The Post-Individual

Out of everything I’ve ever written, “The Post Individual” best encapsulates what I’ve learned about life online: that to go online is to become reindividualized and born again as a slice of self that interacts with the slices of selves of others. Through this we are building a new society that redefines what individualism even is.

Post-individual collectives: In an era of individualism, how many followers you have is the key social indicator. In an era of post-individualism, it’s what groups you’re a part of that matters. The individual isn’t erased, it’s supported and strengthened by aligning with others. As more of our social and inner lives are lived online, internet-base... See more

Earlier generations were bound by family, geographic location, and their physical being. People today face few limits on their ability to explore, express, and manifest distinct identities. But our approaches are shaped by the platforms and algorithms we identiate through.

The spaces previous generations filled with close human relationships we fill... See more

What I’ve come to realize is that while our potential identities are infinite, our energy is not. Energy put into one identity is energy taken from another. To be Very Online is to be Never Offline. To become infinite is to become infinitesimal somewhere else. As Turkle wrote in The Second Self :

“For adults as well as children, computers... offer c

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As the internet evolves, especially for us “very online people,” there’s a deepening sense that we are, together, becoming something beyond the scope of our original intentions. We are rapidly approaching a sum far greater and more mysterious than what we often perceive as its cold, mechanistic parts.

While we conventionally think of ourselves as “u... See more