Tech-vexed: how digital life threatens our capacity for awe | Aeon Essays

Is an online relationship as honest, open and palpable as a face-to-face relationship? Does the absence of taste, touch, smell – or blood, sweat and tears for that matter – make a difference in the quality of what is experienced? Is immersion in a video game or chat room the same as playing a game on a wet grassy field, or congregating with an in-p... See more

The upshot of device-mediated encounters is that they may be benign in single instances but collectively they are alarming. The larger question is where we are headed with such encounters. How do they impact our capacity to love, to be present to one another, to sort out what deeply matters about oneself and life? What impact do they have on human ... See more

Today, we are rapidly becoming ‘tech-vexed’ – my word for the gradual yet relentless seduction of computerised life. The COVID-19 pandemic simply accelerated a trend: many of us are now more intimately connected to smartphones than to nonmediated relationships with people. The net result of this insular life is that relationships with ourselves and... See more

And, until we obtain omniscience, until our consciousness equates to infinity, we will always be vulnerable, inadequate on some level.

Corresponding to the price of authenticity, the tech-vex can also exact a price on human dignity. It begs the question, to what extent does machine-mediated living gratify, ennoble? Can it replace the sense of fulfilment that people feel when they attain a skill or achieve an insight? Can a work put together by artificial intelligence match the elo... See more