Simplification of Internet Services in the Knowledge Society

Nowadays we live in the information society, which the specificity and phenomenon is based on ability of using new technology in everyday live. Therefore this work will be an expression of the belief that information society, at the beginning of new millennium, is facing the challenge of global computerization process. And in this case it could be a background for the development of net society.

Knowledge Management (KM) is one of the hottest Internet challenges influencing the design and the architecture of the infrastructures that will be accessed by the future generation. In this paper, we bridge KM to philosophical theories to quest a theoretical foundation for the discussion, today utterly exciting, about Web's semantics. The man has always tried to organise the knowledge he gained, using lists, encyclopaedias, libraries, etc., in order to make the consultation and the finding of information easier. Nowadays it is possible to get information from the Web, digital archives and databases, but the actual problem is linked to its interpretation, which is now possible only by human beings. The act of interpreting is peculiar for men, not for machines. At the moment there are lots of available digital tools which are presented as KM technologies, but languages often do not discern meanings. We shall investigate the meaning of "knowledge" in the digital world, sustaining it with references to the Philosophy of Information and epistemology. After having provided a definition of "knowledge", suitable for the digital environment, it has been extended to "collective knowledge", a very common concept in the area of global information, proper to the current process of knowledge production and management. The definition is verified testing if a well-known growing phenomenon like Wikipedia can be truly regarded as a knowledge management system.

Future Internet, 2010

Currently, there is much talk of Web 2.0 and Social Software. A common understanding of these notions is not yet in existence. The question of what makes Social Software social has thus far also remained unacknowledged. In this paper we provide a theoretical understanding of these notions by outlining a model of the Web as a technosocial system that enhances human cognition towards communication and co-operation. According to this understanding, we identify three qualities of the Web, namely Web 1.0 as a Web of cognition, Web 2.0 as a Web of human communication, and Web 3.0 as a Web of co-operation. We use the terms Web 1.0, Web 2.0, Web 3.0 not in a technical sense, but for describing and characterizing the social dynamics and information processes that are part of the Internet. ] have argued already in 2007 that a sociology of and in Web 2.0 is needed. So far there is no theoretical clarification of these notions available. Most definitions of these terms are marketing based or rather unreflected. The paper at hand seeks to establish a sociology of Web 2.0 and Social Software by clarifying their theoretical foundations from a sociological view. One of the authors has recently argued that what is primarily needed is not a phenomenology or empirical social research of the Web, but a critical theory of the Internet and society because changing societal circumstances create situations, in which new concepts need to be clarified and social problems emerge, which need to be solved .

Geomatics and Environmental Engineering, 2016

Proceedings of the 28th Interdisciplinary Information Management Talks , 2020

Although the World Wide Web (or web) is a decentralized network of interconnected documents, highly centralized ecosystem dominated by a few supranational companies has developed on top of these foundations. These companies create their own platforms and offer web-powered services that are used by people and organizations around the world. Many of these platforms or services are free of charge, but the providers often process personal and other users' data not just to improve their services but also for other commercial purposes. The users' data also represent a significant barrier to entry of new companies to the market, because collecting the users' data would require significant investments from the new entrants. At the same time, users often face difficulties when switching service providers because their data are in many cases not easily transferable between services. As a result, these supranational companies have become centers of significant power and influence. This article presents the so-called re-decentralization of the web as a complementary alternative to this present state. The goal of the re-decentralized web is to return to the original ideas of the web as an open space, where everyone can freely publish their content and decide on the use of their data. This paper offers a probe into this issue from a social and technical point of view based on an integrative literature review. In this context, some relevant phenomena such as cloud feudalism, platform capitalism or dictatorship of algorithms were highlighted and referred to. In conclusion, the paper summarizes the current situation, presents challenges for further research, and discusses the possible implications of wider adoption of the technologies based on the idea of a re-decentralized web in the near future.

2004

Autonomous Decentralized Community Information System (ADCS) is a proposition made to meet the rapidly changing users’ requirements and cope with the extreme dynamism in current information services. ADCS is a decentralized architecture that forms a community of individual end-users (community members) having the same interests and demands in specified time and location. It allows those members to mutually cooperate and share information without loading up any single node excessively. In this paper, an autonomous decentralized community communication technology is proposed to assure a productive cooperation, a flexible and timely communication among the community members. The main ideas behind this communication technology are: content-code communication (servicebased) for flexibility and multilateral communication for timely and productive cooperation among members. All members communicate productively for the satisfaction of all the community members. The scalability of the system...

2000

To enquire if there are hopes or fears in commercializing the World Wide Web of the Internet (or Web for short), this paper asks how the Web should be conceived scientifically. It then identifies the basic loop which is constraining the Web as a tool for purposes of communication. The next step is to ask what it means to communicate by the means of the Web. The Web is understood as a mass communication medium which is not a social system in itself but a "perturbator" disturbing, and attracting, the "iterations" of other social systems. The question then is in which respects the Web may be a mass communication medium that demands a completely new "coding" by social communications in order to understand what type of information and utterances the Web involves. The conclusion is that the fears of a commercialisation of the Web are not justified since there is no way to completely turn a mass communication medium into a market, and that the hopes of commercialisation may do well to beware of a type of communication which underlies a market that asks for a new type of good and features a new type of consumer as well as producer.

APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers, 2018

The appearance and the extended use of the internet can probably be considered as the most significant development of the twentieth century. However, this becomes evident if and only if the internet is not simply conceived as a network of interconnected computers or a new communication tool, but as a new, highly complex artificial being with a mostly unknown nature. An unavoidable task of our age is to use, shape, and, in general, discover it—and to interpret our praxis, to study and understand the internet, including all the things, relations, and processes contributing to its nature and use

It can be demonstrated that the Internet realizes precisely the postmodern values in its structure, organization and way of functioning: the Internet is a postmodern being. 17. It seems that the crisis of modernity created a tool which is in accordance with its value system, which, as a result of this accordance, is worth keeping and even developing further. 18. However, this tool, the Internet, at the same time seems to be useful for performing activities which are built on the postmodern world but which nevertheless transcend it and can be used for studying the search for the way out of the crisis. 19. It is well-known that as a consequence of the consistently developed pluralism of the postmodern, the modern values are also part of the postmodern value system, so it is also understandable that a great part of Internet use follows modernist aims (commerce, correspondence, administration, etc.). 20. Nevertheless, we can regard the creation and study of various websites and the maintenance of and roaming in these worlds, that is, networking and surfing, as the typical forms of Internet use. 21. Essentially, organized on the basis of radically different value systems, and in an infinite number of individual versions, the whole of human culture is represented on websites which are multiplying with an incredible speed. 22. Most of the knowledge of mankind can be found on websites, but knowledge represented in this form is not available for the visitors of the websites adjusted to the value system of modern society and of the modern scientific institutional system. We do not encounter it ordered according to a universal rationality, but it can be studied mostly in a particular form, through contents and structures determined by individual values and contingencies. 23. The paths leading to truth are individual, and of course, it is a question whether the truths which can be reached this way are not too individual. 24. It seems to be obvious that the knowledge represented on websites is fit into a context which is essentially different from its social embeddedness which can be observed in modernity. Indeed, the goal of such "epistemological" activities is often the creation of new contexts. 25. Knowledge acquires a new form on the Internet. 26. The spread of postmodern pluralism unfolding in recent years as a result of the crisis of modern knowledge led to the outbreak of the so-called "science wars". 27. As an intellectual reaction against the pluralization of knowledge, the modernist warriors of the "science wars" declare the unity of the scientific worldview and the need to make the interpretation of scientific truths exclusive, and they aggressively attack the "loosening" institutional system and publication practices. 28. The "science wars" facilitate the return to the traditional social embeddedness and modernist form of knowledge. 29. The processes sketched above unfolding in the social-human context of knowledge in recent decades display many similarities with the changes of religious faith in the late Middle Ages. 30. The crisis of religious faith developed 500 years ago. 31. The religious worldview lost its earlier stability in those times. The trust of people in the contemporaneous religious institutional system and the official experts of faith faltered. 32. At the same time, it is also obvious that the people did not necessarily regard divine truths as objectionable. Rather, they condemned their social embeddedness, their legitimizing of political power, and the social system of conditions of the creation and use of religious truths. 33. The reformation movements of the age were created as a response to the crisis of faith, as a consequence of which religious faith became plural to a significant degree. 34. The defenders of reformation declared the disintegration of the worldview based on the value system of the Catholic Church. What is more, they evaluated it as a necessary and desirable development. v Theses about the reformation of knowledge XML to PDF by RenderX XEP XSL-FO F ormatter, visit us at http://www.renderx.com/ 35. Reformed faith broke with the Catholic approach to faith, which can be characterized as an abstract emotional state, and it fought for the acceptance of the personal versions of the relationship to God. But of course, its "suggestions to overcome the crisis" did not lead out of the world of faith. 36. Through making use of rationality, the reformers made the abstract emotional system of religious faith individual and concrete. 37. It is well-known that printing played an important role in the reformation of faith. 38. Books are tools which are in harmony with the value system of the modern world. They made it possible to experience faith in a personal way, and its reformation was a result of the fact that the modern book was capable of accommodating the value system of the middle ages, and, in the form of the Bible, give it into the hands of the people in significant numbers (and occasionally in national languages). 39. But the typical use of the book as a modern tool is not this, but rather the creation and study of modern narratives in seemingly infinite versions. Books express various theories and stories. 40. As a result of the development of the movements of the Reformation, counter-reformation activities increased against pluralizing the world of religious faith, and with a need to defend the unity of the religious worldview and to return to the catholic institutional system and forms of religious activities. 41. If we compare the historical versions of the social status of rational knowledge and religious faith, the similarities will be striking. 42. On the basis of all this, our choice of words seems to be justified and we can rightly talk about the reformation of knowledge as the tendency of the change of the embeddedness of knowledge characteristic of our age. 43. The scenes of the reformation of religious faith were the religious institutions (churches, monasteries, the Bible, etc.). 44. In our days, the reformation of knowledge is generated in the scientific institutional system: in research facilities, universities, libraries, and publishers. (Remember that the idea of editing websites was created by one of the researchers of CERN. Furthermore, a significant proportion of websites can still be found on the servers of universities, libraries, media libraries, and publishers.) 45. The reformation of religious faith was a development unfolding from the crisis of religious faith. The reformation of knowledge is a series of changes unfolding from the crisis of rational knowledge. 46. In both cases, the (religious and scientific) institutional system, and the expert bodies (the structure of the church, schools, mostly universities, research facilities, libraries and publishers, and priests, researchers, teachers and editors) lose their credibility as well as their significance in religious and scientific life. 47. Instead of the abstract forms of faith and knowledge that they represent, and which are valid for everybody, huge masses of people favor concrete, individual forms which are only valid for them. 48. The reformation of faith, getting rid of the influence of the religious institutional system, is striving for developing a direct relationship between the individual and God. The reformation of knowledge develops a direct relationship between the individuals and knowledge, scientific knowledge. 49. Knowledge can essentially be represented and studied on the Internet independently of the influence of the scientific institutional system. There are no editors and referees on websites; everyone has to take responsibility for their own standpoint. 50. Of course, there are refereed journals on the Internet as well, but they are essentially not different from those printed on paper-they are obviously modernist products and they do not represent the real mentality of the Internet. 51. Being liberated from the rule of abstract emotion, the people of the middle ages became individual. vi Theses about the reformation of knowledge XML to PDF by RenderX XEP XSL-FO F ormatter, visit us at http://www.renderx.com/ 52. The reformation of faith played a key role in the process of the development of the modern individual: creating a harmony between divine predestination and individual free will, it secured the possibility of personal faith, making the development of individuals possible and desirable in great masses. 53. However, the developing modern individual losing her embeddedness in her traditional world, finds herself in an environment which is alien and even hostile to her. 54. Everyone and everything is dangerous, she can only feel safe if she herself controls the conditions of her existence. Thus, control is at the center of the worldview of the modern individual. 55. As a consequence of her fear and desire for safety, the striving for unconditional control will become her nature; the modern individual is selfish. 56. Man, participating in the reformation of knowledge (yet again after the events several hundreds of years before), is forced into another individualization process. 57. The development of the postmodern individual is taking place through the operation of a personal relationship to knowledge. 58. The postmodern personality, being liberated from the rule of the modernist institutional system of knowledge, finds herself in an uncertain position: she herself can make decisions about scientific truth, but she cannot rely on anything for her decision. 59. How can we decide whether a claim on a website intended to be scientific is true or false? We can only pay attention to ourselves, our own earlier experiences and a few small signs (e.g. the characteristics of the URL address). 60. This results in a quite uncertain situation in an epistemological sense. How can we tackle this difficulty? 61. Back then, the modern individual asked the help of rationality and found...

2013

Networks play a central role in the biology of organisms and their physiological functioning, social organizations and relationships, domestic and international political processes, business, finance, development of new ideas and discoveries in science and technology. The World Academy’s project on ‘The Science of Networks’ focuses on the various dimensions of networks and the principles governing their operation. This is the first in a series of articles applying concepts of Network Science to explore un­tapped potentials for accelerating the development of global society. Society is a highly complex, interconnected, living network of relationships. The entire process of social development and civilization from early times can best be understood as the progressive growth of the number, type and complexity of interactions and relationships between people, places, activities, and ideas. Moore’s law for the micro-processor is a subset and technological expression of a principle that has been operative in society since before the invention of agriculture. Networks govern the operation of society at multiple levels and scales in Space and Time. They determine the movement and exchange of material things, interactions between individuals and groups, interrelationships between activities, systematic linkages between organizations, collection and dissemination of information, accumulation and organization of knowledge, and exchange and development of ideas. The exponential growth in the power and productivity of modern society is an expression of the laws of network science. This article examines the development of the physical dimension of social networks the begins with the linking together of small isolated communities into clusters and their organization around larger urban commercial and political centers. It explores the role of language as a networking tool, the transformative power of roads and railroads, the rise of cities as multi-functional centers, and the role of printing, media and the Internet as catalysts for human interaction and social development. The concept of integration, which is so critical to the power of networks, is also the key to unlimited expansion of social productivity and human welfare.