homo digitalis

"Undoubtedly, something irrevocable is happening to the self in the presence of the robotic-informatic web of media systems, external memory devices, and digital procedures threading through it. As offices, corporations, manufacturing and computing become distributed and virtualized, and an explosion of images, hypertexts, internet connectivity, telepresence and technologies of immersion increases communicational and interactive bandwidths, a new self is being installed, or better, is emerging, at the intersection of these techno-effects and our ancient, enbrained bodies. The electronic dolls of the future, all those proxy selves, avatars, technoid personas and digital puppet we can't wait to play with, are getting more enticing by the moment. But in relation to the effects and affects of technology, the self -- either as too present subject or elusive object -- becomes ever more difficult to locate and theorize. ..." becoming beside oneself

"Do starlings have any inkling of how majestic and beautiful their flocking is? Is there a starling sublime? Are human collectives -- social as much as biological -- more like a mass of starlings than we ever imagined? Is each of us made up of a flock of lesser creatures inside our heads? Perhaps. But, in any event, the fact of their flocking, the emergence of a routine or algorithm with a complex dynamical profile from the simultaneous, identical and simple activity of individuals, carries something essential of what I want to say here about the individual self and the collective other, and about the circuits linking the modes of simultaneity/sequentiality and the polarities of self/other within contemporary technoscientifically inflected culture...." going parallel