The Onlife Manifesto

The ever-increasing pervasiveness of ICTs shakes established reference frameworks through the following transformations:

1. the blurring of the distinction between reality and virtuality;
2. the blurring of the distinctions between human, machine and nature;
3. the reversal from information scarcity to information abundance; and
4. the shift from the primacy of entities to the primacy of interactions.

The world is grasped by human minds through concepts: perception is necessarily mediated by concepts, as if they were the interfaces through which reality is experienced and interpreted. Concepts provide an understanding of surrounding realities and a means by which to apprehend them.

However, the current conceptual toolbox is not fitted to address new ICT-related challenges and leads to negative projections about the future: we fear and reject what we fail to make sense of and give meaning to.

In order to acknowledge such inadequacy and explore alternative conceptualisations, a group of scholars in anthropology, cognitive science, computer science, engineering, law, neuroscience, philosophy, political science, psychology and sociology, instigated the Onlife Initiative, a collective thought exercise to explore the policy-relevant consequences of those changes.

This concept reengineering exercise seeks to inspire reflection on what happens to us and to re-envisage the future with greater confidence.

23 settembre 2016