On Saturday 11th September, I presented a paper entitled, ‘Cultivating sīla Online: the use of Cognitive Interventions in Systems Design‘ at the ninth annual conference of the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues. A copy of the paper is also available on Academia, with the presentation slides below. It is noteworthy that this was the first conference that Oriel College had hosted since the beginning of 2020 and, in neat symmetry, that event happened to be the eighth annual conference of the Jubilee Centre.
The Centre has been applying Aristotelian virtue ethics to the sphere of education with substantial effect. Usually, papers reflect this background, but on this occasion the organisers reached out a bit further, to researchers using other approaches to tackle the same kind of issues. Hence the acceptance of a paper from the perspective of Buddhist ethics.
Faced with growing mental health issues, the UK through its research bodies is investing heavily in novel approaches to address them, which often feature the design and use of interventions. This is especially fitting in the digital world as commercial concerns have already seized the online environment to deploy various kinds of micro-interventions to sustain and grow the ‘attention economy’, generally at the expense of the users’ awareness.
The recovery of one’s cognitive space was thus the prime motivation for the paper, for which virtue-based thinking routines (as already outlined on this site) were proposed, in the manner of Harvard’s Project Zero’s Thinking Routines. The aim is to help us stop and reflect critically at key moments in the use of social media — such as writing a status update and making a connection. Particular consideration was given to how the interventions are introduced (or deployed). Various options are available, covering formal and informal education, as well as building in the interventions into the software itself (as per the title). The design and use are still at the early stage, so they will likely be refined further.
The paper was presented through the following slides:
You can also download the PDF.
As expressed by Prof. James Arthur, the gathering at Oriel was an expression of much-needed hope and optimism. And most especially a great opportunity to engage in conversations without the use of screens.