Digital Well-being

Technological developments have always accompanied the existence of human beings. Today is no different, although the speed at which technology is developing, as well as the extent thereof, is rather unprecedented. Globally, the technological landscape has been disrupted and revolutionised through developments such as artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, big data, and the availability of cloud computing. These developments are reconfiguring many aspects of our lives and leading to ‘datafied societies’, which often lead to uncertainty and unease around who, what, and how we can trust in ever-increasing digitally mediated relationships. Although many of these changes are inevitable and surreptitiously becoming part of our everyday lives, universities should be at the core of grappling with and making sense of these rapid techno-societal upheavals. On the one hand, universities are compelled to join the race by harnessing and adapting their expertise and knowledge to contribute to and maximise the potential advantages of the global digital turn. On the other hand, universities cannot justify mere technological development without critical and reflective assessment of the current and rapidly changing status quo of technological advancements. Serious and dedicated considerations as to the reasons, the outcomes, and potential unintended consequences – such as human and environmental costs – must form part of engaging with the digital that permeates our lives. Universities are spaces where academic disciplines are practised and researched, traditionally within well-defined boundaries. Sometimes, the interests of diverse academic disciplines collide and become increasingly entangled, more so in the context of technological advances and realities in our lives. It raises the question as to the ways in which traditional academic disciplines will rise to the occasion to think differently about our combined intellectual future. In fact, only by celebrating this often-uncomfortable entanglement could a dedicated interdisciplinary enquiry start imagining the ways in which technology could (and should) sustainably benefit our societies more broadly. The Digital Well-being group also needs to embark on enquiries into the societal, psychological, economic, political, and ethical aspects related to the digital, digitisation, and digitalisation as well as broader digital humanities projects that are interdisciplinary in nature. For the more technical projects, a variety of social enquiries could be embarked upon, e.g., how do we enhance digital fluency and digital literacy among laypeople? How are technologies designed and adopted and to what extent are communities involved in these processes to develop technologies that are truly needed and user-friendly for a wide range of end users. How do we harness the social good of technological developments without losing track of its potential abuses, especially with issues related to increased surveillance and concomitant harm? How could digital potential be used to first and foremost solve local, immediate needs, given the manifold social and economic barriers – often referred to as the ‘digital divide’ – and the unintended consequences, even collateral damage, that digital advances have caused. How could existing projects be enhanced by the ICDF providing a digital skill set that includes engagement with issues related to the digital backbone, but also ethical, social, political, and normative deliberations with far-reaching potential effects on our combined projects.