Introduction

In this presentation, we want to discuss the essential and disconcerting role of information and communication technology (ICT) in the current military doctrines and strategies establishing a “Revolution in Military Affairs”.

Life is going to be digital, so is warfare. The concept of Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) describes how military doctrines and strategies change fundamentally if new military technologies arise. Under President George W. Bush, RMA has become the baseline of defense policy and armament planning of the Unites States (cf. Joint Vision 2010 [1] and Joint Vision 2020 [2]). Its objectives are a global network of battle units including unmanned combat vehicles, precision strikes to minimize collateral effects and remote operations to spare own soldiers lives. The necessary key technologies are computers (synonym for ICT) with ICT–driven weapon development and the further establishment of command-control-communication-intelligence infrastructures (C3I).

Computers and weapon technology: a quick walk through history

First computers came up in the 1940s: Konrad Zuse´s developments financed by Deutsche Wehrmacht; similar military developments in Great Britain and the United States. In the following three decades after World War 2, the classical case of dual-use dominates: military-driven develop–ment of ICT with rapid evolvement of civil computer applications. Computer professionals became aware of the massive use of computers in weapons not before the 1980s. The political situation in Germany and, in particular, the deployment of Tomahawk (cruise missile, early kind of drone) and Pershing II (ballistic missile) triggered the foundation of FIfF (Forum Computer Professionals for Peace and Social responsibility) in 1984. (See [3,4] for more details.)

Dual-use reversed into its contrary

Today´s military computers and communication systems are mainly based on civil technology. Hardware and software technologies are too complex to be designed from scratch, they need a kind of evolution. The maturing of technology has been based on a myriad of civil applications. ICT–driven weapon technology is inevitably based on civil research and development, resulting in a spreading grey area:

Example 1: drones, controlled via global communication networks, vision sensor technology, etc.,

Example 2: autonomous unmanned combat vehicles (popularly called killer robots), driving force for RoboCup etc.

Concerning the security euphemism (security research, security architecture, security technology, etc.), industrial strategies and government policies support that the demarcations between civil and military security become blurred:

Example 1: integration of the Forschungsgesellschaft für Angewandte Naturwissenschaften (FGAN) in die Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (FhG) with the establishment of the Fraunhofer Group for Defense and Security, civil and military security research now under one roof, cross-fertilization explicitly intended,

Example 2: BMBF (Ministry of Education and Research) research strategy, BMBF and BMVg (Ministry of Defense) minister`s recent statements,

Example 3: the European Commission’s security research program (1 400 000 000 €).

The consequences for universities and federal research facilities are that they make profit from trickle–down effect simultaneously undermining civil clauses due to loss of transparency. The consequences for the individual computer professional are the difficulty of reasoning and the uncertainty of taking bearing in their professional environment. (Confer [5,6].)

Intrinsic challenges of ICT-based weapon systems and military infrastructures

Complexity and invisibility of embedded ICT tends to blur public conscience by misinformation and disinformation. Hiding real warfare behind computer screens lowers the threshold for approval. The consequence for global political developments is that weapons with effects remaining under the public perception threshold constitute a grey area of proliferating non-declared wars (e.g. cyber attacks, drone strikes).

Example 1: cyber weapons in face of the vulnerability of civil life due to increasing penetration by ICT infrastructures,

Example 2: drones from 'civil' applications to stealth missions; excessive pool of ICT inside and behind, inexorable development towards autonomous combat air vehicles.

Evolving technology, driven by research in Artificial Intelligence, is a core business of computer science. The further development of armed robots and robot arms will lead to weapons that decide autonomously what they destroy and whom they kill. Therefore, a debate on ethics arises unavoidably: Who is responsible? How can the laws of war (like the Geneva Convention) be respected by machines? Is ‘computer ethics’ an option? (Confer [7,8].)

Message to the concerned computer professional

Stop sleepwalking into a technology-driven "defense" policy, and try to recognize a potential involvement in weapon development, military budget resources etc., contribute to public awareness. Consider to foster a rigorous ban of all weapon systems which shirk public control like is demanded for autonomous combat vehicles by the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC). Unveil the abuse of the dual-use term, and employ your expert knowledge to enhance public awareness.

A more elaborated discussion can be found in [9].

References

1. Department of Defense (USA): Joint Vision 2010, 1996, http://www.dtic.mil/jv2010/jv2010.pdf
2. Department of Defense (USA): Joint Vision 2020, 2000, http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/concepts/ccjo_jointforce2020.pdf
3. Bickenbach, J., Keil-Slawik, R.; Löwe, M.; Wilhelm, R. (Eds.) Militarisierte Informatik, Schriftenreihe Wissenschaft und Frieden 4, Berlin, 1985.
4. Kreowski, H.-J. Informatik und Militär: Zusammen in den Abgrund, In Umdenken in der Informatik, 2. Jahrestagung des Forums Informatiker für Frieden und gesellschaftliche Verantwortung 1986., Löwe, M.; Schmidt, G.; Wilhelm, R., Eds., Verlag für Ausbildung und Studium in der Elefanten Press, Berlin, 1987, pp. 37-42, reprint in FIfF-Kommunikation 2011, 4, pp. 51–54.
5. Meyer-Ebrecht, D.: Dual-use und die Zivilklausel: ‚Sicherheitsforschung’ – oder wie Rüstungsforschung zivile Forschung vereinnahmt. FIfF-Kommunikation 2012, 4, pp. 56–58.
6. Töpfer, E. Zivil-militärische Sicherheitsforschung. Wissenschaft und Frieden 2012, 4, pp. 16–19
7. Arkin, R.C. Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots, Chapman & Hall/CRC 2009
8. Kreowski, H.-J.: Gehören Killerroboter vor ein Kriegsgericht?, FIfF-Kommunikation 2011 28,4, pp. 27-29.
9. Kreowski, H.-J.; Meyer-Ebrecht, D. Der Missbrauch der Informationstechnik für die ‚Revolution’ des Kriegsgeschäfts. In Gesellschaftliche Verantwortung in der digital vernetzten Welt, Bittner, P.; Hügel, S.; Kreowski, H.-J.; Meyer-Ebrecht, D.; Schinzel, B. , Eds., LIT Verlag, Münster, 1914, pp. 81 – 88.

Introduction

Microblogging history begun less than a decade ago, although it could not be explored under a long-term perspective, however there is already a wide set of publications that covered the development of microblog platforms both in the West, analyzing the success of Twitter and in China in case of Sina Weibo.

Most of the literature addressed more attention to the reasons that drove the quantitative growth of the medium, focusing on the relationship between new media and important events such as the U.S President election (2008), the Arab Spring (2012) but also the Wenzhou train collision (2012) and the scandal of the Red Cross Society of China in 2011. Articles with comparative approach between Twitter and Sina Weibo have been published highlighting the role of control provided by the government in case of Sina Weibo; the orientation towards news and information sharing in the case of Twitter. In other words management of the platforms and content have been the focus of the comparison (Gao et all, 2012; Chen et all, 2011; Sullivan, 2012). Other studies criticized the effectiveness of microblog in terms of political empowerment highlighting a dystopic perspective (Morozov, 2011; Fuchs, 2012; Eltantawy and Wiest, 2011; Franceschini et Negro, 2014). Nevertheless, less attention has been addressed to the role played by the aesthetic design and the constitutive choices that characterized the two microblog services.  

Methods

The aim of this paper is to present the constitutive choices of the two platforms (Starr, 2004) describing all the main steps and changes they had since the time they were officially lunched. The analysis will take in account the six versions of Sina Weibo on one hand, and the three ones of Twitter (the original, the “new Twitter” and the “new new Twitter”) through a historical diachronic approach. The author will apply the three layer aesthetic analysis (Benney, 2013) analyzing the two microblog platforms through: their concentration on consumption and entertainment; their strategy to implement surveillance and identify (if any); their level of “hackerbility” (see Santo, 2013) offered to their users in order to guarantee a control over the interface. The author will also argue how the role of aesthetics layout as well as the design of the two microblog platforms impact users flow of information supporting political and economic strategic decisions ex ante.

Results and Discussion

The second part of the article will be dedicated to explore the operational design of both services evaluating the level of openness and interaction with other platforms. Questioning to what extent they could be considered walled gardens systems and in which way they interact with application programing interface. This second level of analysis argues in which terms microblogging could be purely defined as “information networks”; whether it implement specific policies addressed to trading and marketing sites (TMSs) and/or play and game sites (PGS) (Van Dijck, 2013) and eventually how these platforms implement their ideas of business model.

References and Notes

Benney, J. (2014). The Aesthetics of Chinese Microblogging: State and Market Control of Weibo. Asiascape: Digital Asia, 1(3), 169-200.

Chen, S., Zhang, H., Lin, M., & Lv, S. (2011, December). Comparision of microblogging service between Sina Weibo and Twitter. In Computer Science and Network Technology (ICCSNT), 2011 International Conference on (Vol. 4, pp. 2259-2263). IEEE.

Eltantawy, N., & Wiest, J. B. (2011). The Arab Spring| Social Media in the Egyptian Revolution: Reconsidering Resource Mobilization Theory. International Journal of Communication, 5, 18.

Franceschini, I., & Negro, G. (2014). The ‘Jasmine Revolution’in China: the limits of the cyber-utopia. Postcolonial Studies, 17(1), 23-35.

Fuchs, C. (2012). Social media, riots, and revolutions. Capital & Class, 36(3), 383-391.

Gao, Q., Abel, F., Houben, G. J., & Yu, Y. (2012). A comparative study of users’ microblogging behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter. In User modeling, adaptation, and personalization (pp. 88-101). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Morozov, E. (2011). The Net Delusion: How not to liberate the world. Penguin UK.

Sullivan, J. (2012). A tale of two microblogs in China. Media, Culture & Society, 34(6), 773-783.

Van Dijck, J. (2013). The culture of connectivity: A critical history of social media. Oxford University Press.

Introduction

The aim of this paper is to present a critical examination of the perceived obstacles operating within the United Kingdom's (UK) academic community to engaging with the praxis of open access (OA) publishing and dissemination. It draws on research currently underway seeking to problematise and challenge some of the orthodox perceptions operating within the academic publishing environment.

It is a given that the academy has long relied on the dissemination of research findings through formally distributed publication to ensure quality assurance, knowledge propagation and engender discourse. This legacy publication model was configured around the distribution of physical (rivalrous) hardcopy material with exclusive reproduction rights transferred to an increasingly industrialised academic publishing industry. The resultant commodified academic dissemination sector has arguably configured an increasingly unbalanced and exploitive relationship between immaterial knowledge producers and publishers [1].

However, due to the increasing ease of digital (non-rivalrous) dissemination, growing institutional financial tensions and ideological pressures to shift from normative modes of intellectual property enclosure, this traditional publishing hegemony has been challenged over the last two decades by emergent moves towards opening access to academic publications [2]. Despite the arguable “self-evident” societal good [3] that OA represents and the reported global academic community’s intellectual willingness to engage [4], collectively British academic culture has been perceived to have lagged behind comparator nations [5]. While some argue that the UK situation has improved [6], typically only fifth of total publication output is deposited within green OA repositories [7], although the number of academics utilising gold OA publishing routes has risen in the wake of recent national policy shifts [8-10]. Nevertheless, the implementation of the government mandated Finch Group’s review [5] and subsequent parliamentary hearings on scholarly communication have revealed the importance to which the national political economy attaches to OA dissemination. Consequently the UK represents a uniquely fascinating environment with respect to university policy, infrastructure and practice as a target for cultural inquiry.

Methods

This research seeks to address the questions behind this seeming cultural inertia by UK academics towards new paradigms of openness that. Using a qualitative ethnographically framed approach this research began by seeking to establish a grounding in the current institutional OA related praxis, an approach which offered a broad and adaptable range of methods suitable for research into academic cultures. These results will contribute to contextualising and critiquing a systematic analysis of the actors and power relationships impacting on the epistemological foundations of scholarly praxis within the UK academic community.

Prior work into this area has often been predicated on quantitative metrics or a technological deterministic epistemology [11-13], exposing a particular flaw in seeking to propose solutions without sufficient rationalisation of the complex constructs and relationships configuring the UK academy. Particularly there is scant consideration of the impacts on the academy’s behaviour from the neoliberal and marketisation ideologies subsuming the UK university sector in the wake of the Jarratt report [14]. Subsequent governments have continued to enact policies in line with neoliberal capitalism's free market competitive ethos, as a result the UK academy’s praxis has become subverted from the Newmanian elite scholarly institution ideal to mass-market neo-Taylorist metric driven education factories [15]. Subsequently as the academy increasingly prioritises competitive productivity over authentic scholarship then the quest for capital dominates, generating genuine tensions around the potentialities for embracing openness in academic dissemination praxis. Thus considering the ontological and epistemological questions around the purpose, function and ethos of the academy is crucial in focussing this work’s intellectual framework.

Consequently, this research draws on aspects of cultural, social and political economic theory as they encompass how societies change and develop, seeking to explain social behaviour and structures [16]. While the work of free culture scholars around concepts such as the digital commons offer potential resonances with OA [17], much of it is steeped with neoliberal, positivist and technological deterministic epistemology.  Methodologically then this research has established that the work of Marx, Gramsci, Autonomism and Foucault provides the most suitable intellectual infrastructure in terms of problematizing and understanding the tensions, conflicts, power relationships and discourses which constitutes the academy’s OA behaviour. These methodologies comprise the underlying intellectual framework and analytical lens, shaping both methods used to gather and analyse data.

To establish a baseline of the current discourse and praxis within the academy, a series of semi-structured qualitative interviews [18] were conducted with OA support staff based at a broad cross-section of UK universities, permitting a dynamic and authentic narrative to be generated. Respondents, through being embedded within organisational structures and cultures provided knowledgeable authentic insights into the local academic corpus’ praxis. The interviews focussed on four thematic areas (activities, engagement, influences, obstacles) and established a multi-faceted account of current and historical behaviours. Following qualitative content analysis [19], the data was used to construct a narrative representing current OA praxis across the UK academy. Additionally, respondent quotations were utilised to represent genuine insider-insight, as well as contributing towards a deeper “revelatory and emancipatory” [20] analysis exposing underlying mechanisms, cultural conventions and power relationships.

Results and Discussion

Seven major themes were elicited from the interviews. While these broadly aligned with the thematic areas, the greatest degree of variance was demonstrated around the obstacles to engendering a culture of successful normative OA cultural praxis. Obstacles included procedural uncertainties, cultural attitudes, procedural workloads and the complexity of publisher license regimes. It also became clear that academics across the UK do not comprise a heterogeneous monolithic culture even within a single institution or discipline. Such was the multiplicity of obstacles exposed that attempting to resolve so many competing barriers may in itself represent a significant challenge for those seeking to propagate a coherent enabling OA discourse. While approaches to advocacy were typically uniform within institutions, these results suggest that a greater level of bespoke support is required to resolve these issues.

Additionally, normative OA discourse commonly centres on a disciplinary split portraying those within scientific disciplines as leading on OA praxis compared to arts and humanities scholars typified as reticent or resistant. Orthodox perceptions rationalise this as a consequence of a prior focus on article sharing, insufficiently robust models for OA books and learned societies’ influences. These results challenged this orthodoxy, in that exemplars of good or poor engagement were demonstrated across all disciplines. However it was commonly observed that engagement with OA was sporadic across the institutions and had yet to reach a cultural tipping point.

It is important to recall that these interviews were conducted with support staff, working to enable OA among their academic colleagues. Thus perceptions of problems may demonstrate a subjectivity based within the difficulties encountered in their own working environments. The fact that that academic awareness of OA praxis was commonly cited as poor may speak as much to the priority with which support staff ascribe to advocacy work, or may represent an inherent defence of their function’s import within the competitive neoliberal university environment.

Conclusions

The aim of this research has been that efforts towards achieving sustainable OA cultural engagement will be enhanced through achieving a deeper understanding of the praxis, power relationships and discourse operating in the UK academy. What became clear from the analysis was that it is impossible for the UK academy’s culture to escape from the pervasive influence of capital, shaped as it is by influences both internal and external. The linking of research income to OA requirements by funders represents a significant further shift towards capital. The interviews made it apparent that this has significantly contributed to recently elevated levels of OA engagement and support from senior institutional management. Such closer involvement brings with it a perceivable shift towards a creeping pragmatism in institutional OA processes. Thus the maintenance of institutional financial health supplants ambitions of achieving broader ideological goals, such as contributing towards the emergence of an open scholarly digital commons.

From this work a perception is reached that while across the UK university sector great strides are being made towards OA, at the same time its cultural integration remains conflicted. Though this research has constructed a rich overview of UK institutions’ cultural responses it is clear that further interviews must be conducted with scholars across the disciplines to contextualise these results with the academic views. Only through this additional contextualisation can any mismatch between the challenges perceived by the key institutional actors be exposed and resolved.

Additionally, efforts towards problematizing the network of actor power relations operating on academic culture, discourse and praxis clearly necessitate broadening the enquiry’s scope to incorporate dialogues with publishers, learned societies and research funders. In this way a rationalised contextual picture of the forces shaping the UK academic responses to OA can be created.

Acknowledgments

The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for funding this work, and the collaborative input of Dr Andreas Wittel and Dr David Woods

References and Notes

1. Lilley, S. How publishers feather their nests on open access to public money. Times Higher Education 2012, 1^st November.
2. Suber, P. Open Access.; MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, USA, 2012.
3. BOAI. Read the Budapest Open Access Initiative.; Budapest Open Access Initiative: Budpest, Hungary, 2002.
4. Rowlands, I.; Nicholas, D. The changing scholarly communication landscape: an international survey of senior researchers. Learned Publishing 2006, 19(1), 31-51
5. Finch, J. Report of the Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings – the Finch Group (Finch Report). Research Information Network.; Research Information Network: UK, 2012.
6. Gargouri, Y.; Lariviere, V.; Gingras, Y.; Brody, T.; Carr, L.; Harnad, S. Testing the Finch Hypothesis on Green OA Mandate Ineffectiveness. University of Southampton: Southampton, UK, 2012.
7. Blackman, T. The Transition to Finch – the implications for individual researchers. Academy of Social Sciences: London, UK, 2012.
8. Macilwain, C. Is Open Access Finally on the Ascendancy? Bioscience 2013, 63(1), 7-11.
9. RCUK. RCUK Policy on Open Access and Supporting Guidance.; Research Councils UK: London, UK, 2013.
10. HEFCE. Open access in the post-2014 Research Excellence Framework.; HEFCE: London, UK
11. Fry, J.; Oppenheim, C.; Probets, S.; Creaser, C.; Greenwood, H.; Spezia, V.; White, S. PEER Behavioural Research: Authors and Users vis-à-vis Journals and Repositories.; LISU: Loughborough University, UK, 2009.
12. Lee, S.D. The Gates are Shut: Technical and Cultural Barriers to Open Education. In Opening up Education: The collective advancement of education through open technology, open content and open knowledge.; Iiyoshi, T., Kumar, M.S.V., Eds.; MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, USA, 2008; pp. 47-60.
13. Swan, A.; Brown, S. Open Access Self-Archiving: An Author Study.; Key Perspectives Ltd: Truro, UK, 2005.
14. Jarratt, A. Report of the Steering Committee for Efficiency Studies in Universities.; Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals of the Universities of the United Kingdom: London, UK, 1985.
15. De Angelis, M.; Harvie, D. 'Cognitive capitalism' and the rat-race: how capital measures immaterial labour in British universities. Historical Materialism 2009, 17(3), pp. 3-30.
16. Murphy, M. Introduction. In: Social Theory and Education Research. Understanding Foucault, Habermas, Bourdieu and Derrida.; Murphy, M., Ed.; Routledge, Abingdon, UK, 2013; pp. 3-17.
17. Benkler, Y. Networks of power, degrees of freedom. International Journal of Communication 2011, 5, pp. 721-755.
18. Rubin, S.R.; Rubin, I.S. Qualitative Interviewing: The art of hearing data.; Sage: London, UK, 2005.
19. Schreier, M. Qualitative Content Analysis in Practice.; Sage: London, UK, 2012.
20. Alvesson, M.; Deetz, S. Critical Theory and Postmodernism: Approaches to organization studies. In Critical Management Studies: A Reader.; Grey, C., Willmott, G., Eds.; OUP: Oxford, UK, 2005, pp. 60-106.

1. Introduction. Three Crossroads

In today’s world, trends toward improvement in the quality of life are offset by a regression and degradation of the mental and social environment, both in part due to the massive role of information in the society. As at any crossroads, one has the possibility of going forwards or backwards. At this Socio-Political Crossroads, it is necessary to understand the way information operates to get on the ‘right’ road.

The science and philosophy of information as disciplines are also at another, closely related crossroads: they may develop in the direction of integration in an Informational Turn, a new way of Informational Thinking as proposed by Wu Kun [1] that can support efforts toward a Global Sustainable Information Society, in the term of Wolfgang Hofkirchner [2]. Alternatively, they may diverge or regress in the direction of increasingly socially irresponsible specialization and scholasticism. This is, then, a Transdisciplinary Crossroads.      

A third crossroads, inseparable from the first two, involves the direction of development of the science and philosophy of information as metaphysics. It is a Metaphysical Crossroads that includes a definition of the dynamic relation of man to the universe. Like the other two, there is a positive branch (“Turning One’s Head” as Gerhard Luhn describes it [3]) leading toward less dysfunction at the individual and social level. The negative branch implies an on-going blockage of ethical development of the society.

In this paper, I discuss three aspects of information as they relate to a potential information commons. One is the political dimension and the potential commitment to some form of action in which practitioners of information science could be involved. The second is my dialectic logic in reality (Logic in Reality; LIR [4]) that in my view best describes the nature and evolution of information; and the third is the relation of that logic to the dialectic logic of Hegel in some of its current interpretations, as discussed by Fuchs [5]. In this view, Logic in Reality provides a link to science, hence its scientific support of initiatives for the common good. This paper is, accordingly, a response to the first question posed in ICT&S 16, namely, “What contradictions, conflicts, ambiguities and dialectics shape the 21^st century information society?”

2. Dialectical Philosophy and Logic

2.1 The Problem of Logic – Again and Still

The current social, political and economic system, with its failures and lack of ethics is unfortunately supported, directly or indirectly, by the tenets of standard philosophy and in particular its logic. In many theories of society and economics, the underlying logic is essentially bivalent classical logic, a logic of “exclusion”, mirroring the absolute separation between premise and conclusion, set and member of set and the principle of exclusivity in standard category theory. The situation has scarcely evolved since 1936, when Norris stated [6] “…practical and technological problems simply cannot be solved by use of Aristotelian logic alone. This is not a logic of forward-looking or intentional activity whether practical or technological.”

For Jacques Ellul in the 1960’s [7], the term logic characterized primarily the dysfunction of the society, as in “the implacable logic of the market” that exacerbates the separation between the global networks, for example in Manuel Castell’s conception [8], of capital flows and the human experience of disenfranchised workers. Barinaga and Ramfelt [9], quoting Castells, state that one of the challenges of the society is that its very logic is based on an idealized, one-sided conception of society that excludes an important part of the world population. Any intellectual approach that weakens, deconstructs or discredits this ideology and proposes workable, socially acceptable alternatives is therefore to be welcomed.

In 2006, Christian Fuchs suggested [10] the need for a new functional “logic of self-organization” as a necessary feature for models to be able to deal with normative aspects of development, so that the “meaning” of the meaning of information is not ambiguous, but includes a moral dimension. At this Conference, Section ICT&S 3 on the Internet, Commodities and Capitalism will deal with the commodity logic of contemporary capitalism.

In a 2009 paper [11], I described further the essential components of my “logic of and in reality” (LIR), and showed that it had the capability of addressing and illuminating issues raised by Hofkirchner, Fuchs et al. in their evolutionary “Salzburg Approach”. LIR founds a logical approach to the evolution of both groups and individuals and their interaction, and to the negative as well as the positive aspects of current technological developments. LIR provides a new logical interpretation of key concepts in social theory including morality, cooperation and conflict, grounding them in physical reality and authorizing patterns of inference. The term “evolutionary” is discussed in terms of similarities and differences with biological evolution; LIR offers a logical explication and expansion of Fuchs’ statement that nature and society are both identical and non-identical.

2.2 The Relation to Hegel

Logic in Reality is both dialectical and transcendental in the sense of Hegel. It is dialectic in that the law of non-contradiction fails and transcendental in that it ‘straddles’ the opposition between subject and object [6]. Such a logic is close to an ontology, that is, it says something about the nature of things. Of course, the conceptual structure of reality that LIR offers includes information to which Hegel did not have access. None of it, however, is inconsistent with the principle of contrastive dialectics but rather reinforces it. As I have pointed out elsewhere, LIR supplements Hegel by adding a descending dialectic to Hegel’s ascending one and incorporates a necessary ground at the lowest physical level of reality. Logic in Reality makes it possible to enter the dialectic process from science itself, that is, the entities postulated and in part proven by science (other than to hard-core anti-realists), for example quantum physics, are compatible with a philosophical sublation and indeed isomorphous to it. Elements and their contradictions or oppositions follow the same pattern of evolution and emergence.

2.3 Žižek and Fuchs: A Fresh Look

The sociologist Slavoj Žižek is a devastating critic of the current late-capitalist politico-economic system and its “pseudo-natural logic”. Calling our society an Information Society is already an ideological statement, although not recognized as such, since it suggests degrees of freedom from capitalism that do not exist. In a major book, Living in the End Times [12], Žižek shows how this anti-humanist system is reflected in current art – literature and cinema – even in its ‘New Age’ form supposedly opposed to the current capitalist paradigm. One must reject the ideology at work in technology and the artificial solutions it proposes. However, “It is not enough to demand an ecological reorganization of capitalism, but neither will a return to a pre-modern organic society and its holistic wisdom work.” Žižek thus calls for a “fresh look” at the uniqueness of our situation, a concrete social analysis of the economic, political and ideological roots of our problems. A reconceptualization of dialectical logic is necessary to which Logic in Reality may contribute.

In the paper prepared for this Summit referring to Žižek, Fuchs [5] states that capitalist society operates in such a way as to maintain the continuity of capitalism as a system in the face of contradictions resulting from the discontinuities which are a consequence of the ICTs. In Lupascian terms, ‘energy’ needs to be added to permit a resolution of these contradictions at higher level of reality, in other words, convert the ICTs to an information commons, a non-capitalist information society. Logic in Reality, in my view, should be the preferred language to discuss complex interrelated contradictions and dialectics of dialectics, a term used by Lupasco [13].

3. What Has Happened to the Common Good?

The environments for human existence which can be considered as components of the common good are the following: 1) the informational environment, defined by the revolution in the information and communications technologies (ICTs); 2) the natural global environment which, apart from some local improvements, is undergoing massive and possibly irreversible degradation; 3) the local socio-economic environment in which individual human beings evolve.

In a recent book [14], whose title is that of this section, François Flahault shows that social reciprocity and coexistence are the essential requirements for a satisfactory individual life, defining the real, non-economic “common good”. However, the necessary codification of the rights of individuals, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the aftermath of World War II, is now interpreted in a context of market-driven globalization of the ICTs, leading to a drastic and inhuman devaluation of the common good. What is new and problematical in the environments is not technology – science and engineering per se - but the ever-increasing space, material and mental, that is abusively occupied by the artifacts of technologies and their misdirection to individual selfish goals. Unless philosophers and logicians as well as scientists address these issues, they will have failed to address the reality of our world.

4. The Social Competence of Information Science

What is thus missing in the information science literature (and in the first part of this memorandum) is the social-political dimension, the social, economic and political context in which any application of a more ethical philosophy theory must be made. This paper may be thus considered as having aspects of a social critique, a ‘social philosophy’ in the sense of the neo-Marxist Franck Fischbach [15]. I see the entire Summit as social philosophy in this sense. It is an ethical reflection on an informational commons as a necessity for that commons, and it is at the same time a political reflection on the process of struggle to achieve it. Fischbach’s social philosophy does not separate the social from the political, sparing the effort to put them back together subsequently.

The complex entity constituted by the participants in this Summit and their transdisciplinary contributions confers a competence and a unique credibility on them. Practitioners of Information Science start with an advantage of being at the heart of the defining technology of our “Information Age”, and I suggest that this is recognized by every user of the technology, that is, everyone.

5. Conclusions

In the perspective outlined here, Logic in Reality is the thread that runs from the foundations of the nature of information in the physical structure of the world, through the informational characteristics of human beings to those of the society that defines the context for human existence as a social animal. LIR is therefore a new tool to use in the ‘struggle to learn how to struggle’. In the metaphilosophy of information of Wu Kun [16], transdisciplinary informational activities have as a direct consequence the weakening of centralized governments and political institutions and, correspondingly, a strengthening of a commons.

Finally, encouraged by Fuchs’s demonstration of the importance of Heraclitus’ version of dialectics, I close with a fragment that I feel is à propos to a Summit about an information commons: “Fragment 2: Accordingly, one ought to follow what is common, that is to say, what is universal. For the universal Word is common to all. …”

References

1. Wu, K. 2010. The Basic Theory of Philosophy of Information. Paper, 4th International Conference on the Foundations of Information Science, August, 2010, Beijing.
2. Hofkirchner, W. 2013. Emergent Information; A Unified Theory of Information Framework. World Scientific Publishing Company: Singapore.
3. Luhn, G. and G. Hüther. Wende im Kopf. Radebeul, Göttingen: unpublished manuscript.
4. Brenner, J. E. 2008. Logic in Reality. Springer: Dordrecht.
5. Fuchs, C. 2014. The Dialectic: Not just the Absolute Recoil, but the World’s Living Fire that Extinguishes and Kindles Itself. Reflections on Slavoj Žižek’s Version of Dialectical Philosophy in Absolute Recoil: Towards a New Foundation of Dialectical Materialism. triple-C 12(2): 848–875.
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The being concept has been the ultimate concept of Western philosophy. The famous philosopher in history are inevitably put forward their own understanding of the concept of the being. Philosophy of information as a new philosophy form in this era, the philosophy of information and information science should common progress. Information ontology of WuKun starts from partition of the existential field, this way for a new classification and interpretation of the existence fundamentally changed the scope and connotation of existence, the subsequent will change the scope and connotation of the existence.

1. Being concept and partition of the existential field in the Philosophy of information

The concept of being has been the ultimate concept of west philosophy. The development of information science and philosophy of information provides us with the new view of the being field constitution and the complexity of the way of understanding. First reality not equal to being, And objective things are not all reality. Objective unreality is the general terms of the content of the reaction (similar to reflect) between the objective things. So “objective unreality” has essential difference With the “objective reality” that logo being way of the material world. If the “objective reality” logo exist way of the material world. Then we can accordingly use indirect existence to logo exist way of the information world. To establish a new concept of existence: the world is unified on the basis of material, and material and information (direct existence and indirect existence) dual existence in the world.

2. The hierarchy of being

Discuss the problems of being and non-being have to from the being level classification. Accordance with the new classified methods of being, being areas are simply classified into three: direct being, objective indirect being and subjective being. If from the nature of subjective being is subjective information, we can subdivide the subjective being into for-itself information (the information intuitive grasp of subject) and regeneration information (the information create by subject thoughts). we can put the two categories called "subjective for-itself being" and "subjective regeneration being". We can be summarized as four level of being: A. Objective directly being, B. objective indirectly being, C. subjective for-itself being, D. subjective regeneration being. A complete object, in the case of subjective involvement should be has the four being layers.

3. Being and non-being

The being of pure should include the entities in the whole world, and non-being should be a pure emptiness. Parmenides mentioned "beings exist, non-being does not exist", " non-being is cannot be know", "non-being ", of course cannot be know, also can't speak. But when he proposed the word " non-being " can given a clear definition, that something no exist in this world. So at least " non-being " in the case of as a concept can be understood, can speak. Because in terms of the concept of "nonbeing" is exists. Now that is "non-being", all of there is no difference between, also is not content, but it as the opposite of being is also can be recognized, even classification, but there is no content under the classification, the concept of the non-being classification of these categories is belong to the being category of information level.

Being is only a mobile node in the time axis, the timeline pass through and will pass through part all belongs to the non-being, of course all the other parts out of timeline are all belongs to the non-being. The real being is just a point on the timeline, and evolve with the moving of the timeline. being is endless changing over time, there is no eternal being. So non-being divided into three kinds: front nonbeing, rear non-being and absolute non-being.

Past time and being are all front non-being, of course, also including those passing possibilities of the being evolution. But some levels of the material being that was loss can be preserved, these may reserved due to some properties of the mutual conversion of being and non-being. While rear nonbeing that behind the being on the timeline are not a sure path, rear non-being should be a possibility space that has not yet launched, represents the all possible development of being. Being in the process of evolution will have a possibility space more than one line, this theory was first put forward by the self-organizing theory. The transformation of being and non-being also like this, the evolution direction of being is gegenwart being. Absolutely non-being is refers to the possibility that absolutely impossible on the timeline.

4. Several properties of the Exchange of being and non-being

The exchange of being and non-being have several properties:

1. continuity
2. developmental
3. contingency
4. retrospectiv
5. predictability.