From Behavioral Design to Reverence for Life: Care Policies for the Digital Environment

Abstract

The article raises the problem of the ecology of a human being in a digital reality, namely, the issue of caring for a resource accessible to any person living in new conditions. The aim of the study is to substantiate the need for a transition from the behavioral design as well as the corresponding ethological paradigm to the existential design, involving a more responsible and careful approach to ecology and ethics in human capital management in the context of cognitive capitalism and digitalization of life. In the modern world it is often the question of productivity growth and technological advancement. Meanwhile, the question of human capacities and incapacities (mental, physical, behavioral) does not arise. Taking into account the absence of a caring attitude towards human capacities, this resource will never go turn into human capital. The research demonstrates that the design of digital media allows the use of the available human resources more properly if technical requirements of speed, quantity, simplicity are changed in compliance with existential requirements (changes in the subject of herself/himself, not in the objects of her/his activities) increasing his/her role, ethical meaning, feeling of presence in the event, tracking the results of actions and a deeper awareness of the results. The article is aimed at media philosophers, anthropologists and theorists of digital culture.

Keywords

• behavioral design
• reverence for life
• existential design
• control policies
• care policies
• digital reality
• cultural logic of interfaces
• mediaphilosophy
• cognitive capitalism