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Today, in any mature information society (Floridi 2016), we no longer live online or offline but onlife, that is, we increasingly live in that special space, or infosphere, that is seamlessly analogue and digital, offline and online. If this seems confusing, perhaps an analogy may help to convey the point. Imagine someone asks whether the water is sweet or salty in the estuary where the river meets the sea. Clearly, that someone has not understood the special nature of the place. Our mature information societies are growing in such a new, liminal place, like mangroves flourishing in brackish water. And in these ‘mangrove societies’, machine-readable data, new forms of smart agency and onlife interactions are constantly evolving, because our technologies are perfectly fit to take advantage of such a new environment, often as the only real natives. As a result, the pace of their evolution can be mind-blowing. And this in turn justifies some apprehension. However, we should not be distracted by the scope, depth and pace of technological innovation. True, it does disrupt some deeply ingrained assumptions of the old, exclusively analogue society, e.g. about production, logistics, customization, competition, education, work, health, entertainment, politics and security, just to mention some crucial topics. Yet that is not the most consequential challenge we are facing. It is rather how we are going to design the infosphere and the mature information societies developing within it that matters most. Because the digital revolution transforms our views about values and their priorities, good behaviour, and what sort of innovation is socially preferable—and this is the fundamental issue, let me explain.

DOI: 10.1007/s13347-018-0303-9

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