Our Times

the self is no longer a subject but a project . The self is something to be optimised, to be maximised, to be made efficient, cultivated for its capacity for productive output. The worry is that all life activities become viewed as lines on a résumé. Knowingly or otherwise, we risk being constantly governed by the question How is what I’m doing rig

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Young people do not degenerate; this occurs only after grown men have already become corrupt,” wrote Montesquieu in the eighteenth century.1 Our children may take this statement to heart when they find that their elders are leaving them with a poorer future. Three-quarters of American adults today are not confident that their children will be bette

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Paul Bogard’s 2013 The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light is probably about as a good a survey of the consequences of light pollution as you’re likely to find. Bogard traces the rise of the regime of artificial lighting and its less than benign consequences for both humans and non-humans, from the well-docume

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In den meisten Ländern kann man sich heute – eingeschränkt allenfalls durch Eigentumsrechte – innerhalb des Territoriums frei bewegen, muss aber staatliche Kontrollen akzeptieren, sobald man eine Staatsgrenze überschreiten möchte. Der Staat wurde zum einzig legitimen Akteur der Mobilitätsermöglichung und ‑beschränkung sowie der Grenzkontrolle am Sa

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Die technologischen Möglichkeiten der digitalen Protokollierung von immer mehr Lebensspuren laden heutzutage dazu ein, ein auf das Individuum zielendes diagnostisches Instrumentarium der Risikoklassifikation anzuwenden. Der über uns schwebende Datenschatten, der unser soziales, politisches und ökonomisches Leben beschreibt und nachverfolgt, kann oh

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Yet, smartphones are much more than an accumulation of improvements in hardware and software into a pocket-sized device that we spend too much time looking at. They represent something entirely new. When we pick up our phones, our taps and swipes engage not only a system of hardware and software, but also something much bigger—a set of institutions

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Trauma is a far subtler concept than many of us realise. It isn't just a word for something extremely stressful. It doesn't always come from short, sharp shocks like car accidents, terrorist attacks, or firefights. And, trauma isn't the same thing as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). What trauma is about is events and their effect on the mind.

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As we have seen in the previous theses, our digital environment:

Regulates our lives towards a smaller number of paths purposely designed by others rather than trails more fortuitous and exploratory.

Builds up a monolithic authentic self rather than a lush set of mutually-enriching contextual identities.

Is heavily focused on categorising people, whic

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