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CEPE 2014
Well-Being,Flourishing, and ICTs
Les Cordeliers, Paris, France
June 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

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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

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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 education
we 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

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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) and
acceptable private life (functioning in consumption)

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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

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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 Naess
a 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 attitude
our 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" engagements
through 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 technosphere
there 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.2013070103
Verbeek, P.-P. (2005). What things do: Philosophical reflections on technology, agency, and design. Pennsylvania State University
Press
Verbeek, 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:
michel.puech@paris-sorbonne.fr