If you assumed we were going to make predictions about the looming importance of VR and AI and IoT in 2017, you were wrong.

Okay, we admit that all those initial-designated technologies, along with things like cyber security and data science and conversational interfaces, will probably dominate the IT world for 2017 and indeed for years to come. But there is another trend that may have just as much if not more impact on our society in the future.

That trend is an increasing interaction between technology and philosophy.

Yes, it may have taken a little while to convince philosophers to use computers at all, but once professional thinkers entered into the world of information technology, they quickly saw its implications for many issues in philosophy of the mind, cognitive mapping, ethics, and moral and political philosophy.

At the forefront in this accelerating trend is the American Philosophical Association’s Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers.  Published by the Committee on Philosophy and Computers, the newsletter, under the direction of current editor Piotr Boltuć, features full-length articles and shorter snippets on a wide range of topics, including e-teaching, the nature of information, autonomy of agents, the ontology of web-based objects, truth theories, and probabilities for AI.

If you’d like to explore this growing field of computers and philosophy, we suggest you visit the website of the International Association for Computing and Philosophy.  You can also read more at the APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers website or check out the journal Minds and Machines.

Happy thinking.