Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to give an outline of digital hermeneutics understood as the encounter between hermeneutics and digital technology, particularly the Internet. In the first part, I want to raise the attention of IT researchers and hermeneuticists to the theoretic and practical relevance of the encounter of their areas of research that are sometimes considered as incompatible to each other. There is still a lot of translation work to be done in order to get these two cultures come closer to and profit from each other. The second part of the paper deals with the foundation of digital hermeneutics on what I call—following Heidegger’s and Vattimo’s paths—digital ontology as opposed to digital metaphysics.
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Acknowledgments
I thank Arun Kumar Tripathi (Dresden University of Technology, Germany) for his commitment to an e-mail dialogue on the subject of this paper and for his invaluable hints to relevant literature.
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This paper is based on a keynote address to the conference “Thinking Critically: Alternative Perspectives and Methods in Information Studies” organized by the Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Wisconsin, May 15–17, 2008. A video of the lecture is available at: http://129.89.43.24:8080/ramgen/classes/samore/2008/samore08.rm. The original text is online at: http://www.capurro.de/wisconsin.html. It was published in: Elizabeth Buchanan and Carolyn Hansen (eds.). Proceedings. Thinking Critically: Alternative Methods and Perspectives in Library and Information Studies. Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee 2008, p. 190–220. I thank the organizers for their permission to use this text.
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Capurro, R. Digital hermeneutics: an outline. AI & Soc 25, 35–42 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-009-0255-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-009-0255-9