Webfare : A Manifesto for Digital Well-Being / by Maurizio Ferraris

Cover -- Contents -- Growth or Degrowth? Maurizio Ferraris's Economy of Digital Waste Recycling -- Prologue: Why Webfare? -- Acknowledgments -- 1. From The Tyranny of Merit to The Democracy of Need -- 1.1 Nature and Society -- 1.2 Need and Consumption -- 1.3 The Sorcerer's Apprentice -- 1.4 The Need for Theory -- 2. From Analog to Digital -- 2.1 Ichnosphere -- 2.2 Infosphere -- 2.3 Docusphere -- 2.4 Antroposphere -- 3. From Artificial Intelligence to Natural Intelligence -- 3.1 What Is Life? -- 3.2 The Techno‐Anthropological Circle -- 3.3 Natural Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence -- 3.4 Culture as Second Nature -- 4. From Human Capital to Human Heritage -- 4.1 A New Heritage -- 4.2 A Rich Heritage -- 4.3 A Renewable Heritage -- 4.4 An Equitable Heritage -- 5. From Homo Faber to Homo Sapiens -- 5.1 Relativization -- 5.2 Rarefaction -- 5.3 Mobilization -- 5.4 Valorization -- 6. From Welfare to Webfare -- 6.1 Virtue Banks -- 6.2 Privacy Protection -- 6.3 Interpretation -- 6.4 Redistribution -- Epilogue: From Being to Being‐Together -- Bibliography.

From time immemorial, humans have been making deals, consuming goods, cultivating interests, thereby manifesting specific forms of life. Now, these forms of life solidify automatically by transforming into data. Webfare, a form of digital welfare, seeks to initiate a Copernican revolution that places need instead of merit at the center of society. In 21st-century welfare, consumption and production will be considered as the two faces of the same reality. The possibility to create new value is precisely what sets Webfare apart from traditional welfare: it recognizes the new value created by the Web, and aims to use it for everyone's well-being.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2025. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.