Posts Tagged ‘Digital and physical’
Why Writing Always Exposes The Truth
In the age of social media we allegedly bare more of ourselves than ever before. The digital realm has allegedly stripped us bare, naked. Exposed like someone standing on the street stark naked. And yet, whilst it’s true we share more of ourselves on line than ever before, I would argue we are still as protective of our true selves as we always have been.
It’s argued that our digital self, the self we portray online, on our Facebook and Twitter profiles, is an idealised reflection of our conscious self. But it goes deeper than that.
As Peter Rollins argues, our conscious self is often an idealised reflection of who we truly are. And many of us can begin to think that’s our true selves.
But it’s not.
It’s a reflection of who we want people to think we are.
Read MoreKnight Rider, Apple Watch & The Tower of Babel
In the 1980’s there was a show called Knight Rider. It was incredibly cool. And the big star of this show – and due respect to David Hasslehoff here – was the car, KITT. A self-aware supercomputer in a groovy black trans-am. And a watch which the car’s owner, Michael Knight, could talk to the car on.
Last week Apple announced the launch of the Apple Watch. A watch we will be able to talk to and command, but which will also receive and send text messages, and connect online. Technology is advancing at a rapid rate.
It’s amazing to think the first space aircraft which went to the moon were powered by as little electricity as it takes to run a kettle. The average iPhone is a million times faster than the first home computer.
Social media is already making the world a far smaller, and quicker place, changing the way we live. The next big advancement is likely to be the pursuit of artificial intelligence and research into how transfer human consciousness onto a supercomputer. A technology which may be as little as 20 years away.
But many say technology is destroying us. They say we need to stop the advancement of technology, scale back, and go back to how things ‘used to be’. According to them technology is the cause of many of the problems in our world, and ultimately damages us. They say we need to limit and control it, stop advancing.
However, this is to fundamentally misunderstand both technology and humanity.
To understand this issue further, we need to go back in time.
To the brick, and the tower of Babel.
Read MoreSocial Media: Digital Extending the Physical
Last time we discussed how the profile we present in the digital space can be merely a representation of the social self we display in the physical realm. This leads into a bigger, wider question though. Are all the interactions and spaces in the digital realm merely an extension of what happens in the physical…
Read MoreSocial media & the social self
We all have a social self. A self the world sees, the part of us that we like everyone to know, the best parts of us. The words we use to interact with those around us, the image we present to the world. The social self is merely an image projected by us, which we…
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