Wolfgang Hofkirchner

TU Wien | TU Wien · Institute of Design and Assessment of Technology

Digital Humanism, formulated in 2019, is an explicit demand for the development and application of human-centred technology, that is, for “pulling” a humanised and humane digitalisation instead of “pushing” it for merely economic reasons. Under the title above, the scientific encounter of inter- and transdisciplinary perspectives has aimed at prese...

This book examines the contributions of the transhumanism approach to technology, in particular the contributed chapters are wary of the implications of this popular idea. The volume is organized into four parts concerning philosophical, military, technological and sociological aspects of transhumanism, but the reader is free to choose various rea...

This paper is an attempt to achieve an understanding of the situation the evolution of humanity is confronted with in the age of global challenges. Since global challenges are problems of unprecedented complexity, it is argued that a secular paradigm shift is required away from the overemphasis on allegedly neutral standpoints, on a mechanistic pic...

The Global Sustainable Information Society is a theoretical concept describing the vision of a good society in the age of global challenges. Globality, sustainability and informationality are understood in an innovative way as essential features of a world society to come that is capable of mastering the global challenges. Regarding informationalit...

The paper describes the glossaLAB international project as a contribution to confront the urgent need of knowledge integration frameworks, as required to face global challenges that overwhelm disciplinary knowledge capacity. Under this scope, glossaLAB is devised to make contributions in three main aspects of such endeavor: (i) development of a sou...

Humankind is on the transition to a supra-system of humanity, according to which social relationships – that organise the common good – are re-organised such that global challenges are kept below the threshold of a self-inflicted breakdown. In order to succeed, three conditions are imperative: (1) Global governance needs a global conscience that or...

Ludwig von Bertalanffy did not leave us a legacy of a social systems theory. Nonetheless, reconstructing his general approach to systems provides us with several ideas on how to build a theory of social systems. The concept of social relations easily connects to Bertalanffy's concept of relations of organization. His way of thinking underlines that...

The paper describes the PRIMER international initiative aimed to develop interdisciplinary research capacities and skills to boost the ability to face global challenges whose complexity is beyond the reach of individual disciplines. To this end, the initiative has carried out education , research and innovation activities based on theoretical and m...

Beiträge auf dem Kolloquium „Emergente Systeme, Information und Gesellschaft – Problemstrukturen und Lösungsansätze“ Wolfgang Hofkirchner und Hans-Jörg Kreowski: Editorial Wolfgang Hofkirchner: Eine Informatik für eine globale nachhaltige Informationsgesellschaft Rainer E. Zimmermann: System, Materie, Information. Probleme der Grundlegung ihrer Beg...

In 1997, a review was published of the development of the Net (“a new social institution, an electronic commons”) pushed by the Netizens, as Michael Hauben baptised them. These were people online who “understand the value of collective work and the communal aspects of public communications”, but who at that time were already challenged by “the incr...

Transhumanism is an international philosophical and futuristic movement aiming to enhance the intellectual and physical capabilities of human beings beyond their current limits. It has gotten quite some drive and attention in the last 30 years. Transhumanists intend to employ already existing technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics,...

After roughly 35 years of development in the theories of self-organization and related variants (chaos, self-organized criticality, and so forth), it is somewhat of a surprise that physics proper has not yet sufficiently found its entry into the ongoing quest for a precise concept of information. Already as early as in the sixties of the last centu...

[EN] The glossariumBITri, planned as a central activity for the interdisciplinary study of information, developed by BITrum group in cooperation with the University of Santa Elena (Ecuador), essentially aims at serving as a tool for the clarification of concepts, theories and problems concerning information. Intending to embrace the most relevant p...

This Chapter has three sections. The first section puts ethics in a system-theoretical perspective. It deals with the basic question ethics seeks to answer: how are Is and Ought related to each other? Answers matter insofar as they provide different frames for analysing what goes wrong with morals in unbound morphogenesis. The second section gives...

The talk will show how insights from a view of information based upon systems thinking (Unified Theory of Information) can be applied to analyse the crises we have been witnessing in our times of global challenges. Under the premise that sciences of information are instrumental to the survival and thriving of humanity, normative propositions are de...

This chapter deals with “mechanisms” from the perspective of critical systems thinking. “Mechanisms” are rooted in self-organisation. Far from being mechanical, they are contingent dynamisms. They are the cause of the advent of Information Society; they are the cause for the reproduction of Information Society; and they are the cause of a transform...

Within the framework of the Unified Theory of Information (UTI) developed by the present author, knowledge is a part of social information. More specifically, social information is defined as any information appearing in social, or human, systems. The study of social information has methodological implications. Its methodology is partly an applicat...

When developing the so-called Salzburg Approach to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and Society in the years 2004 to 2010, the sociology of technology the then working group of mine at the University of Salzburg used was based upon a combination of critical thinking and systems thinking – of Critical Theory and Systems Theory. Crit...

This chapter contends that the fact we find “morphogenesis unbound” being a tendency of current societal development does not justify to call the latest social formation “morphogenic society”. What is indicated by “morphogenesis unbound” is rather a crisis threatening the continuation of civilised life on Earth. This crisis can be overcome if and w...

This chapter explores how close the concepts of morphogenesis and self-organisation are. Both can be seen to have natural science origins, though applicable to the long-term history of societies, to events within societies and to the contemporary society into which modernity seems to be transforming. Both can be labelled descriptive, explanatory an...

Gregory Bateson's famous saying about information can be looked upon as a good foundation of a Unified Theory of Information (UTI). Section one discusses the hard and the soft science approaches to information. It will be argued that a UTI approach needs to overcome the divide between these approaches and can do so by adopting an historical and log...

The internet is a revolution – there is no doubt and no discussion about it anymore. But is it also a revolution of a second order: a (digital) revolution that causes or at least fuels a (real world) revolution? Gutenberg’s technique newly invented in the beginning of the 15th century did so. The revolutionary ability to print books instead of copy...

Gregory Bateson’s famous saying about information can be looked upon as a good foundation of a Unified Theory of Information (UTI). Section one discusses the hard and the soft science approaches to information. It will be argued that a UTI approach needs to overcome the divide between these approaches and can do so by adopting an historical and log...

This chapter explores the general system theory (GST) that turns out to be the name for systems science in statu nascendi from which many ramifications followed in the course of the history of systems science. The complex systems approach as the most recent development of the new paradigm seems to have more in common with the original ideas than ot...

Currently, a Science of Information does not exist. What we have is Information Science that grew out of Library and Documentation Science with the help of Computer Science. The basic understanding of information in Information Science is the Shannon type of “information” at which numerous criticisms have been levelled so far. The task of an as-yet...

In his article Open Problems in the Philosophy of Information (Metaphilosophy 2004, 35 (4)), Luciano Floridi presented a Philosophy of Information research programme in the form of eighteen open problems, covering the following fundamental areas: information definition, information semantics, intelligence/cognition, informational universe/nature an...

Editorial to the Special Issue: Towards a New Science of Information – Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on the Foundations of Information Science, Beijing, August 21–24, 2010

Editorial to the Special Issue: Towards a New Science of Information – Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on the Foundations of Information Science, Beijing, August 21–24, 2010

It is a widely held assumption that computers process information. When finding out that natural systems manifest information processes, it is hypothesised that natural systems too are computers. This can be called the quintessence of the "computational turn", however, it is a non sequitur. This chapter draws upon the ontological distinction of str...

Philosophy-of-information considerations can analyse information concepts according to four ways of thinking. A Unified Theory of Information (UTI) requires the fourth way of thinking – integration. This integration can be performed, if a complex systems view is informed by the heuristics of a historical and logical account. In particular, the term...

The appearance of notions of a “good society” does not come as a surprise, given the recent crises in the fields of economy, the financial markets, or the climate change. These notions play a decisive role in the context of implementing ICTs. This chapter contends that ICTs – like any technology – make sense in the context of normative visions only...

Maturana and Varela (1980, p. 78f) provided the following definition of autopoiesis: “An autopoietic machine is a machine organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components that produces the components which: (i) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate...

The BITrum glossary, planned as one of the first activities in the development of the BITrum project, essentially aims at serving as a tool for the clarification of concepts, theories and problems concerning information. Intending to embrace the most relevant points of view with respect to information, it is interdisciplinarily developed by a board...

How is the relationship between ICTs and society to be conceived? And how is this relationship to be evaluated? These two questions form the basis for building an ideal-typical categorisation of different theoretical approaches. The scheme offers an opportunity to be conscious of the advantages and disadvantages of certain ways of theorising. For l...

Given the short period of time internet research and related new fields had to establish themselves, it does not come as a surprise that their development is still a search for identity. Self-reflection is needed when it comes to recommendations for practice, and when it comes to empirical studies, and it is in the domain of theory where the glue c...

How is the relationship between ICTs and society to be conceived of? And how is the relationship to be evaluated? These two questions form the basis upon which an ideal-typical categorisation of different theoretical approaches can be built. The scheme presented here allows to be aware of advantages and disadvantages of certain ways of theorising.

The paper reconstructs the read thread that links the information revolution, the information concept and information ethics in Floridi’s philosophy of information. In doing so, it acknowledges the grand attempt but doubts whether this attempt is up to the state of affairs concerning the actual point human history has reached. It contends that the...

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 techno-social system th...

The appearance of notions of a "good society" does not come as a surprise, given the recent crises in the fields of economy, the financial markets, or the climate change. These notions play a decisive role in the context of implementing ICTs. This chapter contends that ICTs - like any technology - make sense in the context of normative visions only...

The paper deals with the necessity and feasibility of an integrated information theory. It develops guidelines for how to conceive of information in a way that avoids the pitfalls of certain ways of thinking like reductionism, projectivism or disjunctivism.

The paper deals with the necessity and feasibility of an integrated information theory. It develops guidelines for how to conceive of information in a way that avoids the pitfalls of certain ways of thinking like reductionism, projectivism or disjunctivism.

Wolfgang Hofkirchner and Steen Nepper Larsen each review the text by Søren Brier. Cybernetics. Why Information is Not Enough!, was published in 2008 by the University of Toronto Press, 477 pp.

La pregunta por la información cuestiona en esencia la naturaleza, la medida y las condiciones de aplicación de su contenido y de su flujo. Se trata de dotarnos de herramientas conceptuales, formales, incluso morales, capaces de refinar las nociones precientíficas vagas o metafóricas de información en todos los campos de conocimiento. El proyecto B...

In the perspective of an as yet-to-be-developed Unified Theory of Information as part of an as yet-to-be-developed theory of evolutionary systems semiosis plausibly coincides with self-organisation. A concept of sign processes that is flexible enough to perform two functions as follows is everything that is required for this framework. It must rela...

The article discusses principles that form part of evolutionary systems thinking in social sciences and humanities. It is argued that introducing the concept of self-organization relates agency and structures in a way that makes it possible to take up certain features of Critical Theory by which it can meet the demands for a critical social science...

of government’s effect of their human dignity? Examinations of trust and distrust by individuals within

The concept of information has become a crucial topic in several emerging scientific disciplines, as well as in organizations, in companies and in everyday life. Hence it is legitimate to speak of the so-called information society; but a scientific understanding of the Information Age has not had time to develop. Following this evolution we face th...

Purpose The main purpose of this paper is to consider knowledge production as a social self‐organization process, to clarify ethical implications of such an approach, and to relate it to the thinking of Heinz von Foerster. Design/methodology/approach The method employed is the one of dialectical constructions, i.e. existing contradicting approache...

The original publication is available at JAIST Press http://www.jaist.ac.jp/library/jaist-press/index.html IFSR 2005 : Proceedings of the First World Congress of the International Federation for Systems Research : The New Roles of Systems Sciences For a Knowledge-based Society : Nov. 14-17, 2016, Kobe, Japan Symposium 2, Session 1 : Creation of Age...

Discussions about paradigm shifts in science and the world picture on the threshold of a new millennium are already commonplace. However, what exactly do they mean? This paper stresses that changes in thought are a response to changes in the social conditions of life. A distinction is drawn between ways of thinking and world views. The focus is on...

In this paper we will present a theoretical explanation of the relationship between so-called individual emergence and the emergence of social systems. We want to take as our point of departure the assumption that from the perspective of hierarchical systems theory self-organization on the level of social systems includes a bottom-up process as wel...

Daß die Menschheit an einem einzigartigen Punkt ihrer Geschichte angelangt ist, an dem die Existenz der sogenannten globalen Probleme — das sind Probleme anthropogenen Ursprungs im Bereich der Nutzung technischer, natürlicher und humaner Ressourcen — die materielle Reproduktion ihrer nationalstaatlich verfaßten Teilsubjekte gefährden kann, deren Wo...

This paper deals with the scientific status of biosemiotics. It tries to characterize the purpose, the do- main and the approach of biosemiotics in the perspective of the overall trend in science towards unification within complexity.

Die Informationsgesellschaft ist in aller Munde. Was aber Information ist, bleibt unklar. Viele Disziplinen beschäftigen sich mit «Information» und eröffnen unterschiedliche, manchmal sogar widersprüchliche Blickwinkel. Trotzdem scheint ein Dialog in vielen Bereichen fruchtbar. Die technische Informatik beschäftigt sich mit Informationsstrukturen u...

In the field of science-technology-society, there are three one-sided approaches to analyzing the spread of the Internet: technology-push, economy-pull, and community-pull. Information science, when dealing with the transformation of our societies, will have to cover all of them and even try to find out missing links. We propose adding the analysis...

It does not come as a surprise that, due to the rise of self-organization concepts, the concept of emergence has been revisited. Actually, the latter may serve as a proper philosophical foundation of the former, if the self-organization paradigm is understood as a turn away from the mechanistic world view and if the philosophy of emergence gets rid...

In: Informatik Forum 1/1997, 36-45 WH: Dear Rafael, in order to start our dialogue, I would appreciate your giving the first contribution by answering the following question: what conclusions do you draw from the logical trilemma in your speech at the conference? RC: Dear Wolfgang, may I first summarize the content of the logical trilemma, or "Capu...

The goal of this article is to subsume the concept of information under a more general heading. One basic notion which can be generally applied is the term “causality”. This concept is used in everyday language, in mythological thinking, and in scientific languages as well. Therefore there exists some chance to adapt it to the context of informatio...

This paper proposes the restoration of information theory by means of a philosophy of evolutionary systems. What this philosophy implies for the conception of information may be called a multi-stage model, comprising both the history and the ordering of information processing by real-world systems. Such a unifying information concept may assist sui...

Ohne Zusammenfassung

In spite of considerable public concern about industrial innovations in Austria there exist only four databases (of poor quality) which allow for quantitative innovation research. This was a reason to engage in the collection of literature-based innovation output data in Austria. This chapter reports on our experience from a first round of data col...

Although it is not the whole story, in analytical terms the relationship between the socio-economic system and the environment can be described as a network of interrelations or, more simplified, as a feedback loop.

Auf Initiative von Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Fred Margulies, der durch seinen plötzlichen und unerwarteten Tod seine Vorstellungen nun nicht mehr verwirklichen kann, wurde am Institut für sozio-ökonomische Entwicklungsforschung und Technikbewertung (ISET) eine Vorstudie “Anwendungskonzepte flexibler Automation in Klein- und Mittelbetrieben” /1/ durchgeführt...

The Unified Theory of Information considers society a self-organising and information- generating system hierarchically made up of a series of encapsulated subsystems, as there are technology, ecology, economy, polity, culture. Information society is considered to be endowed with the capability of taking responsibility of the course of societal evo...

Discussion Paper CSGP D4/09 The most industrialised countries as well as less developed countries are subject to transformation processes in the sphere of the technological organisation of society. This is a result of the development and diffusion of modern information and communication technologies, supported and furthered by national and regional...

The first part of the present paper deals with the concept of emergence irrespective of the nature of the systems to which the concept is applied. Emergence as a key concept of self-organization has synchronous as well as diachronous connotations which in the literature are referred to as scalar and specification hierarchies, respectively (e.g. Sal...

Gunilla Bradley's lifework has been intrinsically motivated by safeguarding human well-being and the search for societal conditions that enable individual self-fulfillment, given the rapid development and deployment of converging computer, tele-and media technologies. Her scientific perspective is normative. Her vision is "the good ICT society" (20...

In this paper we will present a theoretical explanation of the relationship between so-called individual emergence and the emergence of social systems. We want to take as our point of departure the assumption that from the perspective of hierarchical systems theory self-organization on the level of social systems includes a bottom-up process as wel...

In this paper we will present a theoretical explanation of the relationship between so-called individual emergence and the emergence of social systems. We want to take as our point of departure the assumption that from the perspective of hierarchical systems theory self-organization on the level of social systems includes a bottom-up process as wel...

This paper is the first of a number of position papers for the workshop “Towards Criteria of Sustainability and Social Meaningfulness in Development“