To understand the networked self, we must first understand the self, which is a ceaseless endeavor. The ultimate problem of the Internet might stem not from the discrete technology but from the Frankensteinian way in which humanity’s invention has exceeded our own capacities.
"Sciences are born when philosophy learns to ask the right questions; their potential is suppressed when it does not. New philosophy is born when new technologies force it to invent new concepts."
systems of moral demand no longer hinge on obedience, guilt, or inherited belief—but instead center emotional relief and self-optimization.21 Rieff identifies a profound shift in the symbolic order of the therapeutic age in which “controlling symbols”—those that once upheld communal order—have been displaced by “releasing symbols,” which prioritize... See more
“It’s a post-Snowden and post-WikiLeaks generation that throws its hands up in the air and says, ‘we don’t care about the Chinese spy, everyone has our data,’” Elizabeth Ingleson, an international history professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science told Semafor.
Our sense of it being effective to stick together, to do things like loan each other sugar, proactively participate in building neighborhood safety and infrastructure, or babysit each other’s children is dissolving, because in fact it is no longer effective or efficient to do many of these things.