Digital technologies and the disruption of the lifeworld

Socially disruptive technologies (SDT’s) like digital technologies (for example, AI, digital twins, social media etc.) raise societal concerns, which can be observed in concerns about surveillance capitalism, instrumentalization of production and consumption, datafication of all domains of human and non-human life etc. We can frame these concerns in terms of the social disruption of the lifeworld – i.e. the meaningful environment of everyday life experience in which we are at home and live and act together. The disruption of the lifeworld by digital technologies first of all suggests that there are general patterns that SDT’s like digital technologies have in common, and secondly that they not only have an impact on the users or consumers for instance, but have a broader impact on the lifeworld in which we live and act. The first objective of this PhD project is to reflect on the general patterns emerging from 21st century SDT’s. The second objective of this PhD project is to reflect on the socially disruptive impact of digital technologies on the datafication and denaturalization of the lifeworld, i.e. the framing of the world in terms of datasets and algorithmic computation determines increasingly human and non-human living and acting in the world and changes for example the experience of social relations, human-animal relations, and the experience of the meaning of life. To articulate a proper concept of the disruption of the lifeworld by digital technologies, the project critically build on contemporary debates in continental philosophy of technology and philosophy of innovation to develop a concept of World constitutive technics.