Search

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has long been used as the main indicator of a country’s development and wellbeing. Over the past two decades, consensus has been growing that an alternative index is needed to measure societal wellbeing and progress. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) assists countries to develop alternative measures of societal wellbeing. Some well-known examples are the Bhutan Happiness Index, the Canadian Index of Wellbeing, a Sustainable Italy, What Kind of Wales do we Want and Ecuador’s Wellbeing Index.

Facebook and Google suck up our personal data and allow it to be turned into fake news, engagement algorithms and “psychographic messaging” for Brexit and Donald Trump's election. A battle is looming over who will control this sea of Big Data and artificial intelligence (AI) - the public interest or Internet-based platform companies? What can be done to develop innovative policy approaches and a social economy for the digital age?