PHILOWEB 2015: Politicizing the Future of the (Semantic) Web

The relationship between the Web and philosophy is now at a crucial turning point. While a group of philosophers and philosophically-influenced scholars are increasingly interested in the Web, we are facing unprecedented challenges around its future that requires concerted efforts between researcher and disciplines to be properly addressed. With both Internet governance and the very architecture of the Web undergoing rapid change, now is the time for a philosophy of the Web to help to fulfill the Web’s full potential, expanding upon its fundamental principles in new terrains ranging from mass surveillance to the impact of the Internet of things.

Even swifter is the Web-driven transformation of many previously unquestioned philosophical concepts of privacy, authority, meaning, identity, belief, intelligence, cognition, and even embodiment in surprising ways. In response, we hope to provoke the properly philosophical question of whether or not philosophy that can weave these changes to technology and society into a coherent whole that can adapt the principles of the Web to the age of surveillance.