Luciano Floridi

“When technologies are in-between human users and natural prompters, we may qualify them as first-order (Figure 13). Listing first-order technologies is simple. The ones mentioned earlier all qualify. More can easily be added, such as the plough, the wheel, or the umbrella. The axe is probably the first and oldest kind of first-order technology. Nowadays, a wood-splitting axe is still a first-order technology between you, the user, and the wood, the prompter. A saddle is between you and a horse”

“In short, human intelligent design (pun intended) should play a major role in shaping the future of our interactions with each other, with forthcoming technological artefacts, and with the infosphere we share among us and with them. After all, it is a sign of intelligence to make stupidity work for you.”

“The design of good interfaces takes time and ingenuity”

“The great opportunity offered by ICTs comes with a huge intellectual responsibility to understand them and take advantage of them in the right way.”

“Human beings differ from other animals because they are sufficiently intelligent to wish that they could stop working and reasoning – and free enough to toil harder than other creatures to pursue both these aims in order to eventually enjoy free time. It follows that Homo faber and Homo sapiens are only contingent consequences of the truly essential Homo ludens. The fact that philosophers do not typically endorse this view only clarifies why they rarely qualify as champions of common sense.”

“In 2011, the total world wealth1 was calculated to be $231 trillion, up from $195 trillion in 2010.2 Since we are almost 7 billion, that was about $33,000 per person, or $51,000 per adult, as the report indicates. The figures give a clear sense of the level of inequality. In the same year, we spent $498 billion on advertisements.3”.”

“ICTs are modifying the very nature of, and hence what we mean by, reality, by transforming it into an infosphere. Infosphere is a neologism coined in the seventies. It is based on ‘biosphere’, a term referring to that limited region on our planet that supports life. It is also a concept that is quickly evolving.”

“The technophile and the technophobe ask the same question. What's next?”

“According to recent estimates, life on Earth will last for another billion years, until it will be destroyed by the increase in solar temperature”

“The illusion that there might be a single, correct, absolute answer independently of context, purpose and perspective, that is independently of the relevant interface, leads to paradoxical nonsense”

“One of the most obvious features that characterizes any technology is its in-betweenness. Suppose Alice lives in Rio de Janeiro, not in Oxford. A hat is a technology between her and the sunshine. A pair of sandals is a technology between her and the hot sand of the beach on which she is walking”

“Technologies as users interacting with other technologies as prompters, through other in-between technologies: this is another way of describing hyperhistory as the stage of human development”