“What was some time ago dubbed (erroneously) ‘post-modernity’ and what I've chosen to call, more to the point, ‘liquid modernity,’” Bauman explained, “is the growing conviction that change is the only permanence, and uncertainty the only certainty.” This liquidity characterizes not only the functions of capital, the status of institutions, and the... See more

suggests that the self and its relation to the world is not merely a mental phenomenon. It has a sensual, embodied, and material dimension, and changes, even subtle ones, to the texture our experience can have profound consequences.

Perhaps the best way of conceptualizing this is to say that the device over-consolidates the materiality of reading in a way that smooths out the texture of our experience.

the changing texture of material culture in digital society and the attendant consequences for how we experience the continuity of the self.

enduring relationships anchor our identity or our sense of self.

The self is not exactly fixed. It undoubtedly evolves over time, it is multi-faceted, and, critically, it escapes our full comprehension. All of... See more

We might think of it as a puzzle whose pieces are distributed amongst several people. All must be present, supplying their own pieces, in order for the whole to emerge. And when it does, each person receives a bit of themselves back as a gift.

Social remembering: Our own recollection is tied to others with whom we have shared our life.

When more and more of the “things” we take up during the course of our day are digitized or virtual realities, which leave few if any traces in the world?

The texture of our experience is flattened out as a result.

“The existence of a public realm,” Arendt observed, “and the world's subsequent transformation into a community of things which gathers men together and relates them to each other depends entirely on permanence.”