The Good Life

Abstract

From the perspective of information ethics, one of the purposes of human life is flourishing. This means people ought to be free to engage in creative and flexible actions that allow the fullest realization of their potential as intelligent, decision-making agents – i.e., those actions that a person experiences as meaningful. Researchers have suggested that many people in the post-industrial West experience a lack of meaning in their lives, and this “crisis of meaning” is implicated in many of society's ills; consequently many people are not flourishing as they might. Flourishing relies on information access, processing, and understanding, as well as a particular meaningful experiential dimension of information activities. To speak of information experience, personally meaningful activities are experienced as self-constructive ones, characterized by focused curiosity and presence, and which have a central practice that is supported by peripheral practices. Examples of personally meaningful information behavior from the serious leisure hobby of ultramarathon running are discussed as illustration. In reaching for a more ethical information society, we should seek to infuse more of our information activities with deeper personal meaning.

Citation

Gorichanaz, T. (2020), "The Good Life", Information Experience in Theory and Design (Studies in Information, Vol. 14), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 123-134. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2055-537720200000014014