Designing for conviviality

The aim of this paper is to advance systemism (an ontological framework that accommodates both agency and social structure, stressing that everything is a system or part of a system) as a better suited ontological framework for giving an account of the role of technologies in the formation of a good society. Building on Ivan Illich's systemic understanding of a convivial society, my secondary aim is to provide a matrix for the ethical design of technologies meant to foster conviviality. I will argue that such an ethical matrix could overcome strictly individualistic or holistic understandings of the social realm, by admitting that the social change provoked by technology is affecting both the social fabric of the concerned society and the individual which is part of the social structure concerned.