The Post-Individual
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The Post-Individual
“Once upon a time people were born into communities and had to find their individuality. Today people are born individuals and have to find their communities.”
The Post-Individual
The Post-Individual
By the end of the 20th century this process played out to such an extent that people were expected to stand out on their own as individuals. To self-actualize as “Me” became the pinnacle of social success. The human experience became reoriented around an individual’s need to self-actualize through consumerism, as recounted in Adam Curtis’ documenta... See more
The Post-Individual
For individuals before the internet, the key existential question was “Who am I?” After the internet, it's “Who all am I?
The Post-Individual
“For adults as well as children, computers... offer companionship without the mutuality and complexity of a human relationship. They seduce because they provide a chance to be in complete control, but they can trap people into an infatuation with control, with building one’s own private world.”
The Post-Individual
be wary of the seduction of complete control, world builder.
“Once upon a time people were born into communities and had to find their individuality. Today people are born individuals and have to find their communities.”
The Post-Individual
The internet's infinite private worlds at times feel more like the clan-based societies that predated individualism. But where past worlds were bound by blood, today’s are bound by interests, desires, identities, and what the algorithms governing these spaces — helmed by capitalistic KPIs —nudge us to do.
The Post-Individual
In the ancient world where wealthy and influential men held virtually all power and all others were seen as lesser beings, Christianity’s promise of universal salvation was a liberating secret that gave each person the right to their own inner purpose.
The Post-Individual
“Technology catalyzes changes not only in what we do but in how we think. It changes people’s awareness of themselves, of one another, of their relationship with the world. The new machine that stands behind the flashing digital signal, unlike the clock, the telescope, or the train, is a machine that ‘thinks.’ It challenges our notions not only of... See more
The Post-Individual
David Graeber and David Wengrow’s recent book The Dawn of Everything recounts how early Mesopotamian, American, and African societies moved between individualistic and collective periods based on how people procured food (hunting, individualistic; planting, collectivist) with a fluid complexity to identity and function:
“The freedom to abandon one’s... See more