Philosophy of/as Information

In this chapter, I will explore the nature and function of philosophy in Simondon from a single perspective, that of information. The recent development of a branch of philosophy named “Philosophy of Information” allows the framing of this perspective: it permits us to take a retrospective look at Simondon’s work from our current situation, and to appreciate what, in this remarkable work, continues to speak to us with great force and urgency today.1 Simondon, of course, who died at the end of the 1980s, did not see the recent fruits of the information revolution, but his writings were deeply inspired by cybernetics and the theory of information at its heart. Accordingly, we can readily see Simondon as one of the earliest philosophers of information, who reformed philosophy on the basis of the notion of information in multiple key areas. In what follows, after a first discussion of Simondon’s notion of information and its place in his thought, I will focus on reforms in two main areas: a new image of philosophy (thought as individuation), and a new task for philosophy (the integration of philosophy and culture). Throughout, what I wish to emphasize – as my title indicates – is that for Simondon, information is not simply an object for philosophical study, but a notion that comes to reform what philosophy itself is and how it is done. In other words, for Simondon, philosophy of information is also philosophy as information

Postinformational Education

In his best-selling book Thumbelina (2015; original French 2012), Michel Serres proposed that there is a crisis in education today, brought about by information technologies. The problem is this: what is the use of education, when knowledge is now widely and freely distributed on the Internet? It is this problem I wish to take up here. While many approaches to the problem would of course be possible, I will explore these issues by taking my orientation primarily (though not exclusively) from French philosophy. Moreover, I will structure my inquiry through three ‘post’s: the postmodern, the posthuman, and what I will call ‘postinformation.’ These three ‘post’s may be thought of as signposts, markers, or way stations through which I will pass along a surveying, exploratory journey, in the course of which an answer to our initial question will emerge. They are as follows: The postmodern frames the issue of education and information technology within a historical perspective, focused around Jean-François Lyotard’s highly influential book The Postmodern Condition. The posthuman focuses attention on the subject of education, the one who is educated, and the ontologically changed nature of this subject within the information society. (This topic inscribes this article within the theme of this special issue.) Finally, postinformation provides a broad, strategic answer to the challenges raised by reconceptualising what information itself means, such that it can provide an approach to education that responds to the needs of the highly information-rich environment in which the posthuman subject lives. ‘Postinformation’ is a term suggested by Lyotard, but I give it a more specific and developed meaning here: while information is often thought of as epistemic content, postinformation is a more generalised notion of ‘what informs,’ or forms, things in general. This notion shifts the idea of education away from the transmission of knowledge, to that of shaping the educated subject as an effective ‘information processor,’ a capable posthuman agent able to flourish in today’s complex informational environments