The Digitization of Our World: New Publication by Orientations Press

“How Does the Digitization of Our World Change Our Orientation?” – this was the question of our first prize competition that took place in the years of 2019-2021. We now published the five award-winning essays on Orientations Press. You can now download the eBook for free here on our website.

Through our periodic prize competitions, we seek to philosophically confront some of the most pressing reorientations humanity faces in the 21st century. The current digital transformation increasingly affects all dimensions of our orientation, most noticeably in how we communicate, process and store information, work and move in our everyday life, but also with regard to big data, universal surveillance, artificial intelligence, and the internet of things – to just mention a few main keywords. However, it is unclear how this change currently impacts our life and what the long-term consequences will be. As such, through our prize competition, we want to make a contribution to addressing this transformation and provide some initial footholds.

On the day of our foundation’s inauguration, on October 25, 2019, we launched a philosophical prize competition concerning the question of this volume. Here we collect the six award-winning contributions:

1st prize award: “Orientation to Profiles: Identity in a Digitized World” by Hans-Georg Moeller and Paul J. D’Ambrosio;
2nd prize award: “Meet the Moment: An Inventory of Experience in the Digital Era and the Call for Orientation Virtues” by Samantha Sprole;
3rd prize award: “The Digital Transformation of Human Orientation: An Inquiry into the Dawn of a New Era” by Christoph Durt; special student award: split between Abigail Bergeron’s “The Question Concerning Digital Technologies” and Paul Stephan’s “How Could and Should Digitization Change Our Orientation? On the Use and Abuse of Digitization from a Utopian Perspective.” Reinhard G. Mueller introduces the conception of this FPO prize competition, Werner Stegmaier its philosophical horizon.

Click here to download the eBook for free.