Compassionate Digital Innovation: Navigating the Ethical Dilemmas of Sociotechnical Change

Compassionate Digital Innovation examines the ethical tensions at the heart of the digital innovations that shape contemporary life, from artificial intelligence and blockchain to social media platforms. Rather than treating harm as an accidental by-product of progress, this book argues that recurring dilemmas are embedded in the structural logics of digital infrastructures.

Through a pluralistic conceptual framework, it shows how amplification, personalisation, persistence, automation, and simulation generate predictable tensions at scale. Drawing on moral philosophy and empirical research, this book proposes compassion as a constitutional orientation for navigating these tensions. Compassion is framed not as sentimentality, but as a disciplined commitment to reduce avoidable suffering and redistribute responsibility in proportion to power. Across social media, Web3 governance, and AI companionship, readers encounter concrete analyses of both promise and peril. This book moves beyond appeals to “personal responsibility” to envision organised compassion through resistance to extractive models, regulatory reform, and the construction of public-interest alternatives.

For managers, technologists, policymakers, researchers, students, and engaged citizens, this book offers a rigorous yet accessible framework for redesigning digital innovation in service of dignity, justice, and the common good.

Raffaele F. Ciriello is a scholar of compassionate digital innovation at the University of Sydney, Australia. His research advances a critical dialectical approach, focusing on ethical tensions in the design, governance, and use of emerging technologies. He is a frequent contributor to leading journals (such as the AIS Basket, Nature Machine Intelligence, and The Lancet) and media outlets (such as The Economist, Financial Times, and 60 Minutes).