Life Engineering as a Discipline

Abstract

The Business Engineering discipline uses information technology to increase the value of a company; a Life Engineering discipline uses information technology to improve people’s quality of life. We need an engineering approach to the development of the digital world with the goal of quality of life. The short-term goal of Life Engineering is rules for digital assistants for the benefit of people; the long-term goal is rules for superintelligence. The minimum goal is to translate the moderate existing knowledge about information technology and quality of life into recommendations for individuals, companies, and politicians. The tasks of Life Engineering are a world database, i.e. a collection of personal and factual data, that is freely accessible for research, a world model as a collection of all patterns derived from the world database, an objective, and, as far as possible, automated happiness measurement, a quality of life model, and, finally, a happiness coach that transfers the findings into daily life.