I enjoyed this article and found that many of the ‘predictions’ that Luciano Floridi made in his 2007 article, ‘A Look into the Future Impact of ICT on Our Lives’, have actually come to be routine in 2021.

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One example I thought of when he said “the world offline is bound to become a fully interactive and responsive environment of wireless, pervasive, distributed, a2a (anything to anything) processes, that works a4a (anywhere for anytime)” (Floridi, 2007, p.61.), was that of houses with smart lighting and technology such as Google Hub. Another example is that of software and apps learning from our previous choices and predicting the items that we may be interested in, such as, online shopping, music choices on Spotify, movie choices on Netflix just to identify some.

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I think for many of the younger population and those who have access to the information landscape via both the economic means to purchase the necessary hardware and the advantage of living in a place that has fast access to the internet, “the threshold between here (analog, carbon-based, offline) and there (digital, silicon-based, online)” (Floridi, 2007, p. 61.) is not only blurred but possibly non-existent.

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I see his invention of the word ‘infosphere’ to be a relevant categorisation of the large volume of digital information and processes that we are now expected to be familiar with in similar ways to our familiarity with that relating to biospheres and atmospheres. Whether we accept it or not, we are, to some degree, already ‘inforgs’. It’s a bit like ageing, some accept it gracefully and others have to be dragged there kicking and screaming.

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The first concern that came to mind was that of inequality of access. This inequality can be between countries but also within countries. It was highlighted quite starkly in NSW when schools went online during the COVID-19 lockdowns. There were many students who didn’t have access to a device at home, and for those that did, their access to the internet was limited either by economic or geographical restraints. How do we level the playing field so that some in our society aren’t left behind and have a different experience to those that have unlimited access to the infosphere?

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The second that occurred to me whilst reading the paper, was that of the mental health of so-called ‘digital natives’. Should the unthinkable happen and access to the infosphere is disrupted for a significant period and they begin to “feel deprived, excluded, handicapped, or poor to the point of paralysis and psychological trauma” (Floridi, 2007, p. 63), is there enough provision in cyberspace for mental health experts to help them and how will this happen if they can’t connect with each other?

 

All in all, I found this paper to be useful in that it made me reflect on what the information landscape actually looks like to me and how I interact with it. This interaction has already changed in the past 2 weeks!