn could contribute to such questions as are traditionally
elicited by the so-called philosophia perennis.
To begin with, and for the
sake of ease, we shall single out three well-known steps that have had an unquestionable
impact on of the development of the Internet.
a) Two well-established models.
- The first model
takes on a classificatory system of hyperlinks tantamount to the one that
pervades personal computers and allows for the possibility of arranging files
in a pre-ordered hierarchy of folders in the form of conceptual trees, ideally
delimiting a domain of objects (this is the “ontological” model – following
Clay Shirky’s use of the term – whose precursor was Yahoo).
- The second model, via
software programs which have famously come to
be known as search engines, aims at satisfying requests formulated by means of
one or many keywords (alongside the optional recourse to logical connectors to
assemble or quote entire expressions) by retrieving documents located in a
database. The latter are constantly indexed by an army of robots whose never-ending
task is to browse the web in a recursive fashion by following all the links they
encounter, in order to harness those very resources their program deems
relevant. The documents which quench this iterative thirst for information are
then sorted in correlation with their relevance, following a prioritizing order
based on a definite set of criteria – the expression of a secret algorithm.
This is, roughly speaking, how Google operates.
b) A model for the future.
- The semantic Web.
The previous models (including the hierarchical one) could lead to the false
assumption that the architecture of the Web is altogether based on the user’s
real or alleged endeavour. Yet, for many years now, following contributions
both in AI and in semantics, such languages as RDF, DAML, OIL, or OWL have been
contrived to express metadatas. These metadatas, associated with the content
already available on the Web, don't expand the latter with additional meanings
structured for people, but rather for their computer counterparts (purporting
to let them understand and manipulate information by themselves, a step towards
autonomous behaviour). To sum up, the semantic Web’s goal is no longer to build
a human-centered language but rather a computer-readable one.
Three kinds of
questions are elicited by these models and all of them call for a philosophical
treatment :
I) An ontological question :
Computer ontology,
traditionally noted in lower case so as to differentiate it from its
philosophical equivalent, purports to describe a domain of objects by
distinguishing between individuals, classes, attributes and relations. Now,
whereas philosophy overtly tackles the question of the existence of these objects,
computer ontology refrains from doing so, hence leaving the burden on
philosophers’ shoulders. Nonetheless, if one remains devoid of prejudices and
plainly examines this distinction, then there should remain only one conclusion
to be drawn : far from being obvious, the very concept of existence is a threat
even to Ontology (with a big “O”). The
Carnapian distinction between “internal” and “external questions” gives
evidence for this, the overcoming of which dichotomy became one of Quine’s main
motivations for his philosophical endeavour, one of the most important of the XXth
century. Therefore, should we be afraid
of questioning the obvious
This hierarchical
model, with only a handful of professional experts in charge of the whole
classificatory endeavour (i.e. : top-down models) is now being called into
question as the “amateur” users slowly become the centre of another framework
which intends to put the classificatory burden back on their shoulders (i.e. :
the bottom-up model involving folksonomies).
A thorough study of this train of thoughts calls for an assessment that
doesn’t limit itself to computer and information sciences and dares to cross
the boundaries of philosophy, since the question it asks with acute freshness
is none other than the very relevance of the ontological project itself and the
originating locus of all the categories which shape our bond to the world.
(e.g. : Who is better at describing
things ? the philosopher, or those who daily contribute to fashion the world
the way it is by means of a variety of usages ? are folksonomies doomed to
overthrow o(O)ntological “seasoned” categories ? would such an evolution even
be advisable, if possible ?)
II) The importance of philosophy of language :
The Internet’s current guise has sometimes been described as that of a medium chiefly constituted by documents to be perused by men and women. The recent rise of platforms requiring human agency to describe and label contents, thus adding a semantic dimension, underlines what could amount to a dawn of new means of expression where traditional tools of the philosophy of language like the distinction between meaning and reference are given a new garb, as is the case with such concepts as URL and tags.
Actually, each document on the net gets a
unique label (a URL – Ruth Barcan-Marcus concept of “tag”, which paved the way
for what later came to be known as the theory of proper names, comes to mind)
that can, should the right tools be used, receive descriptions based on
keywords (tags). These tags, originally designed to greatly facilitate
browsing, might, however, also bring about new impediments. Thus, to mention an
example borrowed from Clay Shirky, there’s little doubt that distinguishing
between shades of meaning as expressed by words such as “homosexual”, “gay” or
“queer” allows for a better understanding of the general trend concerning the
evolution of the discourse on homosexuality (and maybe homosexuality itself).
On the other hand, if someone happens to use the label “cinema” to tag a movie
review for which another person used the tag “film” they might have pointlessly
resorted to sundry categories with the potential confusion that would accompany
this move. Thence, amongst other issues which tags raise on a linguistic level,
there’s one regarding the canonical philosophical problem of synonymy that’s
hardly escapable.
Hyperlinking, meaningful descriptions, unique
labels, tags… all of these concepts and the multifarious situations they
involve (corresponding to the manifold devices and services available to users
: del.icio.us; flickr, etc.) force us to mull over those usages currently
spreading on the Web. Probing the path people follow when it comes to
attributing a meaning to documents they produce or simply peruse implies that
one turns his gaze to the new material conditions one must deal with. The philosophy
of language is conceived as an endeavour which puts a strong emphasis on usages
linked with the production and manipulation of meanings; nothing prevents it
from helping ud to get a good grasp on such concurring issues by scouting new
territories, even moreso since it has partly contributed to the shaping of
these previously unseen surroundings.
III) A question which appeals to the philosophy of mind :
Again, the driving force behind the semantic Web does not so much aim at designing appliances full of words to be read by people but rather full of meanings and the relations amongst themselves. With the ensuing shift of emphasis it would entail from the question of how human beings infuse meaning, to devising an “ontological language” in order to let machines rise to the semantic dimension. The subsequent corollary (beyond the difficulties integral to such a project) already noted by Berners-Lee, Hendler and Lassila in their ground-breaking article, namely that this research program unarguably follows the path left open by AI, warrants that it is one that could, for the same reason, as well be trodden by philosophy of mind. Whence the possibility of studying some of its undisputed assumptions in the light of two decades of work in that field, first in reference to the concept of intentionality, then as an examination of the computer metaphor at work in this branch of knowledge and its relevance for a medium that has the peculiarity of involving agents no longer exclusively comprised of experts (hence paving the way for a re-examination of its foundations).
Thus, one could well ask whether the
sought-after ideal behind the semantic Web aptly provides the key to understand
the behaviour of the fast-growing new audience (in the light of an already long
history) that has settled on the Net. After all, there’s no reason to believe
these new settlers’ demeanours will mimic those of knowledge professionals,
whether researchers or librarians, whose main focus is the pursuit of
continually faster and more precise information access. Maybe we should begin
to take seriously the casual and entertaining dimensions of both the “surfing”
and “browsing” metaphors used to describe the daily activity of millions of men
and women who navigate from one discovery to another, without any prior
knowledge, nor clear awareness, of what’s to be found. It peerlessly
exemplifies the logic behind a word, crafted by Horace Walpole more than two
centuries ago, that of “serendipity” (the fruitful outcome of hazard, outside
of any rational progression). By definition it defies formalization ; nay,
according to this same definition, the very “noise” surrounding requests sent
to search engines shan’t even be considered a nuisance anymore but rather a
standalone resource, no longer a flaw awaiting eradication. It is precisely
this lack of order and certainties (up to a point), not a perspective dominated
by purely rational agents, that may be more telling of the difference between
man and machine.
The necessity to study the Internet from a
philosophical point of view strikes us as a most pressing challenge, one that a
living philosophy shall not evade if it is to seize new topics of interest for
her, and as long as it resists uncritically yielding to common discourse. As a
discipline chiefly concerned with meaning, can it really afford to remain
outside of a debate whose protagonists have already summoned many of its
resources, or shall it relinquish this opportunity by capitulating to some
groundless rulings inasmuch as the novelty here discussed is one that is also
deeply rooted in a most rich and fertile ground. Hence philosophy, we believe,
shan’t for that very reason fear ending up trivializing itself by going outside
its traditional sphere. Indeed, it’s all a matter of settling in such territories
as were never entirely void of its presence.