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This article discusses the role of technology, as a new political welfare strategy, in relation to health promotion and human welfare. The transformation into the era of digital welfare and the implementations of welfare technologies challenge the notion of sustainable health promotion. Replacing man with machine has implications for social interactions and thereby the perception of quality of life. Theoretically, I am approaching these arguments through WHO-definitions of health as well as by referring to contemporary health sociologists and health philosophers, who point to the crucial aspect of social human interaction. Empirically, the article draws on the work of my Ph.D. study of how to govern a population through pronounced political discourses of welfare optimization as a way of emphasizing sustainable actions. These discussions are brought to the fore of findings of another research project on speak computers as a health promoting technology for people with language impairments. The conclusion of this article is how speak computers represent a sustainable health promoting technology as they reinforce, as opposed to depriving, aspects of social interaction. The overall claim is that digital welfare as a new political welfare strategy necessitates a discussion on the concept of sustainable health promotion when social services through digital welfare alter previous perceptions of human welfare. ; This article discusses the role of technology as a new political welfare strategy in relation to health care, health promotion, and human welfare. The transitions into the era of digital welfare and the implementation of welfare technologies alter previous notions of treatment, prevention, and health promotion. Self-monitoring chronic diseases can be regarded as empowering and augmenting feelings of autonomy and independence, but may also have negative implications due to reduced social encounters with health professionals. When the provision of public health care services is no longer solely in the hands of health professionals, the patient is designated greater responsibility. This means that with the introduction of digital welfare technologies, that is, telemedicine, human interaction between health professionals and patients is transformed, and in some cases is absent. Replacing man with machine creates a stronger focus on (self-) maintenance of physical health, diminishing social and mental aspects of health care. These hypotheses divide the article into three main parts. The first scrutinises policy documents behind the emergence of digital welfare technologies, and their presented affiliation with certain rationales of health, welfare, and socio-economy. Second, the article discusses health as a welfare strategy from a critical sociological perspective, pointing to how the introduction of new health technologies as a welfare strategy also forms a new concept of health and health promotion. The third section discusses how a new concept of not only welfare, but also of health, requires work on the population's mentality. This, I argue, leads to a strategy of governing citizens via discourses of promises and optimisation where the encouragement of virtue and responsibility is presented as a new sustainable strategy for human welfare. The overall conclusion of the article is that in the new strategies of digital welfare technologies are underpinned by new strategies of health care and health promotion, strategies of which we have yet to learn the sustainable effects on human welfare

New public management and knowledge economy have become watchwords in the governance of higher education. The university's role has rapidly changed toward regional development. The aim of this article is critically to highlight the basic rationale of this reorganization and to examine what this can mean in a Swedish context. This rationale is described as the system of various forms of collaboration between industry, commerce, the universities and research institutes, and the political system. In Sweden, higher education is assumed to generate economic growth in different regional communities. How successful the university's contribution can be is, however, an empirical question rather than an ideological one. A paradox lies in this reorganization—the more the university adapts to regional needs, the more difficult it is to generate knowledge in a global context. If the criteria for knowledge is regional development, then the nature of truth is replaced by something completely different.

New public management and knowledge economy have become watchwords in the governance of higher education. The university's role has rapidly changed toward regional development. The aim of this article is critically to highlight the basic rationale of this reorganization and to examine what this can mean in a Swedish context. This rationale is described as the system of various forms of collaboration between industry, commerce, the universities and research institutes, and the political system. In Sweden, higher education is assumed to generate economic growth in different regional communities. How successful the university's contribution can be is, however, an empirical question rather than an ideological one. A paradox lies in this reorganization—the more the university adapts to regional needs, the more difficult it is to generate knowledge in a global context. If the criteria for knowledge is regional development, then the nature of truth is replaced by something completely different.