This text hast three parts: the first is concerned with the concept of form or structure of experience, the second part is devoted to the “electric form” of the experience, and the third part discusses the electric form of the experience generated by the mobile phone. Finally, the text explores the form of the political fostered by the mobile phone as smart phone.

In August 2018, several European consumer associations have launched a lawsuit against Facebook arguing that “My data is mine,” but chose not to boycott the social network in its publicity campaign. The DECO FAQ list reveals why associations did not call for a boycott: they chose instead to use Facebook to disseminate information and to answer questions consumers might have. The argument presented by the associations confronts us with intricate questions concerning the nature of civil society, mainly with respect to the linkage between the market and the public sphere. Generally, critical theorists think that the realms of necessity and freedom are found incompatible with one another. The public sphere is considered as the realm of pure freedom where citizens deliberate matters concerning the destiny of the polis. The civil society is concerned with profit and with providing for material needs. The present paper approaches these questions by considering the nature of institutional configurations of contemporary digital capitalism and, also, the kind of interactions among social agents that act inside it. Are corporate digital networks (Facebook, YouTube, etc.) permeable enough to communicative rationality to make us believe that they can host a culture of convergence and cooperative interaction among social agents such that can aspire to a rational public sphere? To answer those queries, this paper develops a) a literature review on the contradictions of modern contemporary cognitive capitalism; b) a critical analysis of activists’ statements against the use of digital networks; c) support for a critical literacy approach that identifies textual structures and contextual frameworks in digital public debate.

In this theoretical article, we identify a conceptual error in the notion of ‘global media literacy’ and present and discuss eight typologies of media literacy formed on the basis of the ideological, political and economic dimensions of media and media literacy. While the first four types (Types 1-4) are past-oriented, they differ in terms of their endorsement or criticism of the government and capitalism. The same holds for the remaining four types (Types 5-8) except with respect to their future orientations. The time orientation, attitudes towards the government and capitalism determine how media literacy is conceptualized and what type of media literacy is to be promoted. It is proposed that unlike the original sense of literacy which was cognitively based, media literacy is socially constructed, which means that the widespread literacy analogy drawn from reading and writing to media use and interpretation is problematic. Finally, after delineating the eight typologies of media literacy, we discuss whether they apply to the digital world. It is argued that Type 8 media which is future-oriented, anti-government, and anti-capitalist find opportunities in the digital world which they lack due to funding issues in the non-digital world. Another point of the discussion involves the less tribal nature of digital media use since digital media users have access to different views which is not always the case for users of non-digital media. It is hoped that the typology of media literacy presented in this article will be critically discussed and utilized in future studies in the field.

In the early days of the Internet, philosophers, consumers, engineers, and futurists wondered what Web 1.0, the initial stage of the world wide web, might look like. At the time, there was not even a space called the world wide web, let alone the moniker “Web 1.0.” As the Internet flourished, consumers were spun into its sticky, silky residue. More connections and devices heralded in Web 2.0, including changes in both the form and the content of digital media. Now, with Web 3.0 right around the corner as we head into the thirtieth year of widespread web use, we explore the digital attitude adopted towards digital media in contemporary society. The idea of an attitude suggests the typical way we are feeling about a certain thing at the time. How do users and consumers and human beings in general assess their digital media use and understanding? Lines blur between where contents and forms begin and end. The digital media “content” needs a device and the “device” needs content to engage the consumer/user. Form comes through technological, electronic, digital, and device driven ways. Content proliferates through media through a variety of user generated programming, visuals, sound, apps, games, TV shows, billboards, and software. The combination of these elements provides digital media with its spreadable and participatory nature. This reflection considers the digital attitude as it relates to the human-technology experience approaching the Web 3.0 era. Does the web+digital+media’s ubiquity highlight or in some way name a new or different kind of in-between and taken-for granted attitude? Ideas from of Don Ihde, Alfred Schutz and Thomas Luckman, Marshall McLuhan, and Peter-Paul Verbeek are considered.

This article explores the ethical dimension of digital voice assistants from the angle of postphenomenology and the technological mediation approach, whereby technology plays a mediating role in the human-world relations. Digital voice assistants, such as Amazon Echo’s Alexa or Google’s Home, increasingly form an integral part of everyday life for many people. Powered by Artificial Intelligence and based on voice interaction, voice assistants promise constant accompaniment by answering any questions people might have and even managing the physical space of their homes. However, while accompanying daily lives of people, voice assistants also seamlessly redefine the way people talk, interact and perceive each other. In view of their intentionalities, such as interaction by voice, command-based model of communication and development of attachment, digital voice assistant mediate the norms of interaction beyond their immediate use, the way people perceive themselves, those around and form consequent normative expectations. The article argues that understanding how technologies, such as digital voice assistants, mediate our moral landscape forms an essential part of media literacy in the digital age.

As an uncritical theoretical presupposition, the notion of literacy has led to formalistic, bookish philosophy. The constipated philosophical discourse adjudged worthwhile by literati and digirati falls historically into a line of dogmatic argument and counterargument within academic tradition submerged in subjective-idealist solipsism, petit-bourgeois political apologetics, and economic escapism. Careerist generalization of literacy from the ability to read print to include metaphoric uses of the term “literacy” to all media, while comfortably foggy to irrationalists, adds little to our understanding of print or other media except by increasing the gloom that prevails among privileged, neo-liberal pettifoggers.

This paper is a review of WikiLeaks—a prominent name in digital dissent. It was founded by Julian Assange in 2006. Since its inception, the organization has been exposing classified state and corporate documents on its website to common users of the Internet. Anonymous whistleblowers provide WikiLeaks with content. It creates a new methodology of uniting digital media and journalism. It uses information in an unprecedented way to reveal state and corporate transgressions. This paper analyses how WikiLeaks contributes to information-based capitalism. While the site is a commendable venture to reveal state and corporate secrets, WikiLeaks is not free from its flaws. This paper critiques the way Assange robs whistleblowers of their identities and voices and presents himself as a surrogate hero.

Expecting that media and/or digital technologies “do” things (Verbeek), we are called upon to take a stance on them, theoretically as well as practically. Media literacy represents one such stance—we are prodded to be literate about media—but there are others. To this extent media literacy is a lens through which we look at issues and that shapes what we see. This becomes particularly clear when we consider another lens, namely, that of media health. While media literacy suggests a rather pragmatic way of doing, making do with what is on offer, the image of media health dramatically alters the starting point: media are seen here as affecting us, even to the extent that we become sick and need to be cured. This image or model of media as somehow related to disease and health is developed in varying degrees of explicitness in the work of Bernard Stiegler and Marshall McLuhan among others. In this paper, we investigate the differences between the media literacy and media health models from a meta vantage point and ask how the lens determines how we view and understand certain problems in relation to media/technologies. We do this by deploying a metaphor ourselves, namely that of mold. Our models are molds. They are understood as a “frame or model around or on which something is formed or shaped,” but the connotations of fungal growth helping organic decay and of soil and earth are also at stake. Depending on which meaning we prefer, it might turn out that we do not need to choose between our molds/models: they are interconnected, like mold. On a more theoretical level, we link up the media literacy and media health approaches to two major strands in philosophy of technology, namely to the pragmatist/postphenomenological and transcendentalist/critical streams respectively.

As in the Anthropocene the fates of humans and the planet become increasingly entangled, we have a paradoxical problem of agency in the face of the changes: we at the same time create the problem and are impotent when it comes to solving it. It seems that we are reduced to bystanders, or worse, distant witnesses. To understand this problem, in particular to identify what makes possible this deadlock in terms of agency and knowledge, this paper uses the concepts of “Earth alienation” (Arendt) and romantic technologies (Coeckelbergh and others). It then explores some paths which may help to deal with this problem: direct engagement with material and natural things, artistic work, changing our understanding of science and technology and of their relation to culture and politics, and critically studying the language and images we use in our analysis and discussion of the problem. It is concluded that the problem under investigation points us to deeper problems and complexities of modernity, to which there is no magic solution.

The Anthropocene could become the defining name of our period, yet scholars continue to disagree over the very concept. One important challenge that remains to be addressed is the apparent inability to locate our experience of anthropogenic events into meaningful action. We see what is happening around us and we know that we need to do something. But in the end, there is no actual response. Even in our most promising scientific solutions, the evental nature of the Anthropocene is often overlooked. The very fact that we think about anthropogenic events from within the symbolic framework of science and technology obscures them. Drawing from the philosophy of technology and a critical engagement with Slavoj Žižek and Bernard Stiegler, I argue that technoscientific culture provides a fantasy of reality in our current age of human history, which is now inextricably bound up with the history of the Earth. Therefore, the Anthropocene is an event in every sense of the word, namely an object that is fundamentally transforming reality. It not only challenges the framework that regulates our access to reality – which would introduce it as just another fantasy – it shatters that reality completely. Understanding the Anthropocene as event may offer a solution to a general sense of disorientation that leaves human beings unable to react in ways other than merely acting out.

According to geologists and Earth System scientists, we are now living in the age of the Anthropocene, in which humans have become the most important geoforce, shaping the face of the planet more decisively than all natural forces combined. This brings with it a huge and unprecedented responsibility of humanity for the future of the biosphere. Humanity’s impact on the planet has been largely destructive until now, causing a rupture of the Earth System which completely changes the planetary conditions that characterized the Holocene, the generally benign period of the last 11,000 years in which human civilization as we know it has emerged and was able to flourish. In the Anthropocene these conditions can no longer be taken for granted. On the contrary, humanity itself will have to become responsible for the preservation of the biosphere as its ultimate life-support system. This means that its influence on the Earth System has to become a constructive one, among other things by inventing a cleaner and more sustainable modus vivendi on the planet. In this article it is claimed that such a transformation presupposes the invention of a global noösphere that allows humanity as a planetary collective to perceive and monitor the Earth System and interact more intelligently and sustainably with it. The response-ability required for taking responsibility for the Earth System presupposes the existence of a global noösphere that can both support a permanent collective awareness of our embedding in and critical dependence on the biosphere and function as a collective action platform. Based on a Stieglerian diagnosis of our current predicament, a case will be made for the huge potentials of digital media for our future task of caring for the earth.

The Age of the Anthropocene must address the claim that human activity is one of the main factors in determining not just the course of biological life on planet Earth, but a force powerful enough to affect the Earth’s climate as well as the conditions of its oceans and its atmosphere, and in fact, all known life forms. We cannot go backward in time, and it is likely too late to reverse the changes we have already put in motion. We must therefore consider our alternatives for moving forward into the future of this new age. Whatever else is true, we must confront a long-standing problem in this regard, which is to determine who will lead the way, or at least point toward a path forward, in first acknowledging the meaning and implications of this new epoch and then, of course, in figuring out how to deal with the problematic situations that will accompany living in the age of the Anthropocene.

It seems paradoxical that the name of the new geologic age might be the Anthropocene, while converging NBIC technologies are advancing to the point where some transhumanists are predicting that humanity will potentially be evolving into a new post-human species in the next 50-100 years. New technologies, such as 3D printing of body parts and genetic engineering, bring about both exciting and potentially disturbing future scenarios. Transhumanists and bioconservatives bring opposing views to this human enhancement debate. However, they both start from a dualistic point of view, keeping the subject and object separate. The philosophical field of postphenomenology is an effective approach for pragmatically and empirically grounding the human-enhancement debate, providing tools such as embodied technological relations, the non-neutrality of technology, enabling and constraining aspects of all technologies, and the false dream of a perfectly transparent technology.

Online activities are becoming intertwined with almost everything we do. Social networks are so engrained in our lives that they have turned into a crucial part of what we do, both online and offline. Thus, the first question is, How are social media changing us? The second one is instead, How much has social media changed society? When a medium changes its form, human life is modified accordingly. Regarding the latter, if we assume a Foucaultian perspective, we should consider social media as the dispositif that can develop the subjectivity of individuals. Sharing information on social media represents something more than a simple act. This is a performative act à la Austin that shapes and disciplines human life by means of a virtual crowd which compulsively shares information and general opinions. The online dimension of life is either a technique or a practice that makes the dispositif operative. It enhances and maintains the exercise of institutional, physical and public power. What are the public and private consequences of virtual reality? In what kind of network of power is the virtual life enmeshed? According to Walter Benjamin, the digital era has a positive aspect: it allows humans to be aware of the poverty of human experience in general. However, this is not a lament for the old days. Benjamin introduces a new positive concept of barbarism. It has a creative force: the barbarian is a destroyer, but also a constructor. In this new Erlebnis, there is not a progressive linear time; rather, posting, sharing and experiencing happens simultaneously. Digital life is the beginning of a new historical orientation where virtual reality is an extension of the “offline” mode.

The aim of this work is to understand what kind of “other” a digital being can be, or the kind of “otherness” that can be attributed to a digital being. Digital technologies are emerging in our surroundings, and they are so close to us that they can be in intimate relationships with us. There are products like Gatebox, which are designed to produce digital entities that are not merely part of the surroundings, but that are also partners with which (or with whom) humans have relationships. In studying the kind of “otherness” these digital entities can have, the paper highlights the effects of different designs on the types of relations that are possible. Following a phenomenological point of view, the elements required to have a form of “otherness” similar to that of human beings is analyzed by focusing mainly on the resistance opposed by the “other.” According to these elements, the possible relations in which robots can engage is determined according to their specific design.

In considering the performative work of the Argentinean artist, Nicola Costantino, this paper reflects on the meanings of the body as active material and conceptual support, regarding the arising of the Anthropocene. Faced with their own invention, humans engage in self-reference, which causes an estrangement and produces a given intrusion threatening the identity-integrity of the ego, inevitably resulting in repulsion. Actions performed in the process of cosmetic surgery and other scientific interventions in biological bodies manifest bodily dehiscence, in the form of expulsion and negation of morphogenetic nature. Thinkers such as Lacan and Déotte are used to examine the implementation of the “body object” as a knotting of meanings, given the impossibility of reticulate substance, humanity, and subject. What remains is to witness through the body an immanent Anthropocene experience rather than one of a transcendental character, achieved in an extreme way by organic and morphological modification, particularly through surgery. This marks the result of the historical passage to techno-science as well as interpreting an Anthropocene conversion as power-totalizing. The question is whether this convergence between knowledge and practice is shaping a new experience from the experience of a completely transformed body and under what conceptions or categories the new generations will embody the Anthropocene. That concept can accommodate the treatment of a Neo-Darwinism involving the adaptation of the human species under a new form of consciousness.