Philosophy of information

From New York to York

noreply@blogger.com (Luciano Floridi) — Thu, 15 May 2008 16:41:00 +0000

Life can be ironic: within a week, I managed to be in New York, US and then in York, UK.
It even took me some time to realise the odd coincidence. I must be tired.

In York, I gave a presentation at the meeting
E-Learning in Dialogue: Innovative Teaching and Learning in Philosophy and Religious Studies.
I enjoyed several of the other presentations and I was sorry to have to leave early.

The problem: an overall impression that e-learning has not advanced much since the eighties.

The solution: trying to reinvent e-learning as a way of teaching humanity to cope with the new informational agents and environments in which they spend some much time. Many people seemed to like the idea.

A Film for Philosophy

noreply@blogger.com (Luciano Floridi) — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:11:00 +0000

Click on the title.
Just replace the elevator-background music with this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBAasek8NR4
and enjoy!

In NY

noreply@blogger.com (Luciano Floridi) — Sat, 10 May 2008 21:02:00 +0000

Being sick is often a good chance to stay alone with yourself, without an agenda to fulfill. Being stuck in a city because your flight leaves only 24 hours later is a more pleasant way to obtain the same goal. And if the city is then NY, it might be a blessing.

The temptation to eat hamburgers in my hotel room, typing on this computer all the time, had to be resisted. And it was. I went for a long walk and then checked what's new in American Contemporary Art. My lucky day: the Whitney Museum houses one of the world's foremost collections of twentieth-century American art, and the Biennial was on.

Unmissable, if one is around. Not only for the single pieces (I enjoyed many of them, especially Walead Beshty, Jedediah Caesar, Charles Long) but also for the overview it affords on today's America art. Not many novelties, perhaps even a lack of clear ideas and purpose, but a tangible sense of search for new ways of expressions.

Probably most of the objects will soon (one hope) be forgotten. And the usual, obsessive, self-referential mumbling of people who have nothing to say, but think that saying this much, in some smart-assish way, can fill the gap, makes one puke. Who cares! Shut-up, please. Don't waste broadband. White noise and zeros acquire meaning only when there is a message or ones to which they can be contrasted. But then, it is the curators' fault if sometimes silence is not respected (Frances Stark).

One simple thing that seems to have been lost is a clear grasp of the inevitably informational nature of art. Art is a form of communication, where there is

a sender,
a message,
a code,
an encoding process,
a medium,
a communication,
a receiver, and
a final decoding by a receiver.

The sender might be less obvious than it looks (it's the artist, or the museum that ordered the piece, the foundation that provided financial support for it, the Church or Party or Business that commissioned it, the culture that actually produced it...). The message has often many layers and meanings. And the receiver may be hardly identifiable. But these, as well as the other components, are there anyway, whether the artist likes it or not. And the only way to eliminate them is to stop being an artist and going for a walk.

So it is bad, tricky, perhaps disingenuous or simply silly and meaningless to try to avoid the informational nature of art. All rules can be broken but the rule that there will be rules, such as the rule of breaking all rules. Trivial and inevitable truism. One may wish to disrespect, bypass, destroy, annihilate, overcome, disregard, chew and spit out the informational model... but all in vain, for no art is possible without such a structure, let alone an art that denies it.

The best expressions of contemporary art seems to me those that take new and further advantage of the informational model, with innovative techniques, contents, a diversificatoin of senders and receivers, of codes and encoding/decoding processes. Seen in this way, visual-artistic expressions are boundless as music and literature are. The only trouble is that you need to have something interesting to say. And this is not common.

Walking back. A ruminating reflection on silence. On how we miss it so much. Because we cannot listen to ourselves and hence we become strangers to ourselves. The park was blasted by salsa music to force people to jump and exercise at the rhythm of a different kind of sunshine. It ruined the atmosphere.

Information Ethics Roundtable 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Luciano Floridi) — Sat, 10 May 2008 20:50:00 +0000

This Year's Topic of the IER was Information Ethics and its Applications.

I enjoyed the meeting both socially and intellectually. The IRS is a great initiative and the organizers (Tony Doyle, Program Chair, Don Fallis, Kay Mathiesen, and Catherine Womack) have done a great job.

The idea of a full, one-day meeting is attractive, and the careful organization of talks with invited speakers and commentators, makes the debate fruitfully challenging. I certainly have learnt a lot and realised that I have even more to learn.

The information society as a neo-bartering society

noreply@blogger.com (Luciano Floridi) — Tue, 06 May 2008 22:35:00 +0000

We live in a neo-bartering society (www.swapace.co.uk).

On any sterling banknote, one can still read “I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of...”, but the fact is that

Britain

abandoned the gold standard in 1931, so you should not expect to receive any yellow stuff in exchange. The Euro, more seriously, promises nothing. It might be one of the reasons why we are so reluctant to adopt it in this country.

Since all currencies are free floating nowadays, money may well be just a pile of digits. Indeed, when Northern Rock collapsed, several banks in Second Life (SL) followed suit. Players rushed to close their accounts because SL is not Monopoly: the exchange (technically, redemption) rate is around 260 L$ (Linden Dollar) to 1 $ (secondlife.com/whatis/economy-market.php). This is interesting because it transforms providers of in-game currencies, like Linden Lab, into issuers of electronic money. And since the threshold between online and offline is constantly being eroded, one is left wondering when some kind of regulation will be extended to such companies as well. It seems unfair that no government went out of its way to support users who lost all their L$.

True, at the moment you cannot swap L$ for any hard stuff in first life. For this, you need a Nectar card (www.nectar.com). In this case, the neo-bartering nature of the information society is even more evident.

As with all loyalty cards, one earns points by spending. While the money spent might not be yours (suppose you drive a company car and your travelling expenses are reimbursed), the points are as good as cash: a DVD from Blockbuster costs only 500 points (note Sainsbury’s gives you a worse deal). Clearly, bartering and online swapping are based on fair rules, trust and honesty. But we live in a sad valley of cheaters, where the neologism swaplifting (swapping + shoplifting) is becoming popular.

The simplest scam is to agree to a swap and then disappear without honouring your side of the deal. There are, however, slightly less elementary ways of playing the system. Suppose you buy a product for £1000, register the 2000 points on your Nectar card, then return the object purchased and get a full refund. You just made the equivalent of 4 rented DVDs (approximately £16) at no risk, as it is unlikely that the points will be reclaimed. This is dishonest, for you are supposed to contact Nectar “if you believe points have been incorrectly awarded to your account”, but it’s probably not illegal.

Or consider those loyalty cards that offer a once-only, 10% discount when you register your first purchase (www.debenhams.com). Go to the local retailer looking affluent and well-dressed. Once you have accumulated say £300 of potential shopping, make sure that you are invited to register for the loyalty card. Agree, somewhat reluctantly, but provide some incorrect details regarding your credit card (your old address will do). After several attempts, the registration will fail. You will look perplexed. The manager will be embarrassed. Apologises will be exchanged and it is very likely that they will give you the discount anyway (otherwise, you can still walk out without buying anything). You just gained £30, as you can now get another 10% discount next time you register.

All this may seem applicable only to nerds, middle-managers and desperate housewives, but even high-flyers can barter. They just use frequent-flyer miles. According to The Economist, in January 2005 “the total stock of unredeemed miles was worth more than all the dollar bills in circulation”, and you can exchange them for almost anything (www.points.com). The temptation is to pocket the miles earned through someone else’s money.

Last February, for example, the Parliamentary Standards watchdog complained that the Commons Speaker, Michael Martin, had used air miles earned with public money for his family, the ultimate proof (Mr Martin, not the watchdog) that Britain is an advanced information society.

Of course, one day all barriers between points-systems will be lifted. People will then use only World Credits (www.fireflywiki.org/Firefly/FireflyMoney) to purchase anything in the whole universe, independently of ordinal numbers. I look forward to being able to swap my L$ for a socially responsible coffee (starbucks.co.uk/en-GB/_Card).

MA by Research in Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire in conjunction with a research assistantship

noreply@blogger.com (Luciano Floridi) — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 21:34:00 +0000

DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE (UK)

MA BY RESEARCH IN PHILOSOPHY IN CONJUNCTION WITH A RESEARCH ASSISTANTSHIP

2008/09 Programme

The Department of Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire is inviting applications for a one-year position for the Master by Research in Philosophy for the academic year 2008-09.

The successful candidate will pursue research in the area of information/computer ethics, under the supervision of Professor Luciano Floridi, and will be eligible for a research assistantship, in order to work on the international Project “Information and communication technologies, inter-firm networking and innovativeness", funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia. This will require spending three months in Lisbon during the academic year 2008-09.

The Research Assistantship will be awarded (for one year) and governed by the rules of FCT (http://www.fct.mctes.pt/pt/apoios/formacao/ambitoprojectos) and the School of Economics and Management of the Catholic University of Portugal, FCEE-Católica (http://www.fcee.ucp.pt).

The successful candidate will become a member of the GPI, the research Group in Philosophy of Information at the University of Hertfordshire (http://philosophyofinformation.net/centre/gpi/) and join a research joint-venture composed by FCEE-Católica, Carnegie Mellon University (Department of Engineering and Public Policy) Bocconi University (CESPRI - Centre of Research on Innovation and Internationalization), in collaboration with the Research Chair In Philosophy of Information at the University of Hertfordshire (http://www.philosophyofinformation.net/).

The student will be expected to develop and participate in a research project in applied ethics aimed at analyzing the impact of information and communication technologies on firms’ innovation capabilities.

The monthly stipend will be € 980.00/month, according to the FCT regulations, for a candidate already holding a previous M.Sc. or € 745.00/month for a candidate with only a first degree. The Assistantship will also cover expenses for some travelling.

Deadline: 1st of May 2008.

For further information on how to apply please contact:

Janice Turner, J.1.Turner@herts.ac.uk

Institute Research Administrator, SSAHRI (Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities Research Institute), De Havilland Campus - Room R312

University of Hertfordshire

Hatfield, AL10 9AB

Tel: 01707 285628

Fax: 01707 285611

Against Digital Ontology

noreply@blogger.com (Luciano Floridi) — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 19:54:00 +0000

It seems fashionable these days to talk of a digital ontology. Fashionable, but mistaken. Kant had already shown that any attempt to interpret the intrinsic nature of the world as either discrete (digital) or continuous (analogue) is meaningless. He was right.

In an article, just accepted for publication in Synthese, I argue against digital ontology. I do so in order to make room for an informational ontology (see the post below, Wednesday, February 20, 2008). If you are curious, you can read the preprint online.

And here is the abstract:

The paper argues that digital ontology (the ultimate nature of reality is digital, and the universe is a computational system equivalent to a Turing Machine) should be carefully distinguished from informational ontology (the ultimate nature of reality is structural), in order to abandon the former and retain only the latter as a promising line of research.

Digital vs. analogue is a Boolean dichotomy typical of our computational paradigm, but digital and analogue are only “modes of presentation” of Being (to paraphrase Kant), that is, ways in which reality is experienced and/or conceptualised by an epistemic agent at a given level of abstraction.

A preferable alternative is provided by an informational approach to structural realism, according to which knowledge of the world is knowledge of its structures. The most reasonable ontological commitment turns out to be in favour of an interpretation of reality as the totality of structures dynamically interacting with each other.

The paper is the first part (the pars destruens) of a two-part piece of research. The pars construens, entitled “A Defence of Informational Structural Realism”, was previously published in Synthese.

CFP: APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers, special issue on 'The Ontological Status of Web-Based Objects'

noreply@blogger.com (Luciano Floridi) — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 19:42:00 +0000

The APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers organizes a special issue on 'The Ontological Status of Web-Based Objects'.

Contributions of up to 3,000 words should be emailed to the editor, Prof. Peter Boltuc pbolt1@uis.edu, by July 01/2008.

The First Roskilde Science Sunrise Conference 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Luciano Floridi) — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 19:09:00 +0000

Roskilde University is the host of the annual Roskilde Science Sunrise Conference.

The Science Sunrise initiative has been installed to provide an international forum for discussing important new scientific developments and the broader societal, cultural, political, ethical and other challenges such developments may bring about.

The First Roskilde Science Sunrise Conference 2008

Surviving Ourselves: The Human Condition

August 13-15, 2008, Roskilde University, Denmark

How are we to act and interact in the century ahead? Shaping the future and grappling with its complexities is a challenge to ourselves and at the same time a matter of surviving ourselves since history seems to teach us that we are as much problem makers as problem solvers.

What might be the impact on the human condition of two major scientific breakthroughs about to be announced:

(1) the laboratory creation of primitive life, and

(2) the possibility of genetic recreation of dead DNA ("awakening the dead")?

By bringing together some of the most renowned politicians, scientists and public figures together this first Roskilde Sunrise Conference provides a unique forum for discussing some of the scientific, ethical and political consequences of these two new possibilities for the human race in the 21st century.

Invited speakers:

Mark Bedau / Reed University
David Deamer / UC Santa Cruz
Drew Endy / MIT
Gerald L. Epstein / Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC
P. Luigi Luisi / University of Rome
Donald W. Pfaff / Rockefeller University
Pamela Silver / Harvard University, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Steen Rasmussen, FLiNT Center, SDU, Denmark
Robert M. Friedman, Vice President for Public Policy, J. Craig Venter Institute

For further information, please visit our website: http://sunrise.ruc.dk

GPI & IEG Newsletter

noreply@blogger.com (Luciano Floridi) — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:31:00 +0000

The first issue of the new, joint Newsletter of the GPI (research Group in Philosophy of Information, UH) and IEG (Information Ethics research Group, Oxford) is available online at:

http://philosophyofinformation.net/centre/gpi/newsletter.html

The informational nature of being

noreply@blogger.com (Luciano Floridi) — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 14:12:00 +0000

What is the ultimate nature of reality?

In an article just published in Synthese, I argue in favour of an informational ontology. With a slogan: "To be is to be information".

Well,, it's a bit more complicated than that, so, if you are curious, you can read the preprint online.

And here is the abstract:

This is the revised version of an invited keynote lecture delivered at the 1st Australian Computing and Philosophy Conference (CAP@AU; the Australian National University in Canberra, 31 October – 2 November, 2003).

The paper is divided into two parts.

The first part defends an informational approach to structural realism. It does so in three steps.

First, it is shown that, within the debate about structural realism (SR), epistemic (ESR) and ontic (OSR) structural realism are reconcilable. It follows that a version of OSR is defensible from a structuralist-friendly position.
Second, it is argued that a version of OSR is also plausible, because not all relata (structured entities) are logically prior to relations (structures).
Third, it is shown that a version of OSR is also applicable to both sub-observable (unobservable and instrumentally-only observable) and observable entities, by developing its ontology of structural objects in terms of informational objects.

The outcome is informational structural realism, a version of OSR supporting the ontological commitment to a view of the world as the totality of informational objects dynamically interacting with each other.

The paper has been discussed by several colleagues and, in the second half, ten objections that have been moved to the proposal are answered in order to clarify it further.

Training course in biomedical ontology

noreply@blogger.com (Luciano Floridi) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 12:13:00 +0000

A two-day intensive training course in biomedical ontology will be held in Buffalo on 12-13 April, 2008 under the auspices of the National Center for Biomedical Ontology.

The course will provide an introductory survey of methods and an overview of current developments and best practices in ontology in the life sciences. No prior knowledge of ontology is presupposed.

Further details are available here: http://ontology.buffalo.edu/08/TrainingCourse/index.htm

PhD POSITION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TWENTE: CAREBOTS AND THE GOOD LIFE

noreply@blogger.com (Luciano Floridi) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 11:28:00 +0000

The University of Twente is an entrepreneurial research university, located in Enschede, the Netherlands. Distributed over 5 faculties, the UT offers 20 educational programmes ranging from applied physics and public administration to communication studies and biomedical technology.

Research takes place within the context of institutes and focuses, among other things, on nanotechnology, information and communication technology, biomedical technology, policy studies, human behaviour, and mechanics, processes and control. More than 7,500 students and 2,700 staff members live, work and recreate at the UT, the Netherlands’ only campus university.

The Faculty of Behavioural Sciences offers the following Bachelor programmes: Educational Design, Media and Management (EDMM), Communication Studies (TCW) and Psychology (PSY), the following Master programmes: Educational Science and Technology (EST), Philosophy of Science, Technology and Society (PSTS), Communication Studies (CS), Psychology (PSY) a Research Master and two Masters for Teachers. Most of the faculty’s research is carried out within the Institute for Behavioral Research (IBR), and focuses on the themes Health and Safety, Labor and Organization, Knowledge and Education and Communication and Media. Furthermore, research is carried out within the Biomedical Institute (BMTI) and the Institute for Information and Communication Technology (CTIT).

One of departments of the Faculty is the Department of Philosophy, which specializes in research in philosophy of technology, and includes the Centre for Philosophy of Technology and Engineering Science (CEPTES). The department also participates centrally in the 3TU.Centre for Ethics and Technology.

The Department of Philosophy of the University of Twente is looking for a Ph.D. Student (M/F, fulltime) for the project “Carebots and the good life: An anticipatory ethical analysis of human-robot interaction in (health) care” Tasks This project, funded by the 3TU.Centre for Ethics and Technology (http://www.ethicsandtechnology.eu) of the University of Twente, TU Delft and TU Eindhoven in the Netherlands, aims to anticipate and evaluate the role of robots and robotic systems in future (health) care systems and organizations by developing realistic near-future scenarios and by evaluating these scenarios in terms of their contribution to the good life.

The focus will be on the ethical aspects of human-robot interaction in (health) care contexts. Will carebots enhance the quality of life of patients and the elderly, given that human-human interaction will often be substituted for human-robot interaction?

The project will be embedded in the department of philosophy at the University of Twente and the 3TU.Centre for Ethics and Technology.

Profile
A Master’s degree or equivalent degree in philosophy, preferably with a background in ethics, social philosophy or philosophy of technology (consideration will also be given to candidates with multidisciplinary degrees where philosophy is one of the contributing disciplines). Demonstrable interest in robotics and/or issues in health care (but previous work in this area is not required). Good analytical skills. Good communication skills in English, in writing as well as orally. Good team spirit. Creativity, open-mindedness, and an ability to develop new ideas.

Offer
A four-year full-time Ph.D. position, preferably starting May 1, 2008. The gross salary is € 2.000,- in the first year going up to € 2.558,- in the fourth year (€ 27.456,- and € 35.699,- per annum, respectively, including vacation pay and end-of-year bonus).

Information and application

A full project description can be retrieved from http://www.ceptes.nl/robot. For questions about the project you can contact dr. Mark Coeckelbergh (e-mail: m.j.k.coeckelbergh@utwente.nl).

Your application should contain the following documents: a letter of application which explains your interest in the position, your qualifications for it and some suggestions on how you would want to approach the project; a curriculum vitae which includes the name and e-mail address/telephone number of one of your professors, preferably the supervisor of your master’s thesis; a copy of your master’s thesis; copies of academic publications, if any; an academic transcript that contains a list of subjects taken and grades received (this may be an unofficial version or scanned copy).

Your application can be sent by e-mail (preferred) or by normal post to dr. ir. J.F.C. Verberne (e-mail: pz-gw@gw.utwente.nl), managing director of the Faculty of Behavioural Sciences, University of Twente, PO Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, the Netherlands. Please mention the vacancy number 08/050.

Your application should be in by March 17, 2008. Job interviews will be held on March 26 and/or 27. Women are strongly encouraged to apply.

1st Computer Cooking Contest CCC 2008 @ ECCBR 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Luciano Floridi) — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 18:00:00 +0000

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

1st Computer Cooking Contest CCC 2008 @ ECCBR 2008

September 1, 2008, Trier (Germany)

www.computercookingcontest.net

Who says that only human beings are able to cook delicious meals? We aim to teach our computers the haute cuisine and therefore we need your creativity and ideas! Come to the European Conference on Case-Based Reasoning (ECCBR'08) in Trier and participate in the Computer Cooking Contest (CCC)!

Write your own software application for the live competition. Show that your program is more creative than the average kitchen user. Let your computer's recipe creations be evaluated by a professional cook and an international jury of scientists!

Rationales

Once upon a time in the past, when we still were students, we wondered whether there could be a software which would relieve us from the task of matching the content of our fridge to a dish.

Given a restricted set of ingredients, the task is to cook something, where something does taste good. Ideally, something moreish.

Once upon a time in the present, when we were not students anymore, we wondered whether there could be a software which would relieve us from the task of explaining what we are doing, e.g. case-based reasoning, to a broader audience. Given the technological state of the art, the task is to demonstrate something, where something solves a problem. Ideally, something moreish.

Glue the two together and you get it: The Computer Cooking Contest!

Moreish means: it tastes like more. This is the rationale behind the contest, too. It will attract new people, e.g. students, to deal with AI technologies such as case-based reasoning, semantic technologies, search and information extraction. Also cooking is fun, in particular when using a computer for the design of the menu. Furthermore, the contest will attract the public. Since everybody knows something about cooking, people will be curious what a computer might do about it. Furthermore, we all have noticed the increasing interest of the public audience in cooking, stipulated by the growing insight that good food is mandatory for health.

Hence, the Computer Cooking Contest offers the opportunity to explain the benefits of our technologies intelligible to all.

Competition

The Computer Cooking Contest is an open competition. Any individual, student, research group and professional is invited to submit software that creates a recipe for a single dish or even a three course menu. The input will be a database of basic recipes from which appropriate recipes must be selected, modified, or even combined. The queries to the system consist of a number of wanted ingredients and other requirements for the dish or menu.

The overall competition is structured into a main compulsory task and two additional challenge tasks.

The Compulsory Task involves answering queries that require the selection and modification of recipe for a single dish. A sample query could be to "cook a main dish with turkey, pistachio, and pasta". An appropriate answer would be to select a recipe for pistachio chicken and to replace chicken by turkey.

The Negation Challenge is to answer queries that involve avoiding certain ingredients, which you don't like or which are not available.

This can be done, for example, by selecting an appropriate recipe or by replacing or removing some ingredients from a recipe. A sample query could be: "I want to have a salad with tomato but I hate garlic and cucumber". An appropriate answer would be to select an italian tomato salad and to omit the garlic.

The Menu Challenge requires the composition of a three-course menu based on the available recipes. For example we might ask: "I do have a filet of beef, carrots, celery, field garlic and cucumber. Potatoes are available, too. For the dessert, we have oranges and mint. A soup would be preferable for the starter." In this case, a Caldo Verde as a starter, filet steak with baked potatoes, and an orange ice cream with mint flavour would be a good solution.

Please note that for most of the queries there is not a single correct or best answer. Usually many different solutions are possible, depending on your creativity or the creativity of your software. We also do not imply any restriction on the technology to be used. Case-based reasoning is one candidate technology, but other approaches are certainly suitable as well.

The only restriction we impose is that the given database of recipes must be used as a starting point. We will not provide a formal query language.

Queries will be described in free text but the software to be developed can use any kind of user interaction (structural/ formula-based, conversation, text-based).

Evaluation Criteria

All systems will be evaluated with respect to scientific/technical quality (technical originality of the approach, usability of the software, maintainability, and scalability) and with respect to the culinary quality of the created recipes (appropriate to the query, tasty, cookable, creative). The evaluation will involve a peer-review of the papers describing the system and an assessment by an international jury of experts including a professional cook. We also intend to give the ECCBR attendees an additional vote.

Competition Procedure and Timeline

Now: Statement of Interest

Everybody interested in participating at the CCC should visit www.computercookingcontest.net and subscribe to the mailing list through which all relevant information will be communicated.

September 1, 2007:

Publication of Contest Conditions and Material A detailed description of the competition rules, an initial database of recipes in XML format, and a first set of queries has been published. With this information, the contest participants can start with the development of their system.

June 2, 2008:

Qualifying Examination

To this deadline, the contest participants must submit:

an up-to-10-page technical description of the system,

the URL of the running system (web interface) or the executable software (must run on Windows)

the system results for the first set of queries.

In a peer review process, the submitted papers and the systems will be evaluated and the best contestants are selected for participation in the final. The finalists may of course continue to improve their systems for the final.

August 1, 2008:

Publication of the Contest Recipes An extended database including additional recipes will be published four weeks prior to the contest.

The extended database must be used for all queries in the competitions' final. The contest participants must update their system to include the new recipes.

September 1, 2008:

Computer Cooking Contest The finalist systems are demonstrated at the Computer Cooking Contest at ECCBR. At least one person per finalist must register for ECCBR, demonstrate the system and give a technical presentation at the CCC workshop. The technical descriptions of the finalist systems will be published in the ECCBR workshop proceedings.

The systems are evaluated according to the initial set of queries and a confidential set of new queries. The new queries are different, but similar in type and difficulty to the first set. The evaluation will be performed by an international jury. Separate prices will be awarded for the compulsory tasks and for the two challenges.

Contact: Please do not hesitate to contact ccc-org2008@unitrier.de in case you have any questions.

Philosophy, Computing and Facebook

noreply@blogger.com (Luciano Floridi) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 09:26:00 +0000

Tony Beavers has created an unofficial group on Facebook for any IACAP member who might be signed on to that service. This is intended as a bit of an experiment. Anyone interested in Philosophy and Computing/Information is welcome.

As Tony acknowledges "I am aware that there are both pros and cons concerning the idea. (On the Pro side, for instance, Facebook allows for easy communication and sharing of interests. On the Con side, using Facebook in this way may obscure boundaries between the professional and the private.) Be that as it may, the experiment is open to those who with to participate."

You can find the Facebook group at http://evansville.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8269689537&ref=nf

Fifth International Workshop on Modelling and Reasoning in Context

noreply@blogger.com (Luciano Floridi) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 21:55:00 +0000

Call for Papers, MRC 2008

Fifth International Workshop on Modelling and Reasoning in Context

In conjunction with the Third International Conference on Human Centered Processes (HCP-2008), at Delft University of Technology

Submission deadline: March 14, 2008
http://events.idi.ntnu.no/mrc2008

Where traditional software applications "know" by design in which situations they are to function, applications in pervasive computing and ambient intelligence do not necessarily have this luxury. Due to the very nature of the dynamism in the world with which these systems interact, they have to dynamically adapt their behaviour in run time. To do this, they must be able to somehow interpret the environment in which they are situated. This ability is often referred to as being context aware, or even situation aware. Being aware of the environment facilitates the ability to adapt behaviour by being context sensitive.

Context sensitive processing plays a key role in many modern IT applications, with context-awareness and context-based reasoning essential not only for mobile and ubiquitous computing, but also for a wide range of other areas such as collaborative software, web engineering, personal digital assistants, information sharing, health care workflow and patient control, adaptive games, and e-Learning solutions.

From an intelligent systems perspective, one of the challenges is to integrate context with other types of knowledge as an additional major source for reasoning, decision-making, and adaptation and to form a coherent and versatile architecture. There is a common understanding that achieving desired behaviour from intelligent systems will depend on the ability to represent and manipulate information about a rich range of contextual factors.

These factors may include not only physical characteristics of the task environment, but many other aspects such as the knowledge states (of both the application and user), emotions, etc. This representation and reasoning problem present research challenges to which methodologies derived amongst others from artificial intelligence, knowledge management, human-computer interaction, and psychology can contribute solutions.

One specific problem is to deal with uncertainty on different levels, from interpretation of uncertain sensor input data up to identification of contexts with fuzzy borders. Another issue is how to integrate findings from the social sciences and psychology into the design of context aware systems and how to build psychologically plausible knowledge models.

A third aspect is the ability of the system to use explanations, both as a part of its reasoning and as a means of communication with the user.

This workshop aims to bring together researchers and practitioners exploring modelling and reasoning issues and approaches for context sensitive systems, from a broad range of areas, to share their problems and techniques across different research and application areas. The workshop will examine mechanisms and techniques for structured storage

of contextual information, effective ways to retrieve it, and methods for enabling integration of context and application knowledge.

The Modeling and Reasoning in Context workshop series, established in 2004, provides a forum for scientists and practitioners addressing the above issues to exchange and discuss issues and ideas in a friendly, cooperative environment.

Agenda

The workshop will last two full days and will be organised into three main parts.

The first part will consist of short presentations of the accepted papers, grouped into sessions. Each session will be followed by a discussion period. The goal of these sessions is to introduce the work of all the participants.

The second part will consist of three panel discussion sessions, each dedicated to one specific issue. The suggested issues are "key issues for modelling context", "key issues for reasoning in context" and one "open topics", but are subject to change dependent on the interests of the attendees and the nature of submissions. The goal of these panels is to discuss the various approaches to each of these basic issues and to identify the critical problems in need of attention and the most promising research directions.

The workshop will be concluded with an open discussion summarising the most important lessons learned.

Topics of Interest

The major goal of the workshop is to bring researchers, scientists from both industry and academia, and representatives from different communities together to study, understand, and explore issues of development and application of IT systems utilising context.

Besides contributed papers, this workshop will offer organised and open spaces for targeted discussions. We note that the three first MRC meetings were all held in conjunction with conferences on artificial intelligence and computer science. We continue the success from last year, where the workshop was held at CONTEXT 2007, and holding MRC 2008 at HCP will enable us to further reach out to other relevant disciplines and communities and facilitate collaboration between different fields.

Areas of interest includes, but are not limited to:

Generic and specific context models
Explicit representations
Representation of and reasoning with uncertainty
Retrieval of context and context information
Context-based retrieval and reasoning
Socio-technical issues
Context awareness and context-sensitivity
Context awareness in applications
Evaluation of context-aware applications
Explanation and context
Mobile context
Information aging
Context focusing and context switching
Context management

Submissions

Workshop submissions will be electronic, in PDF format only, using the EasyChair submission system through the workshop website. Paper length should not exceed 12 pages in the Springer LNCS format. Guidelines and templates are available at the Springer website

(http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html).

Three members of the program committee will review each submission. A review form will direct submitters to evaluate submissions for appropriateness, technical strength, originality, presentation, and overall evaluation, as well as recording the reviewer’s confidence in the topic.

Papers will be published in accompanying proceedings. Authors of accepted papers will be invited to submit extended versions for inclusion in a book or a special journal issue on context aware systems.

Important Dates

Submission of papers: March 14, 2008
Notification: April 4, 2008
Camera-ready copies: April 11, 2008
MRC Workshop: June 9-10, 2008

Organisation

Chairs

Anders Kofod-Petersen,Department of Computer and Information Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Jörg Cassens, Department of Computer and Information Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
David B. Leake, Computer Science Department, Indiana University, USA
Marielba Zacarias, Faculdade de Cièncias e Tecnologia, Algarve University, Portugal
Preliminary Program Committee
Patrick Brézillon, University of Paris 6, France
Henning Christiansen, Roskilde University, Denmark
Lorcan Coyle, University College Dublin, Ireland
Chiara Ghidini, FBK-irst, Italy
Eyke Hüllermeier, University of Marburg, Germany
Boicho Kokinov, New Bulgarian University, Bulgaria
John Krogstie, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway
Enric Plaza, Spanish Council for Scientific Research, Spain
Thomas R. Roth-Berghofer, German Research Center for Artificial Inteligence, Germany
Hedda Schmidtke, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Korea
Stefan Schulz, The e-Spirit Company, Germany
Sven Schwarz, German Research Center for Artificial Inteligence, Germany
Patrícia Tedesco, University of Pernambuco, Brazil
Santtu Toivonen, Idean, Finland
José Tribolet, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal
Roy Turner, University of Maine, USA
Rebekah Wegener, Macquarie University, Australia

Submission deadline: March 14, 2008

http://events.idi.ntnu.no/mrc2008

What Went Wrong and Why: Lessons from AI Research and Applications

noreply@blogger.com (Luciano Floridi) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:12:00 +0000

AAAI-08 Workshop on

What Went Wrong and Why: Lessons from AI Research and Applications

CALL FOR PAPERS

Submissions due: April 7th, 2008

Bugs, glitches, and failures shape research and development by charting the boundaries of technology; they identify errors, reveal assumptions, and expose design flaws. When a system works we focus on its input/output behavior, but when a problem occurs, we examine the mechanisms that generated behavior to account for the flaw and hypothesize corrections. This process produces insight and forces incremental refinement. In a sense, failures are the mother of necessity, and therefore the grandmother of invention.

Unfortunately, bugs, glitches, and failures are rarely mentioned in academic discourse. Their role in informing design and development is essentially lost. The first What Went Wrong and Why workshop during the 2006 AAAI spring symposium [1,2] started to address this gap by inviting AI researchers and system developers to discuss their most revealing bugs, and relate problems to lessons learned. Revised versions of the articles and the invited talks will be published as a special issue of the AI-Magazine in Summer 2008 [3].

The first workshop clarified that WWWW experiences can be studied at three different levels of abstraction: the Strategic (AI research in general), Tactical (research area) and Execution (project or implementation) levels. An additional category turned out to be the study of how, why and when failures occur in the first place.

The second workshop will continue our analysis of failures in research. In addition to examining the links between failure and insight, we would like to determine if there is a hidden structure behind our tendency to make mistakes that can be utilized to provide guidance in research.

As such, we invite researchers to submit papers (8 pages in AAAI format) connecting problems they have encountered to lessons learned on the tactical or execution level. We would also welcome papers on the study of failures themselves. We encourage authors to elaborate on what they believe was the source cause of the failure, how the problem helped them arrive at a better solution, and to suggest a broader categorization of failures and how to utilize them. Papers should be submitted to submission@whatwentwrongandwhy.org

Important Dates

* Submissions Due: April 7, 2008

* Notifications: April 21, 2008

* Final Papers Due: May 5, 2008

* Workshop: July 13 or 14, 2008 (TBA) in Chicago at AAAI 2008

Chairs: Mehmet H. Göker and Daniel Shapiro

Mehmet H. Göker, PricewaterhouseCoopers, CAR, (mehmet.goker@us.pwc.com)

Daniel Shapiro, CSLI/Stanford University, & Applied Reactivity, Inc. (dgs@stanford.edu)

Program Committee

David Aha (Naval Research Laboratory), Ralph Bergmann (Universität Trier, Lehrstuhl für Wirtschaftsinformatik II), Carl Hewitt (MIT EECS - emeritus), Jean-Gabriel Ganascia (University Pierre et Marie Curie, LIP6), David Leake (Indiana University, Computer Science Department), Doug Lenat (Cycorp Inc.), Ramon Lopez de Mantaras (CSIC Artificial Intelligence Research Institute), Edwina Rissland (University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Computer Science), Ted Senator (SAIC).

References:

[1] Shapiro, D., Göker, M. (eds.), 'What Went Wrong and Why: Lessons From AI Research and Applications', Papers from the AAAI Spring Symposium, March 27-29, 2006, Stanford, CA. Technical Report SS-06-08, AAAI Press, Menlo Park, 2006.

[2] A. Abdecker, R. Alami, C Baral, T. Bickmore, E. Durfee, T. Fong, M. Göker, N. Green, M. Liberman, C. Lebiere, J. Martin, G. Mentzas, D. Musliner, N. Nicolov, I. Nourbakhsh, F. Salvetti, D. Shapiro, D. Schreckenghost, A. Sheth, L. Stojanovic, V. SunSpiral, R. Wray, "AAAI Spring Symposium Reports" , AI Magazine, VOl 27, Nr. 3, Fall 2006, pp. 107-112, American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), Menlo Park, 2006

[3] Shapiro, D. Göker, M. (eds.), 'Special Issue on What Went Wrong and Why", AI Magazine, Vol. 29, Number 2, Summer 2008 (to appear)

Epigenetic Robotics 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Luciano Floridi) — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 20:55:00 +0000

CALL FOR PAPERS: Epigenetic Robotics 2008

31 July - 2 August, 2008, Brighton, UK

Eighth International Conference on Epigenetic Robotics:

Modeling Cognitive Development in Robotic Systems

http://www.epigenetic-robotics.org

Email: epirob08@epigenetic-robotics.org

2008 Conference Theme

Evolution and Development: Related Processes of Change

Location: University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

Important Dates:

1 April 2008: Deadline for submission of papers & posters

31 May 2008: Notification of acceptance of papers & posters

30 June 2008: Deadline for camera ready papers

31 July - 2 August 2008: EpiRob08 @ Brighton

Keynote Speakers

Prof. Eva Jablonka (Tel Aviv University, Israel)

Prof. Susan Oyama (John Jay College, New York, USA)

Dr. Domenico Parisi (Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, CNR, Rome, Italy)

(more to be announced)

Conference Theme:

In the past 7 years, the Epigenetic Robotics annual conference has established itself as a unique place where original interdisciplinary research from developmental sciences, neuroscience, biology, cognitive robotics, and artificial intelligence is being presented.

Psychological theory and empirical evidence is being used to inform epigenetic robotic models, and these models can be used as theoretical tools to make experimental predictions in developmental psychology.

As in previous years, we encourage submissions from researchers whose work broadly intersects the fields (and subdisciplines) of developmental science robotics, and neuroscience. As a special feature, this year we are also highlighting a specific organizational theme: evolution and development as related processes of change.

The particular focus of this theme is on the dynamic interplay between ontogeny and phylogeny. In other words, how do new abilities and skills that emerge during development influence the path of evolution, and how do subsequent evolutionary changes help to create new developmental trajectories? This is a question that fits well within the mission of epigenetic robotics, as it spans not only a wide range of research areas and academic disciplines (e.g., biology, psychology, AI and machine learning, linguistics, anthropology, etc.) but also a broad spectrum of spatial and temporal scales (e.g., neurons, brains, social communities, cultures, etc.).

We are especially interested in submissions that will enhance the emerging dialog between evolutionary and developmental perspectives. Relevant topics include, but are not limited to:

- Artificial embryology

- Morphogenesis, differentiation, and regulation

- Behavioral inheritance and social learning

- The evolution of language acquisition

- Phylogenetic constraints on perceptual processing (e.g., face perception)

- Neuroplasticity and the evolution of cognition

- Evolutionary influences on mother-infant bonding

- Modularity of mind (evolutionary constraints on neural processing)

- Tool-use and problem-solving in humans, non-human primates, and machines

Modes of Submission:

(1) Regular Sub

mission (8-page max). After review, regular submissions will either be accepted or rejected (no revision as short papers or posters). Regular submissions will be allocated 8 pages in the Proceedings.

(2) Abstract Submission (1-page max). After review, selected authors will be invited to present a poster. Abstract submissions will be allocated 2 pages in the Proceedings.

Submission instructions will be available from the EpiRob website:

http://www.epigenetic-robotics.org.

Email submissions and/or questions regarding the submission process to epirob08-PC@epigenetic-robotics.org.

Related Events

Note that "Artificial Life XI" (http://www.alifexi.org/) will be hosted in Winchester, UK (5-8 August 2008), and that we encourage participants to attend both meetings.

Organizing Committee:

Christian Balkenius (Lund University, Sweden)

Luc Berthouze (University of Sussex, UK)

Lola Cañamero (University of Hertfordshire, UK)

Matthew Schlesinger (Southern Illinois University, USA)

Contact:

Dr Luc Berthouze, Senior Lecturer

Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics (CCNR)

Department of Informatics

University of Sussex

Brighton BN1 9QH, UK

Tel: +44 1273 877206 Fax: +44 1273 877873

Positions at Delft University

noreply@blogger.com (Luciano Floridi) — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 20:51:00 +0000

Assistant Professor Ethics & Technology
Delft University of Technology, Engineering & Reflection
Association of Universities in The Netherlands - VSNU

2 PhDs in Philosophy of Technology
Delft University of Technology, Engineering & Reflection
Association of Universities in The Netherlands - VSNU

Call for Papers - New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia

noreply@blogger.com (Luciano Floridi) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 21:24:00 +0000

Call for Papers - New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia

Editor: Doug Tudhope (dstudhope@glam.ac.uk)

Associate Editor: Daniel Cunliffe (djcunlif@glam.ac.uk)

Faculty of Advanced Technology, University of Glamorgan, UK

Submission deadline: January 16, 2008

Acceptance notification: February 27, 2008

Final manuscripts due: April 9, 2008

NRHM covers hypermedia, hypertext, interactive multimedia and related technologies. We invite papers on the following topics and related issues:

- Conceptual basis of hypertext systems

cognitive aspects

design strategies

- Intelligent and adaptive hypermedia

knowledge representation

knowledge organisation systems and services

the semantic web

- Multimedia issues

time and synchronisation;

link dynamics audio/image/video processing and compression content-based retrieval

- Interaction

navigation and browsing; search systems;

studies of information seeking and navigation behaviour;

testing and evaluation user interfaces;

multi-modal interaction

- Tools for hypermedia

(automatic) authoring systems

- Applications in business, commerce, digital libraries, e-learning, information management, the professions, publishing, and public administration, etc.

The New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia (NRHM) is published by Taylor & Francis and appears in both print and digital formats. For more details and indicative topics, see the journal website:

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/13614568.asp

Submissions may take the form of research papers or shorter technical notes and should be sent by email to the editors, preferably in pdf format.

Researching Ethics of ICT in the European Knowledge Society

noreply@blogger.com (Luciano Floridi) — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 09:23:00 +0000

The CCSR has successfully submitted a first stage proposal for a COST Action on the topic of "Researching Ethics of ICT in the European Knowledge Society" and have been invited to submit a full proposal.

COST is one of the oldest European instruments. It does not fund research but supports cooperation. For more information on COST, please check http://www.cost.esf.org/.

If you are actively pursuing research in the area and are interested in exchanging ideas on your research with others, then I would like to invite you to join the proposal. Member States of COST include all Members of the EU, Turkey, Israel, and Switzerland. If you are working in a COST signatory state, then you are eligible to be part of the Action. But even if you are not, there may be ways for you to contribute.

If you are interested, please send your name, email, affiliation, and postal address to:

Dr. Bernd Carsten Stahl,

http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~bstahl/

He will enrol you in the project website and you will be able to see the latest version of the proposal.

Time, unfortunately is limited. Deadline for submission is 01 February. The proposal still needs a lot of work and your contribution would be appreciated.

Robotics and Autonomous Systems Journal Special issue on Semantic Knowledge in Robotics

noreply@blogger.com (Luciano Floridi) — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 14:14:00 +0000

2nd Call for PapersRobotics and Autonomous Systems Journal Special issue on Semantic Knowledge in Robotics

SUBMISSION DEADLINE EXTENDED: FEBRUARY 4 (Final extension!)

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

There is a growing tendency to introduce high-level semantic knowledge into robotic systems. This tendency is visible in different forms within several areas of robotics. Recent work in mapping and localization tries to extract semantically meaningful structures from sensor data during map building, or to use semantic knowledge in the map building process, or both. A similar trend characterizes the cognitive vision approach to scene understanding. Recent efforts in human-robot interaction try to endow the robot with some understanding of the human meaning of words, gestures and expressions. Ontological knowledge is increasingly being used in distributed systems in order to allow automatic re-configuration in the areas of flexible automation and of ubiquitous robotics. Ontological knowledge was also used recently to improve the inter-operability of robotic components developed for different systems.

While all these trends share many common questions and issues, work on each one of them is often pursued in isolation within a specific area, without being aware of the related achievements is other areas. The aim of this special issue is to collect in a single place a collection of advanced, high-level works that tackle the problem of using semantic knowledge in robotics in many of its different forms.

This special issue will also emphasize the link between the robotic community and the knowledge representation (KR) community in AI. The perspective taken here is that there are possibly many ideas and formalisms that can be taken from the KR community, but that these should be evaluated from the point of view of robotics: any KR formalism of interest need not only be representationally and inferentially efficient (as normally required for a KR formalism), but also effectively grounded in the robot's sensor and motor signals.

SUBMISSIONS

We solicit original papers which report novel contributions related to the creation, representation and use of semantic knowledge in autonomous robots. We aim at a balanced mixture of theoretical papers, reporting strong fundamental results, and papers that present techniques which have been experimentally validated on real single or multiple robot systems. Submissions will be peer reviewed for scientific value, presentation quality, and relevance to this special issue.

Papers should be typeset according to the format instructions for the Robotics and Autonomous Systems journal, available from the Elsevier web site.

Length should not exceed 22 pages in the above format (single column). Please e-mail your submission to both guest editors, in PDF format. Other, non-standard formats (e.g., Word) cannot be accepted. In the body of the e-mail message, please specify the following:

Paper title
Name and affiliation of all authors
Name, email, and postal address of corresponding author
Phone and fax of corresponding author Keywords (max 5)
Abstract (maximum 200 words)

All submissions will be acknowledged within a few days. Please contact the guest editors if you do not receive an acknowledgement.

GUEST EDITORS

Joachim Hertzberg (hertzberg AT informatik DOT uni-osnabrueck DOT de) Institute of Computer Science University of Osnabrueck, Germany
Alessandro Saffiotti (asaffio AT aass DOT oru DOT se) AASS Mobile Robotics Laboratory University of Orebro, Sweden

IMPORTANT DATES

February 4, 2008: Submission deadline
April 1, 2008: Notification of acceptance
May 12, 2008: Final version due
Fall 2008: Expected publication date

MORE INFORMATION

http://www.aass.oru.se/Agora/RAS08/

ECAP 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Luciano Floridi) — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 12:04:00 +0000

COMPUTING AND PHILOSOPHY

E-CAP 2008@LIRMM, France, June 16-18, 2008

http://www.lirmm.fr/ECAP08/

Conference Chair: Jean Sallantin js@lirmm.fr

E-CAP 2008 is generously supported by CNRS, Province Languedoc/Roussillon, University Montpellier II

ECAP is the European conference on Computing and Philosophy, the European affiliate of the International Association for Computers and Philosophy (IACAP): see www.ia-cap.org for further information.

IMPORTANT DATES

February 15 , 2008 Submission of extended abstracts

March 17, 2008 Notification of acceptance

April 30, 2008 Early registration deadline

June 16-18, 2008 Conference

GENERAL INFORMATION

From Monday 16 to Wednesday 18 June 2008 the Sixth International European Conference on COMPUTING AND PHILOSOPHY will be held on the Campus of the University for Science and Technology, Montpellier, France.

PROGRAM

Continuing the foci of the E-CAP conferences (beginning in Glasgow, 2003), ECAP'08 will deal with all aspects of the "computational turn" that has emerged over the past several decades, and continues to expand and develop as a result of the multiple interactions between philosophy and computing.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

1. Igor Aleksander Imperial College London UK Virtual Phenomenology

2. Jean-Yves Beziau Université de Neuchatel Switzerland : in the research area - "Intersections" - work at the crossroads of logic, epistemology, philosophy of science

3. Didier Ferrier Université Montpellier II : Norms and Globalization

RELEVANT RESEARCH AREAS

We invite papers that address all topics related to computing and philosophy, including cross- and interdisciplinary work that explores the computational turn in new ways. Hence, the following is intended to be suggestive, but not exclusive:

- Philosophy of Computer Science

- Ontology (Distributed Processing, Emergent Properties, Formal Ontology, Network Structures, etc)

- Computational Linguistics

- Global Information Infrastructures

- Philosophy of Information and Information Technology (Including: Information as structure; Semantic information)

- Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Problem of Consciousness and Cognition

- Computer-based Learning and Teaching Stra

tegies and Resources & The Impact of Distance Learning on the Teaching of Philosophy and Computing

- IT and Gender Research, Feminist Technoscience Studies

- Information and Computing Ethics

- Biological Information, Artificial Life, Biocomputation

- New Models of Logic Software

- "Intersections" - e.g., work at the crossroads of logic, epistemology, philosophy of science and ICT/Computing, such as Philosophy of AI

- Ethical and Political Dimensions of ICTs in Globalization

SUBMISSION OF PAPERS

Authors should submit an electronic version of an extended abstract (total word count approximately 1000 words). The file should also contain a 300 word abstract that will be used for the conference web site/booklet.

To submit papers visit http://www.lirmm.fr/ECAP08/submission.php

The extended abstract submission deadline is 15 February 2008.

For information about paper submission and the program that is not available on the conference web site (http://www.eu-cap.org/), please contact the Conference Chair.

REGISTRATION AND FEES

Registration will take place through the conference website:
www.lirmm.fr/ECAP08/registration.php

The registration fee includes the conference reception, conference lunches and coffee and tea breaks, and one ticket to the conference banquet.

Earlybird Registration - prior to April 30, 2008

Members: 160 Euro

Non-Members: 180 Euro

Members PhD students: 80 Euro

Non-Members PhD students: 87 Euro

Regular Registration - after April 30, 2008

Members: 220 Euro

Non-Members: 240 Euro

Members PhD students: 100 Euro

Masters and undergraduate students may register for the conference at no cost: a fee will be assessed, however, to cover the costs of the lunches and catering.

ACCOMMODATION

To book accommodation, please visit the conference web site:

www.lirmm.fr/ECAP08/accomodation.php

Understanding Behavior from Video Sequences

noreply@blogger.com (Luciano Floridi) — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 11:09:00 +0000

Call for participation, Thematic Winter School

UNDERSTANDING BEHAVIOR FROM VIDEO SEQUENCES

9-14 March 2008, Les Houches, France (the village neighboring Chamonix)

http://visiontrain.inrialpes.fr/?page=school4

The thematic school is organized jointly by three European consortiae: Marie-Curie networks VISIONTRAIN and WARTHE, and by the IST STREP project POP (Perception on Purpose).

The school is intended mainly for PhD students and young researchers. The number of participants is limited to 70.

The school program is multidisciplinary in order to be interesting also to researchers outside the field of computer vision, e.g., in cognitive sciences, psychology, psychophysics. The industrial state-of-the-art in video surveillance will be addressed by some of the speakers too.

There will be space for personal interactions and skiing at the school.

Deadline for early payment (reduced rate): Feb 5, 2008.

Core talk speakers: Aaron Bobick (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA), François Brémond (INRIA Sophia Antipolis, France), Martin Giese (University Clinic, University of Bangor, UK), Karl Grammer (University of Vienna, Austria), David Hogg (University of Leeds, UK), Rolf Pfeifer (University of Zürich, Switzerland)

CFP Special Issue of the Journal of Information, Communication & Society

noreply@blogger.com (Luciano Floridi) — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 18:46:00 +0000

Call for Papers for a Special Issue of the Journal of Information, Communication & Society on ICTs & SD Information and Communication Technologies and Sustainable Development Guest

Editors:
Gunilla Bradley, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
Wolfgang Hofkirchner, Paris-Lodron-University of Salzburg

Assistant Editor: Robert Bichler, Paris-Lodron-University of Salzburg

Deadline for Submission: March 1, 2008

Tentative Publication Date: November, 2008

The objective of this special issue is to discuss current developments in the field of ICTs and Sustainable Development (SD) by providing a forum for both academic researchers and practitioners interested in broadening and deepening the understanding of the sustainability concept.

In the discourse on sustainability there has been a shift from a focus on ecological issues towards the inclusion of broader societal issues. The so called ´Agenda 21´ (1992) in the Rio ´Earth Summit´ stated four mutually independent dimensions of sustainability: ecological, economic, social, and cultural. Such a perspective becomes especially important if one wants to formulate indicators for sustainability. How did so far, can in principle, and could in future, a more comprehensive approach like this influence the understanding of how ICTs can help foster SD?

Authors are invited to submit original, unpublished work, not under consideration for publication elsewhere, with a theory, research or practice focus on the relationship of ICTs and SD.

Authors may submit articles up to 7,000 words in length by sending an electronic version preferably in Word to the following address only:

robert.bichler@sbg.ac.at

Additional details about the submission guidelines can be found here.