Being, Space, and Time on the Web

Abstract

The Web initially emerged as an "antidote" to accumulated scientific knowledge since it enables global representation and communication with minimum costs. Its gigantic scale and interdependence incommode our ability to find relevant information and develop trustworthy contexts. It is time for science to compensate by providing an epistemological "antidote" to Web issues. Philosophy should be in the front line by forming the salient questions and analysis. The scope of our research is to provide a theory about the Web being that will bridge philosophical thinking and engineering. We analyze existence and spatiotemporality in the Web and how it transforms the traditional actualities. The Web space is specified by incoming and outgoing links. The primordial role of visiting durations in Web's existence is approximated by Bergsonian time. The physical space becomes more discoverable. The human activity can be asynchronous, synchronous and continuous. Networked individuals operate in a flexible and spatially dispersed environment. The resulting issues concern the self-determination of a being and the way in which the Web could be a free and open platform for innovation and participation.

Toward a Philosophy of the Web: Foundations and Open Problems

“…On a similar note, without a doubt the Web seems to be impacting the phenomenology of such fundamental metaphysical categories as space and time for ordinary users. Michalis Vafopoulos's contribution "Being, Space, and Time on the Web" is precisely such a retheorization of metaphysics on the Web, taking such fundamental aspects of the Web as the number of links in a page and reconceiving of this as a concept of space, with the time spent by users visiting a given resource as a concept of time, and then drawing a number of social and economic conclusions (Vafopoulos 2012). Moving from the world itself to our knowledge of the world, we find that one of most interesting phenomena brought about by the Web is the tendency of people to increasingly rely on search engines to answer their everyday questions.…”

Recommendation Systems: Bridging Technical Aspects with Marketing Implications

“…The Web "curves" physical time and space by adding flexibility, universality [7] and more available options [8], [9] and sources of risks [10]. At the current Web 2.0 era, Users can easily edit, interconnect, aggregate and comment text, images and video in the Web.…”

Stage Ahoy! Deconstruction of the "Drunken Pirate" Case in the Light of Impression Management

“…Digital information is infinitely expansible. 63 Online, the information can be stored for a long time and with the help of search engines it can usually be retrieved relatively easily. Due to these characteristics, the digi-tal information can get a certain persistence.…”