Profound. Illusion piled upon indoctrinated illusion. I can't even imagine how this is affecting the new generations. And I now understand better why it is hard for older generations to relate to what's happening.
The piece assumes we want to own our digital bodies. But the ownership frame might already be the trap.
Traditional societies didn't have strong concepts of self-ownership. Identity was embedded in kinship, place, ritual. The self was relational, not something you possessed. What you call the platform paradox might be a return to something older: identities that grow from and belong to environments.
The difference? Traditional environments were inherited and evolved slowly. Platform environments are designed and can be modified overnight. We're tribal selves in an environment that's being A/B tested on us.
Postman called it "amusing ourselves to death." But this is more intimate than amusement. It's identifying ourselves to death. We fuse with the medium until the distinction between user and environment blurs. At that point, calling it slavery or ownership both miss what's happening. You can't enslave what you've become part of.
Absolutely. The concept of the self emerged with literacy. Before that, people could not identify themselves apart from the tribe. Authorship emerged with manuscripts, to identify manuscripts/concepts by attribution (with some precursor in the naming/ownership of schools and traditions in philosophy and the arts, I guess).
But since literate and complex individuality is now reversing into identity — IDying everyone with the group — we do return to identifying ourselves by totemic names (or, later, names-instructions, like Muller or Smithson).
And yes, our identities are easier to package and display within platform-suggested presentations, which are just slightly more complex versions of “skins” one can buy in video games. So you can wear it, but not actually fully own it in old sense.
The "skins" parallel is sharper than it first looks. Video game skins are pure signifier. They don't change stats or abilities. Just legibility to other players. Platform identity works the same way. The self isn't modified. It's decorated for consumption.
The irony is that literacy created private selves by enabling solitary thought. Silent reading. Marginalia. Internal monologue. Now the same technology (text-based platforms) produces the opposite: selves that only exist when witnessed. The private interior was a historical blip between two forms of public existence.
Ong noted that oral cultures think out loud because thinking is speaking is being heard. We might be returning to that. The difference: oral cultures had human witnesses. We have metrics.
Profound. Illusion piled upon indoctrinated illusion. I can't even imagine how this is affecting the new generations. And I now understand better why it is hard for older generations to relate to what's happening.
The piece assumes we want to own our digital bodies. But the ownership frame might already be the trap.
Traditional societies didn't have strong concepts of self-ownership. Identity was embedded in kinship, place, ritual. The self was relational, not something you possessed. What you call the platform paradox might be a return to something older: identities that grow from and belong to environments.
The difference? Traditional environments were inherited and evolved slowly. Platform environments are designed and can be modified overnight. We're tribal selves in an environment that's being A/B tested on us.
Postman called it "amusing ourselves to death." But this is more intimate than amusement. It's identifying ourselves to death. We fuse with the medium until the distinction between user and environment blurs. At that point, calling it slavery or ownership both miss what's happening. You can't enslave what you've become part of.
Absolutely. The concept of the self emerged with literacy. Before that, people could not identify themselves apart from the tribe. Authorship emerged with manuscripts, to identify manuscripts/concepts by attribution (with some precursor in the naming/ownership of schools and traditions in philosophy and the arts, I guess).
But since literate and complex individuality is now reversing into identity — IDying everyone with the group — we do return to identifying ourselves by totemic names (or, later, names-instructions, like Muller or Smithson).
And yes, our identities are easier to package and display within platform-suggested presentations, which are just slightly more complex versions of “skins” one can buy in video games. So you can wear it, but not actually fully own it in old sense.
The "skins" parallel is sharper than it first looks. Video game skins are pure signifier. They don't change stats or abilities. Just legibility to other players. Platform identity works the same way. The self isn't modified. It's decorated for consumption.
The irony is that literacy created private selves by enabling solitary thought. Silent reading. Marginalia. Internal monologue. Now the same technology (text-based platforms) produces the opposite: selves that only exist when witnessed. The private interior was a historical blip between two forms of public existence.
Ong noted that oral cultures think out loud because thinking is speaking is being heard. We might be returning to that. The difference: oral cultures had human witnesses. We have metrics.
where do all the posts go?
Like is there a server in ubuntustan?