the techno-social environment

Political and cultural struggles have moved onto the new media hardware and embraced its settings. Since the main effect of digital media, particularly social media platforms, has been to catalyze self-expression, the cultural, political, and economic significance of identity claims has skyrocketed.

the ease of exchanging digital speech has shifted the focus of mass communication from reflections to reflexes, from substance to attitude. Social media demand that everyone relate to others, to their ideas, to their troubles and achievements—indeed, to their very existence.

In the post-Narrative age of the Database, we all assume responsibility for improvising our own, often tentative and fragile, narratives about both the world and ourselves. Because narrative is so critical to our sense of identity, however, we are tempted to zealously guard our narratives.

The internet drastically increases the ease of finding and fulfilling one’s preferred phenomenological feedback loop, whether that be righteous anger, a sense of shared victimhood, or any other appealing gradient.

The overall digital environment is dictated by tech companies with ruthlessly capitalist, expansionary motives, which do not provide the most fertile ground for culture. While the magazine fashion editor may periodically use their ability to pick out and promote a previously unheard voice, the algorithmic feed never will; it can only iterate on

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the platform paradox. The elements of our digital personality should belong to us, but the digital account itself – our digital persona specific to this platform – is an unalienated part of the platform.

Where we had once been free to be ourselves online, we were now chained to ourselves on­line, and this made us self-conscious. Platforms that promised connection began inducing mass alienation.

Much of what we do is immediately authenticated as we do it, stored as data, classified or scored on some sort of scale, and deployed in real time to modulate some outcome of interest – usually, the behaviour of a person, or a machine, or an organisation.