Things

Luciano Floridi

pp. 349-352

in: Mariarosaria Taddeo (ed), Online security and civil rights, Philosophy & Technology 26 (4), 2013.

Abstract

Assuming one could momentarily step aside from the current pandemonium generated by big data, social networks, and smart phones; there is an obvious question that comes to one's mind: what will be the next wave of innovations? Of course, the only safe prediction, about forecasting the future, is that it is very easy to get it wrong. Who would have thought that, 20 years after the flop of the Newton (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiNKMmyRiw4), we would have been queuing to buy an iPad? Sometimes, you just have to wait for the right Apple to fall on your head. Still, there are a couple of low-hanging fruits that seem to be sufficiently ripe to be worth monitoring.