Between Utopia and Dystopia: The Virtual Happiness of Homo Digitalis Just a Click Away

This manuscript will focus not so much on the crisis of a consolidated happiness as on what might be called the emergence of the original experiential abyss for a given individual, and the incorporation, at best, of a subjective pattern of happiness. Likewise, we propose to operate with this ontogenetic pattern in the framework of a socio-technological context, which has come to be called the “digital context”. The main originality or innovation of this manuscript lies in the essential but neglected link between the happiness of homo digitalis and his identification with a certain cultural heritage, as an antidote to the European identity crisis. If it is already difficult to establish a link between human identity and the cultural heritage that surrounds and shapes it, it is even more complex, subtle or evanescent to establish a close and justified connection between that same cultural heritage and the human feeling, not only of well-being, but of happiness, in a digital context.