Abstract

This article is an introduction to the concept of disposition (hexis) and what it means and entails in digital contexts. The increasingly digitized world that many people find themselves in needs to be seen in a larger context of five partly overlapping meta-processes of modernization, each of which calls for identifying appropriate virtues: (1) globalization, (2) economization, (3) digitalization, (4) mediatization, and (5) alienation. These processes and their inherent challenges are explained and illustrated with examples ranging from the lives of Marcus Aurelius and Hunter S. Thompson, the popularity of social networking sites, to Alphabet's discontinued collaboration with the Pentagon's Project Maven.