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In February 2012, the European Commission (DG Connect) launched “The ONLIFE Initiative—a Concept Reengineering Exercise” within the context of the Digital Agenda for Europe. Initiated by Nicole Dewandre of the EC and chaired by Luciano Floridi (University of Oxford), scholars from various academic backgrounds were invited to discuss the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on individual, social and public lives. Of particular concern were the policy-relevant consequences of ICT-related developments. Taking Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition (1958)1 as an initial inspiration, we sought to better understand and articulate the interactions of ICTs with notions of public space in particular and our contemporary lifeworld more generally. As the subtitle “Concept Reengineering Exercise” indicates, the initial focus of this exercise was on re-assessing the conceptual toolbox with which we aim to understand and address these changes. As a prime example of such reengineering, we endorsed Floridi’s understanding of “ONLIFE”: contra strong distinctions between our offline and online lives and experiences that characterized earlier conceptualizations ; “ONLIFE” designates the transformational reality that in contemporary developed societies, with few exceptions, our offline and online experiences and lives are inextricably interwoven (cf. Floridi 2007, 61f.). Once such new conceptual foundations were in place, we could then develop concrete, policy-relevant proposals for what would constitute the good life in a digital or hyperconnected era. That is, one grounding for the specific proposals articulated in the Manifesto—e.g. care for our attentional capacities, in part as fostered by new digital literacies (see below)—is through virtue ethics and its thematic foci on flourishing, contentment (eudemonia) and harmony.2 The larger aim was to offer more effective policy guidance for ICT design and deployment.

DOI: 10.1007/s13347-015-0189-8

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