New Times and New Challenges for Information Science: From Cellular Systems to Human Societies

The extraordinary scientific-technical, economic, and social transformations related to the widespread use of computers and to the whole information and communication technologies have not been accompanied by the development of a scientific “informational” perspective helping make a coherent sense of the spectacular changes occurring. Like in other industrial revolutions of the past, technical praxis antedates the emergence of theoretical disciplines. Apart from the difficulties in handling new empirical domains and in framing new ways of thinking, the case of information science implies the difficult re-evaluation of important bodies of knowledge already well accommodated in specific disciplines. Herein, we will discuss how a new understanding of the “natural information flows” as they prototypically occur in living beings—even in the simplest cells—could provide a sound basis for reappraising fundamental problems of the new science. The role of a renewed information science, multidisciplinarily conceived and empirically grounded, widely transcends the limited “library” and knowledge-repositories mission into which classical information science was cajoled during past decades. Paraphrasing the Spanish philosopher J. Ortega y Gasset, the overhaul of information science itself becomes “the challenge of our time”