Positive Computing

A case for building a digital environment that can make us happier and healthier, not just more productive, and a theoretical framework for doing so. On the eve of Google''s IPO in 2004, Larry Page and Sergey Brin vowed not to be evil. Today, a growing number of technologists would go further, trying to ensure that their work actively improves people''s lives. Technology, so pervasive and ubiquitous, has the capacity to increase stress and suffering; but it also has the less-heralded potential to improve the well-being of individuals, society, and the planet. In this book, Rafael Calvo and Dorian Peters investigate what they term “positive computing”—the design and development of technology to support psychological well-being and human potential. Calvo and Peters explain that technologists'' growing interest in social good is part of a larger public concern about how our digital experience affects our emotions and our quality of life—which itself reflects an