ABSTRACT
The spread of wearable technologies has meant a transformation in several areas affecting health and well-being. From medicine to sports, uses of these new technical solutions are relevant and notorious. In this chapter, we analyze if these technologies can also produce positive effects on the individual person regarding subjective and psychologic well-being, or, in other level, produce effects on societies of which it forms part. If so, these wearables could be considered as positive technologies.
As wearable technologies reinforce personal strengths defined by authors like Seligman, we can understand that they contribute to make people happier and therefore, help then to flourish like human beings. It’s complex to determine how a technology contributes to this reinforcement of personal strengths. But is possible to understand it’s contributions as a mediator to generate basis for this reinforcement. We’ll try to find out how these new technological chances serve to reinforce values or strengths as creativity, curiosity, love for learning or, from the area of justice as a virtue, citizenship or leadership.
In a similar way, we explain how wearable technologies can also provide basis to build an eudaimonic happiness, the kind of happiness associated to a virtuous way of life. This connection between tools, personal strengths and a virtuous way of life allows us to explore the concept of positive technologies and find out practical purposes, uses, and approaches that lead us to catalogue wearables as positive technologies.
