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

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

5th Web and philosophy conference@ESCWC 2015
May 31st 2015, Portoroz, Slovenia

Call for paper

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.

Subjects to be addressed include, but are not limited to

• Philosophy and Politics of Open Data and Big Data
• Human Rights, Internet Rights, and Tim Berners-Lee’s “Magna Carta” for the Web
• Protocols and code as politics
• Algorithmic governance
• Transparency, Surveillance, Cryptography, and (Big/Linked/Semantic) Data
• Alternative accounts of semantics for the Semantic Web
• Philosophical roots of cybernetics, AI and the architecture of the Web
• The future of decentralization on the Web and Internet
• Knowledge in AI, KR, Semantic Web, Linked Data, open data, contrasted (or enriched) with knowledge in other disciplines (especially STS)

Some questions that may be addressed include, but are not limited to

• Can and should we code open values into the architecture of the Web or Internet and how?
• What are the philosophical and political issues raised by federated and distributed social networks?
• Has the dream of “code being law” turned into a nightmare, or can it still be a positive account of the future?
• How can AI or KR, open or linked data, benefit from a more realistic account of knowledge as found in Science and Technology Studies (STS)?
• Is Linked Data an alternative to Big data?
• Can we go further than a modeling diversity as a plurality of viewpoints on the Semantic Web?
• Does the Linked Data Platform retain and extend the fundamental properties of the architecture of the Web?
• Are the boundaries between researchers, engineers and activists blurring now that the future of the Web is at stake?
• Is the conception of objects central to the resource-oriented Web architecture comparable to that of the Internet of things (IoT)? Should a Web of Things draw its inspiration from the original Web?

Important dates

1. Submission deadline: March 16, 2015
2. Notifications: April 3, 2015
3. Camera ready version: April 17, 2015

Submissions

Short (up to 6 pages) or extended (up to 12 pages) papers have to be submitted on easychair.
They will be reviewed by at least two PC members.

Chairs

• Alexandre Monnin (Inria, Wimmics)
• Harry Halpin (W3C/MIT)

Program Committee

• Bruno Bachimont (Université de Technologie de Compiègne)
• Scott Lash (Goldsmiths)
• Primavera Di Fillippi (Paris II/Harvard Berkman Center)
• Francesca Musiani (CNRS)
• Anthony Beavers (University of Evansville)
• Aurélien Bénel (Université de Technologie de Troyes)
• Brian Cantwell Smith (Toronto)
• Leslie Carr (University of Southampton)
• Eric Dagiral (Université Paris Descartes)
• Jérôme Denis (Telecom ParisTech)
• Gunnar Declerck (Université de Technologie de Compiègne)
• Aldo Gangemi (CNR/Paris XIII)
• Katherine Legg (Waikato University)
• Harry Halpin (IRI/W3C)
• Yuk Hui (Leuphana University)
• Pierre Livet (Université Aix-Marseille)
• Larry Masinter (Adobe)
• Christopher Menzel (Texas A&M University)
• Alexandre Monnin (INRIA)
• Ashveen Peerbaye (Université Paris-Est)
• Valentina Presutti (CNR)
• François Rastier (INALCO/CNRS)
• Jonathan Rees (Duke University)
• Eddie Soulier (Université de Technologie de Troyes)
• Henry S. Thompson (University of Edimburgh)
• Michalis Vafopoulos (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki)
• Petros Stefaneas (National Technical University of Athens)
• Tony Heys (Microsoft)
• Yorick Wiks (Oxford Internet Institute)
• Xiaoshu Wang (RENCI)

The PhiloWeb series of conferences was originally initiated by Alexandre Monnin and Harry Halpin (http://web-and-philosophy.org/) and its main aim is to bring together researchers studying the Web and the Semantic Web with Philosophers and welcome all submissions of a philosophical nature involving the Web. Four PhiloWeb conferences have so far been organized: PhiloWeb 2010, an international symposium in Sorbonne (Paris, France), PhiloWeb 2011, co-located with PT-AI in Greece (Salonika), PhiloWeb 2012, co-located with WWW 2014 as one of its workshops (Lyon, France) and PhiloWeb 2014 GR in Greece, organized by Petros Stefaneas, Michalis Vafopoulos, Alexandre Monnin and Harry Halpin, co-located with the 6th International Conference on Information Law and Ethics, ICIL 2014 (Thessaloniki). In 2013, Harry Halpin was co-chair of WebScience 2013 while Alexandre Monnin was one of its program chairs, after which philosophy was then added among the stack of disciplines relevant to Web Science.