What is it about?
The paper explores what is happening to the idea and experience of embodiment in a data-driven culture. I argues that subjectivity is being splintered by these processes and that the very notion of 'embodied existence' is transformed by what might be though of as 'virtual presence' in the network.
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Why is it important?
This paper contributes a nuanced conceptual understanding of what changes to personhood are occurring in an age of digital technologies, data and infrastructures. Given that social life is now overwhelming conducted online or through the medium of data, we need more detailed theorisations of what these processes imply for our sense of self and our modes of embodied/social practice. This paper points to the risks and affordances of a life not solely contingent on the organic or biological body.
Perspectives
This paper offers an account of how digital data are mediating our bodies and behaviours, in the process opening up nuanced possibilities for a social life beyond the constraints of the organic and biological body. This pathway affords both risks and opportunities, for both escaping entrenched habits as well as carving out nuanced modes of social practice.
Dr Gavin John Douglas Smith
Australian National University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Surveillance, Data and Embodiment, Body & Society, January 2016, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1357034x15623622.
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