Last Friday, December 23, was the third anniversary of the passing away of Philip Serracino Inglott.
This month, two professors, Mirielle Hilderbrandt from Vrije University Brussels and Bibi van den Berg from Leiden University (in the Netherlands) published a fitting description of Philip as he was known in the international philosophy technology scenario. This description was given in the notes on the authors of the book publishing Philip’s work as a chapter in the book The Philosophy of Law meets the Philosophy of Technology, in the series Information Freedom and Technology, co-authored by David Koepsel.
Prof. Koepsel was Philip’s mentor who admired Philip’s philosophical concepts, which are sometimes difficult to perceive and grasp. This description of Philip serves not only as a tribute to this young Maltese philosopher who specialised in the philosophy of technology but should also inspire future aspiring philosophers who are struggling with life to be well understood. Philip Serracino Inglott (1976-2013) was a geek and a tinker at heart.
As a student of philosophy, he derived his greatest pleasure from helping engineering students fix their bikes. In Malta he graduated in philosophy and IT. While working for an NGO, he participated in the Virtual University of the Small States of the Commonwealth, which aimed at using open software technology to aid education in developing small States.
After that fulfilling experience, Philip returned to philosophy. He obtained his Master’s in Philosophy of Science, Technology and Society from the University of Twente in 2010. His thesis dealt with ‘Wikipedia, Open Source Software and their relationship to Deliberate Democracy’.
At TU Delft, Philip was looking at the effects of Web 2.0 and related technologies on the moral frameworks of the internet-native generation. He wanted to uncover the common moral thread that ties Wikileaks and Anime Music Videos to Open Source and Open Access. Philip was intrigued about how the internet feeds actions like the Occupy Movement and the Arab Spring. Beyond its use as a tool to facilitate such movements, does the practice of using the internet shape our moral frameworks to be less tolerant of authoritarian rule?
Philip was married to Victoria. His eclectic interests varied from all things technical to cooking, music, carpentry, politics to gardening, philosophy and anything related to IT. He liked cats a lot.
He passed away in December 2013, 10 days after his first academic publication. He was 37 years old. One recalls his distinct happy smile when Prof. Lilian Azzopardi congratulated him on this publication, referring to it as a distinct seminal paper. Hiding his pleasure he humbly replied no, not this, perhaps the next. This was said just a few hours before his death. There had to be no next, at least on this earth.