•  3
    Talk at the Philosophy [in:of:for:and] Digital Knowledge Infrastructures online workshop 2023 (28/09/2023).
  •  403
    Leading prescriptions for addressing the spread of fake news, misinformation, and other forms of epistemically toxic content online target either the platform or platform users as a single site for intervention. Neither approach attends to the intense feedback between people, posts, and platforms. Leading prescriptions boil down to the suggestion that we make social media more like traditional media, whether by making platforms take active roles as gatekeepers, or by exhorting individuals to beh…Read more
  •  371
    We present a novel model of individual people, online posts, and media platforms to explain the online spread of epistemically toxic content such as fake news and suggest possible responses. We argue that a combination of technical features, such as the algorithmically curated feed structure, and social features, such as the absence of stable social-epistemic norms of posting and sharing in social media, is largely responsible for the unchecked spread of epistemically toxic content online. Shari…Read more
  •  4
    This slim volume contains much that is suggestive, but little that is substantive. This is unfortunate, as there is need of a sustained analysis of the epistemology of instruments.
  •  60
    To one side of the wide third-floor hallway of Victoria College, just outside the offices of the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, lies the massive carcass of a 1960s-era electron microscope. Its burnished steel carapace has lost its gleam, but the instrument is still impressive for its bulk and spare design: binocular viewing glasses, beam control panel, specimen tray, and a broad work surface. Edges are worn, desiccated tape still feebly holds instructive remi…Read more
  •  13
    REVIEW: Daniel Rothbart, Philosophical Instruments: Minds and Tools at Work (review)
    Spontaneous Generations 3 (1): 233-235. 2009.
  •  1494
    Taking iPhone Seriously: Epistemic Technologies and the Extended Mind
    In Duncan Pritchard, Jesper Kallestrup‎, Orestis Palermos & J. Adam Carter‎ (eds.), Extended ‎Epistemology, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
    David Chalmers thinks his iPhone exemplifies the extended mind thesis by meeting the criteria ‎that he and Andy Clark established in their well-known 1998 paper. Andy Clark agrees. We take ‎this proposal seriously, evaluating the case of the GPS-enabled smartphone as a potential mind ‎extender. We argue that the “trust and glue” criteria enumerated by Clark and Chalmers are ‎incompatible with both the epistemic responsibilities that accompany everyday activities and the ‎practices of trust that …Read more
  •  700
    Technology and Epistemic Possibility
    Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie (2): 1-18. 2013.
    My aim in this paper is to give a philosophical analysis of the relationship between contingently available technology and the knowledge that it makes possible. My concern is with what specific subjects can know in practice, given their particular conditions, especially available technology, rather than what can be known “in principle” by a hypothetical entity like Laplace’s Demon. The argument has two parts. In the first, I’ll construct a novel account of epistemic possibility that incorporates…Read more
  •  10
    Since Robert Hooke published Micrographia, scientists have been expanding the boundaries of science to new scales, giving rise to questions about epistemology and ontology and challenging perceptions of objectivity, life, and artifact. Recent developments in areas such as nanotechnology and synthetic life have not only pushed these boundaries, but have called their very existence into question. In this issue, Spontaneous Generations examines science at the nanoscale from ten perspectives...
  •  3805
    People increasingly form beliefs based on information gained from automatically filtered Internet ‎sources such as search engines. However, the workings of such sources are often opaque, preventing ‎subjects from knowing whether the information provided is biased or incomplete. Users’ reliance on ‎Internet technologies whose modes of operation are concealed from them raises serious concerns about ‎the justificatory status of the beliefs they end up forming. Yet it is unclear how to address these…Read more
  •  23
    Paul E. Ceruzzi. Internet Alley: High Technology in Tysons Corner, 1945-2005 (review)
    Spontaneous Generations 2 (1): 251. 2008.
    Internet Alley is much more a book about regional history than about politics, economics, or history of technology, yet it draws extensively on all of these fields. The book is stronger for its interdisciplinarity, but as a result does not sit comfortably within any traditional historical discourse. Historians of science or technology not dealing with northern Virginia in the twentieth century will find little of help in this book.
  •  1647
    Information providing and gathering increasingly involve technologies like search ‎engines, which actively shape their epistemic surroundings. Yet, a satisfying account ‎of the epistemic responsibilities associated with them does not exist. We analyze ‎automatically generated search suggestions from the perspective of social ‎epistemology to illustrate how epistemic responsibilities associated with a ‎technology can be derived and assigned. Drawing on our previously developed ‎theoretical framew…Read more