This book brings together international experts from a wide variety of disciplines, in order to understand the impact that digital technologies have had on our well-being as well as our understanding of what it means to live a life that is good for us. The multidisciplinary perspective that this collection offers demonstrates the breadth and importance of these discussions, and represents a pivotal and state-of-the-art contribution to the ongoing discussion concerning digital well-being. Furthermore, this is the first book that captures the complex set of issues that are implicated by the ongoing development of digital technologies, impacting our well-being either directly or indirectly. By helping to clarify some of the most pertinent issues, this collection clarifies the risks and opportunities associated with deploying digital technologies in various social domains.
Chapter 2 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.
Christopher Burr is a philosopher of cognitive science and artificial intelligence. He is a Senior Research Associate at the Alan Turing Institute and a Research Associate at the Digital Ethics Lab/Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford.
His current research explores philosophical and ethical issues related to data-driven technologies, including the opportunities and risks that such technologies have for mental health and well-being. A primary goal of this research is to develop frameworks and guidance to support the governance, responsible innovation, and sustainable use of data-driven technology within a digital society.
To support this goal, he has worked with a number of public sector bodies and organisations, including NHSx, the UK Government's Department for Health and Social Care, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation, and the Ministry of Justice.
He has held previous posts at the University of Bristol, where he explored the ethical and epistemological impact of big data and artificial intelligence as a postdoctoral researcher and also completed his PhD in 2017.
Research Interests: Philosophy of Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence, Digital Ethics, Decision Theory, Public Policy, and Human-Computer Interaction.
Luciano Floridi is the OII’s Professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Information at the University of Oxford, where he is also the Director of the Digital Ethics Lab of the Oxford Internet Institute. Still in Oxford, he is Distinguished Research Fellow of the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics of the Faculty of Philosophy, and Research Associate and Fellow in Information Policy of the Department of Computer Science. Outside Oxford, he is Turing Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute (the national institute for data science and AI) and Chair of its Data Ethics Group; and Adjunct Professor (“Distinguished Scholar in Residence”) of the Department of Economics, American University, Washington D.C.
He is deeply engaged with emerging policy initiatives on the socio-ethical value and implications of digital technologies and their applications. And he has worked closely on digital ethics (including the ethics of algorithms and AI) with the European Commission, the German Ethics Council, and, in the UK, with the House of Lords, the House of Commons, the Cabinet Office, and the Information Commissioner’s Office, as well as with multinational corporations (e.g. Cisco, Google, IBM, Microsoft, and Tencent). Among his current commitments, he is Chair of the Ethics Committee of the Machine Intelligence Garage project, Digital Catapult,UK innovation programme; and Member of the Board of the UK’s Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation (CDEI); the Advisory Board of The Institute for Ethical AI in Education; the EU Commission's High-Level Group on Artificial Intelligence; EY AI Advisory Board; and the Advisory Board of the Vodafone Institute for Society and Communications.
Research interests: Digital Ethics (including the ethics of AI, and Information and Computer Ethics), Philosophy of Information, and the Philosophy of Technology.
Among his recent books, all published by Oxford University Press (OUP): The Logic of Information (2019), The Fourth Revolution - How the infosphere is reshaping human reality (2014), winner of the J. Ong Award; The Ethics of Information (2013); The Philosophy of Information (2011).
