by Erich Prem
Abstract
Digital humanism emerges from serious concerns about the way in which digitisation develops, its impact on
society and on humans. While its motivation is clear and broadly accepted, it is still an emerging field that does
not yet have a universally accepted definition. Also, it is not always clear how to differentiate digital humanism
from other similar endeavours. In this article, we critically investigate the notion of digital humanism and
present its main principles as shared by its key proponents. These principles include the quest for human dignity
and the ideal of a better society based on core values of the Enlightenment.
The paper concludes that digital humanism is to be treated as a technical endeavour to shape digital technologies
and use them for digital innovation, a political endeavour investigating power shifts triggered by digital
technology, and, at the same time, as a philosophical endeavour including the quest to delineate its scope and to
draw boundaries for the digital.
Methodologically, digital humanism is an interdisciplinary effort to debate a broad range of digitisation
shortfalls in their totality, from privacy infringements to power shifts, from human alienation to disownment.
While it overlaps with a range of established fields and other movements, digital humanism reflects a new academic,
engineering, and societal awareness of the challenges of digital technologies.