"beyond digital literacy: technological wisdom for the good life", michel puech, cepe 2014

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Page 1: "Beyond digital literacy: Technological wisdom for the good life", Michel PUECH, CEPE 2014

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CEPE 2014Well-Being,Flourishing, and ICTs

Les Cordeliers, Paris, FranceJune 23, 2014

Beyond digital literacy: Technological wisdom for the good life

Michel Puech

Funding for this talk: Équipe ETOS, Télécom Ecole de Management, Institut Mines-Télécom

made on a PC with LibreOffice

Page 2: "Beyond digital literacy: Technological wisdom for the good life", Michel PUECH, CEPE 2014

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my point in a nutshell

“To survive today, one needs some digital literacy”

“To flourish today, one needs some technological wisdom”

main argument:

the present technophere allows this transition:

wellbeing as surviving         wellbeing as flourishing

Page 3: "Beyond digital literacy: Technological wisdom for the good life", Michel PUECH, CEPE 2014

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technoethics perspective

an approach at the intersection between

philosophy of technology Albert Borgmann's and Carl Mitcham's in particular

applied ethics recent trends in virtue ethics in particular

digital media studies in the sense of Charles Ess

because the current technological environment is disruptive for two main reasons:

it is digital

it is pervasive

ancient values reference systems do not obtain

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technoethics perspective

we adapt with prodigious virtuosity to material innovation

the smartphone for instance

but not so smoothly to their moral, emotional, and social consequences

Facebook's exposure for instance

what's new? → technoethics focuses on individual existence

its phenomenology

its pragmatic value-laden ordinary behaviors≠ decades of politico-social deciphering of technological change and grandiose social reform planning

→ towards an existential virtuosity (Peter D. Hershock)

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digital literacy, necessary skills

inside the technosphere, the infosphere

digital literacy and digital educationwe already do it

because the lack of digital capability means a major work and social disability

but ≠ ethical approach

oral literacy → text literacy → digital literacy...→ existential literacy

to reconnect the dimensions of a disintegrated modern self (Briggle and Mitcham 2009)

a broad interpretative ambition + a resolute focus on the self

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digital literacy, necessary skills

case study: the smartphone

paramount of ordinary technology existential significance

through a “wearable” device: immersion in the infosphere

the interface with the world that mediates more and more of our activities

this existential experience goes beyond the “device paradigm” of contemporary technology (Borgmann 1984), it goes beyond functions and uses

the debate is no longer about the skills for thriving in the infosphere

they are part of ordinary life for digital natives

but rather about the meaning of thriving

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digital literacy, necessary skills

abundance (material and immaterial):

an abundance of means in a cultural moment when ends are scarce

requires: the awareness and self-reliance that allow the construction of a self from this abundance

more than a literacy, it is a culture and in fact it is a meta-culture →

digital literacy =

how to use Google and Wikipedia e.g.

remains a functional skill

≠ digital meta-culture

how to assess data retrieved from the Web

how to make sense of them in a project of personal appropriation and self-constitution

Page 8: "Beyond digital literacy: Technological wisdom for the good life", Michel PUECH, CEPE 2014

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the question of the good life reanimated

beyond social “functioning”, wellbeing requires existential assessments of value that pertain to wisdom and not to functional optimization

but...

we have lost the meaning and the methods of the fundamental questions of ethics

discredit of ideologies (political and religious)

easy comfort of abundance in the technosphere

→ a post-modern ideal of acceptable work (functioning in production) andacceptable private life (functioning in consumption)

Page 9: "Beyond digital literacy: Technological wisdom for the good life", Michel PUECH, CEPE 2014

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the question of the good life reanimated

"wisdom revival" in philosophy

beyond Sterile Standard Academism

toward real engagement

typical edited book The good life in a technological age (2012)

Verbeek: “what kind of hybrids we want to be”

3 empowerments

cognitive empowerment, through the resources of the technosphere

pragmatic empowerment, mediated by the infosphere

ethical empowerment, where philosophers step in and the wisdom question emerges

Page 10: "Beyond digital literacy: Technological wisdom for the good life", Michel PUECH, CEPE 2014

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flourishing

the concept of the good life

flourishing≠ functional happiness

sophisticated utilitarianism up to the most philistine satisfaction of greed (the 1980s ideology)

self-realization according to Arne Naessa universal project of flourishing for all life-forms

one of the most promising frameworks for a global ethics of modernity

notion of “mixed communities”, including non human life forms and the ecosystem → extension to the technosphere and infosphere as technological environments

the “buen vivir” movement in South America

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flourishing

1970s' critical stances by Ivan Illch, E.F. Schumacher + others

alternative models (and their cross-fecundation)H.D. Thoreau in the West

Buddhism in the East

Harry Frankfurt's ethics of care as meta-attitude about one's election of importances

converge toward a new vision of wisdom

as a reaction and an alternative to the infantilization and disappropriation brought about by recent technology

subverted by the mass medias and the advertisement industry

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flourishing

an effort + a technoethical change:

focus on personal behavior, particularly micro-actions

≠ changing the politicians in charge or the owners of factories

away from the command-and-control attitudeour vision of the world is still narrowly conditioned by engineering

the rational planning of a process that would operate the transformation of a part of reality and in the end deliver the desired state of facts

power

       over things (technology)

       over people (domination)

       over oneself (wisdom)

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authenticity and self-consistency

a specific technoethical awareness and resolution

to remedy the loss of engagement in modernity, deplored by Heidegger or Borgmann

new "mediated" engagementsthrough the appropriation of technologies

stupidification can be resisted

a meta-level of self-construction in the technosphere

invest first-order empowerment (Google, Wikipedia, credit card, etc.) with a second-order dedication to self constitution

the resource is never a direct “good” to be stored and secured in one's existential stock

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authenticity and self-consistency

self-reliance makes the difference

between being an object in the networks of techno-structures

and being the subject of a life

→ micro-resistance strategies to “outsmart the smart” in our devices and commodities

Foucault's last ideas on the resistive constitution of the subject through the reversal of domination structures that become resources for the self

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wisdom in the technosphere

Foucault' self-care and technologies of the self

application to ordinary technology

→ practices of the self that can be conceived as a permanent philosophical exercise aiming at wisdom

awareness, consistence, authenticity, and more

what's new in technoethics ?

the claim that there are abundant resources out there, waiting to be put together by a self that embraces a lucid project of self-constitution

the limitation to an infra-political level

a modest proposal of a self permanent education in ordinary life

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wisdom in the technosphere

back to the point: “wisdom beyond literacy”

digital competence in ancient days = code writing, code reading and understanding

expert knowledge

→ Apple and intuitive interfaces →

user skills and not expert skills

→ wisdom under the same logic

heroic wisdom for "experts" in ancient times

ordinary wisdom for everyone in the technospherethere is no wellbeing in the technosphere at a lower degree of engagement

i.e. as "functional happiness"

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references

Amichai-Hamburger, Y. (ed) (2009). Technology and psychological well-being. Cambridge University Press.Balch O. (2013, February). Buen vivir: the social philosophy inspiring movements in South America, The Guardian /

Sustainable Business, Feb. 2013. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/blog/buen-vivir-philosophy-south-america-eduardo-gudynas

Berry, D. M. (ed.). (2012). Life in code and software: Mediated life in a complex computational ecology. Open Humanities Press. Retrieved from http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Life_in_Code_and_Software.

Borgmann, A. (1984). Technology and the character of contemporary life: A philosophical inquiry. University of Chicago Press.Brey, P., Briggle A., & Spence E. (eds) (2012). The good life in a technological age. Routledge.Briggle A., Mitcham C. (2009). Embedding and networking: Conceptualizing experience in a technosociety. Technology in

Society 31(4), 374–83. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2009.10.001 Ess, C. (2009). Digital media ethics. Polity Press.Foucault, M. (1994). Dits et écrits II, 1976-1988. Gallimard.Foucault, M. (2001). L'herméneutique du sujet. Cours au Collège de France (1981-1982). Gallimard/Seuil.Frankfurt, H.G. (1988). The importance of what we care about. Cambridge University Press.Hershock, P.D. (1999). Reinventing the wheel: A Buddhist response to the information age. SUNY Press.Hershock, P.D. (2006). Buddhism in the public sphere: Reorienting global interdependence. Routledge.Lanham, R.A. (2006). The economics of attention: Style and substance in the age of information. University of Chicago Press.Luppicini, R., Adell, R. (eds) (2008). Handbook of research on technoethics, 2 vol. Information Science Reference.Mitcham, C. (1994) Thinking through technology: The path between engineering and philosophy. Chicago University Press.Naess, A. (1989). Ecology, community and lifestyle. Cambridge University Press.Prensky, M. (2001, October). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, MCB University Press, 9 (5). Retrieved from

http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf Puech, M. (2013). Ordinary technoethics. International Journal of Technoethics, 4(2), 36-45, July-December 2013. DOI:

10.4018/jte.2013070103Verbeek, P.-P. (2005). What things do: Philosophical reflections on technology, agency, and design. Pennsylvania State University

PressVerbeek, P.-P. (2011). Moralizing technology: Understanding and designing the morality of things. University of Chicago Press.

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more

this paper in full-text version:

http://michel.puech.free.fr/docs/2014cepe.pdf

this presentation and more documents:

http://michel.puech.free.fr

contact:

[email protected]