Umwelt as the foundation of an ethics of smart environments

Abstract

Due to the increasing embeddedness of pervasive and immersive technologies in the built environment, a new type of spaces known as smart environments emerges. With them arise many ethical issues related to freedom, agency, consciousness, and the governance of human-machine interactions. In this paper, I use Jakob von Uexküll’s Umwelt theory to devise principles for an applied ethics of umwelt, as part of a broader ethics of smart environments. Umwelt ethics is one of human beings’ surrounding world in the context of environmental capitalism. As umwelt becomes a resource to be exploited by economic agents with de facto or de jure rights to control space, defining ethical principles pertaining to the digitalization of space in the built environment is more important than ever.