II. Monsters, hybrids, uncertainties: cyberspace and the repressed unconscious of modernity

The etymology of cyberspace alludes to its nebulous nature; ‘cyber’ originating from the ancient Greek kybernetes or helmsman, itself derived from kybernan, meaning to steer or govern, and ‘space’ denoting a unit of time, time lapse, physical expanse or infinite continuum void of matter. The notion of control and unboundedness, materiality and void, expresses something of the polarity of this parallel virtual reality; although by hosting both symbolic and perceptible forms of information exchange, it presents an unfathomable horizon of potentialities. Despite being produced by a disembodied, unfettered, anarchic electronic network of connections mediating human life and abstract space, information and communication technologies are still dependent on spatial fixity such as bandwidth and access points. Many technologies augment and sustain human life from retinal implants to rehabilitation robotics, where the human–machine interface uses biological gestures to deduce the intent of the patient and translate this into control signals for the robotic artefact. The Director of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group and pioneer of the Gemini Spinal Cord Fusion Protocol even predicts the first human head transplant, cephalosomatic anastomosis, will take place in 2017 (Canavero, Reference Canavero2015, p. 18). Just as this revolution in neuromodulation presents a range of complex ethico-legal implications, in recent years rapid immersive technological innovations have manipulated the symbolic social order and have outpaced the development of corresponding legal policy and safeguards.

Advanced mass surveillance technologies have facilitated greater intrusions into private life by a variety of public and private actors, whose activities are often beyond the reaches of law and regulation. An interconnected set of tracking devices capture and categorise our every action at any given time; we are under constant observation without knowing when, by whom or why. The intensification of information gathering and data sharing enabled by new panoptic technologies of power are too often competitive with, rather than complementary to, the existing norms of the real world and are not readily subject to legal or moral censure. Edward Snowden recently revealed, inter alia, a seven-year illegal vast communications data-sharing operation between GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) and the US, facilitated by the National Security Agency's surveillance programme PRISM (governed by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act 2008). Following a series of hearings, in February 2015, Liberty & Others v. GCHQ [2015] UKIPT/13/77/H, the secretive Investigatory Powers Tribunal found the bulk interception of electric communications may have been in breach of Articles 8 and 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights; however ‘adequate indication’ that ‘appropriate rules or arrangements exist and are publicly known and confirmed to exist’, along with a promise not to circumvent the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 in future, was considered to be a sufficient safeguard against unlawful surveillance.

The Kafkaesque nature of cybersecurity mechanisms and mass gathering of ‘big data’ in vast databases has fuelled a sense of resentment and climate of mistrust, which ensures the legitimacy of suspicionless surveillance versus privacy remains a contentious area. Whilst crime prevention is a legitimate aim, widespread surveillance and monitoring is arguably driven primarily by the concerns of government operating in an often orchestrated climate of fear, rather than as a response to the actual experience of crime (van Munster, Reference Van Munster2011). In addition, the economic capital accumulated by the knowledge industry facilitates the manipulation of reality and privileging of particular interests, which impinge on political power, financial markets, consumer behaviour, employment policies and welfare standards. It follows that the technologies and interests of those who ‘own’ and control them are embedded into what Fuchs describes as ‘structures of domination’ (Reference FUCHS2008, p. 114). As the product of vast structures of control, the lives of individuals are reinvented by those with power, yet network theorists have claimed networked resistance can overwhelm capitalist elites and neoliberal ideologues. Although undoubtedly they generate a certain amount of unease and disruption, the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement and similar anti-austerity factions have not lessened the grip of hierarchical power elites.

The locale of struggle is complicated by the absence or presence of specific physical properties, so it is inevitable that the realm of inquiry has shifted from not only who has the capacity to influence the structures of power and principles of control but also what mediums are capable of upholding or changing the representation of reality, in mediating human experience and social interactions (Shaw, Reference Shaw and Feenan2013). Whilst panoptic technologies discipline, control and normalise our city streets without any specific reason, internalised synoptic structures – such as the media and entertainment industries, producing television programmes, web-based content and newspapers – comprise an extensive enculturation of the mass audience, in which exchange of cultural meaning takes place during the process of interaction. The internalisation of control via the perpetual presence of ‘an inspecting gaze, a gaze which each individual under its weight will end by interiorising to the point that he is his own overseer, each individual thus exercising this surveillance over, and against, himself’, has produced self-policing subjects (Foucault, Reference Foucault and Gordon1980, p. 155). Both panoptic and synoptic forms aim to neutralise each instance of radical difference and alterity into enclosed spaces of technological competence and control; working towards the ideal of a homogenous knowledge and culture which is shared by a diverse and increasing population of docile and malleable databased individuals traversing spatial and temporal boundaries.

Much of modernity has concentrated on the creation of boundaries and categories which reinforce a set of privileged interests relating to discourses of progress, capitalism, globalisation, science and technology. For Bruno Latour, modernity manifests itself in the proliferation of monsters, hybrids and uncertainties which – whilst professing a fundamental distinction between human and non-human – have in practice generated theories and concepts that are themselves hybrids, monsters and embodiments of uncertainty (Reference Latour and Porter1993, pp. 10–12). Multiple threats of war, disease, environmental disaster, economic uncertainty and the spectre of technological singularity present monstrous ethical dilemmas, and the fluidity of classifications and categories with which we attempt to contextualise these phenomena serve to compound our collective sense of anxiety. The loss of identity, authenticity and connection with the sensory world, even a sense of rootlessness, is exacerbated by the increasing penetration of market values and organisational power which underpin mass technologies and mass consumption. From a psychoanalytic perspective, unchecked technological advancements produce an awakening of repressed instincts that oppress the centred sense of self, and as a larger range of virtual and inauthentic factors impact on the real it becomes pertinent to address those elements which pose such a threat. The framing of this opposition in confrontational terms suggests the possibility of autonomous technologies beyond human control, in particular the spectre of the posthuman. This constitutes the dark side of modernity for some; whilst for others the posthuman turn has been welcomed as a unique opportunity to critically explore key elements of the human effects of this process of transformation.

III. In anticipation of a posthuman future: from fantasy to fact

The development of new technologies, scientific progress and economic change has reimagined the dynamics of social space and lived experience, and has created novel challenges, not least of all in relation to the transgressive human–machine interface. Recent advances such as cloning, xenotransplantation, embryo manipulation and genetic enhancement also raise important epistemological questions relating to human exceptionalism or anthropocentrism. The idea of what it now means to be human has been explored via a diverse range of academic, scientific, aesthetic and literary forms. In recent scholarship, the traditional civilisational social model as a locus of thoughts, shared values and interaction with respect to social justice, social cohesion and political thought has been supplanted with the idea of the posthuman. Because of wide variations on how the posthuman is constructed and envisaged, there are many views but little consensus. Some welcome the posthuman turn as a unique opportunity to ‘critically and creatively [think] about who and what we are actually in the process of becoming’, as well as affording the opportunity to forge ‘multiple allegiances and new ecologies of belonging that can redefine cosmopolitanism’ (Braidotti, Reference Braidotti2013, pp. 12, 183).

Such opinions debunk the myth of humanity as an impossible ideal which has always excluded individuals who failed to fit the category of ‘human’ and so were denied the full panoply of legal rights and protections afforded to others. The acculturation of the gendered female body means women have struggled to gain political, employment and educational rights; as Simone de Beauvoir observed: ‘one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman' (de Beauvoir, Reference DE BEAUVOIR1973, p. 301). In the late eighteenth century, Western European single women, for example, were taught accomplishments such as needlepoint and etiquette rather than academic subjects, and married women possessed no legal identity; they were unable to retain the services of a lawyer, or make contracts, and they had no rights even over their own children. Even now it may be argued that various ritualistic ‘beauty regimes’ – from anti-ageing products to routine cosmetic surgery – disempower, diminish and enslave women to an idealised image of femininity. Despite legislative reforms such as the UK Equality Act 2010, when women appeal for equal treatment, opportunities or rights recognition, it is from the starting point of a preformed cultural construct founded on the idea of hegemonic masculinity (Shaw, Reference Shaw2010, pp. 34–36). An overarching patriarchal model has always reserved power and privilege for men; meaning ‘not all of us can say, with any degree of certainty, that we have always been human, or that we are only that. Some of us are not even considered fully human now' (Braidotti, Reference Braidotti2013, p. 1).

The post-gender, posthuman perspective despatches any hierarchical notion of the ‘natural self’ whilst presenting technosocial reality as one which may be free from biologically based oppression. The fictional and real-world imagery associated with the human–machine cyborg, however, tends to be predominantly hyper-masculine (Darth Vader, The Terminator, RoboCop, Iron Man, Neo from The Matrix, military applications of technoscience). In conforming to modernism's patriarchal dualistic assumptions, this conception smuggles in another form of gender stereotyping. In addition, although becoming a cyborg would confer greater powers on individuals than those who remained human, the remaining humans would likely become a subspecies (Warwick, Reference Warwick2002, p. 157). For Hayles the posthuman goes beyond body modification, metaphorical and actual biological limitations, as it esteems information over materiality and situates the body as a prosthetic extension of the mind; and is characterised by four main assumptions:

If human consciousness can be uploaded as information and moved between bodies or computers in the manner of extropian Hans Moravec's (Reference Moravec1988) theory of ‘transmigration’, in Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence, then the body is no longer of central importance. The removal of the line between machine, mind and computer means there are no longer ‘essential differences or absolute demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and bodily organism, robot technology and human goals’ (Hayles, Reference Hayles1999, p. 3). This technological separation of mind and body has profound implications for culture and civilisation. Similarly for Foucault in The Order of Things, ‘the idea of man’, as human consciousness, morality and existence, is profoundly historical and simply an effect of language, desire and the unconscious. Fashioned by dominant discourses within which its authority was constructed, and like a face drawn in the sand at the edge of the sea, he predicts the concept and ‘era of man’ as coming to an end (Foucault, Reference Foucault1970, pp. 386, 387). This does not describe a world without humans; rather it refers to a different understanding, an evolution, of what we understand by the concept of ‘human’. This is an idea taken up by Baudrillard and McLuhan, who suggest that the ubiquity of digital media along with an attendant implosion of meaning in the media have destabilised any shared sense of reality and rendered the real world of objects and human experience obsolete. The effect of substituting the real with a world of signification or ‘hyperreality’ is claimed to have been so far-reaching as to permanently change human nature.

In his lecture on ‘Aesthetic Illusion and Virtual Reality’, Baudrillard expressed the view that whilst there is always a hidden camera somewhere filming us without our knowledge, our entire life has taken on a ‘video dimension’ because of the more disturbing effect of the ‘virtual camera’ in our head (Reference Baudrillard and Zurbrugg1997, p. 19). E. M. Forster's The Machine Stops depicts a technologically mediated individual who becomes so removed from nature that they no longer comprehend their total alienation from what is real; freedom of mobility has become synonymous with, even replaced by, maximum connectivity and utility (Reference Forster2011). The constantly updated iPad and smartphone exemplify the modern ideal of maximum mobility and utility, with a range of apps from pocket yoga to augmented reality urban exploration; using AR technology a walk in the park becomes a shopping experience, allowing the user to browse, even feel, items on sale. Similarly, watching television, web surfing and playing chess with acquaintances on different continents are all possible from the device, replacing the home as a basis for engaging in such activities. Recently patented ‘Google Glass’ with bone induction technology transforms the individual into machine by interpreting visual and aural data encountered by the user, projecting this as a series of words and images via pop-ups onto a small screen worn as spectacles, obviating the need to process the information for themselves; whilst new virtual reality (VR) technology interfaces – Facebook's ‘Oculus Rift’ and Sony's ‘Project Morpheus’ – create an entirely fabricated world for the user to navigate. Aside from issues of privacy (surreptitious surveillance of unsuspecting others) taken to the extreme, this hypermobility reverses into immobility consequent on the loss of corporeal awareness and lack of autonomy, since almost everything can be conducted and interpreted by the device. For Merleau-Ponty, the body can adapt and extend itself via ‘literal’ or external devices and, after acquiring the ability to perceive the world through the device, it ceases to exist; having been absorbed, it now constitutes an essential part of what it means to be (Reference Merleau-Ponty and Smith1962, p. 440). A saturation of information and identity-shifting possibilities means that whilst knowing and being everything at once is realisable, what is ‘relative, concrete and particular in life’ is destroyed and, most importantly, ‘one is in contradiction with oneself’, which leads to an incomplete sphere of existence (Kierkegaard, Reference Kierkegaard2010, pp. 62, 68).

Whilst there is some disquiet over the loss of identity that may result from technological hypermediations of self and a danger that social enterprise, imagination and thought will become subjugated by the overarching technocultural imagination, it does not follow that all technological advancement is detrimental. As Foucault points out: ‘everything is dangerous is not exactly the same as [everything is] bad. If everything is dangerous, then we always have something to do … every day [we must] determine which is the main danger’ (Reference Foucault and Rainbow1997, p. 256). Ed Hutchins rejects the claim that cognitive science has even been able to model the formal, abstract and symbolic higher functions of the human mind, in part because these are dependent on context, culture and history (Reference Hutchins1995, pp. 202, 363). Just as we encounter machines every day which exceed the total of our cognitive capacity without any threat to our autonomy, such as satellite navigation systems and driverless cars such as Induct Technology's Navia, decision-making is distributed between equal human and non-human participants without posing a threat or being anti-human. As Hutchins points out, it is only through embodied human effort and imagination that such smart devices have been conceived in order to improve our working, leisure and home environments. Even though writers such as Hayles have written about the body as a ‘pattern not a presence’ and contemplated the future disembodiment of information, she still reasons that social, technological, political and cultural changes can be advantageous to a transformed humanity. As long as the human subject is conceptualised as autonomous with unambiguous boundaries, the complex interplay of both human and non-human can be viewed with optimism:

Contrary to Baudrillard's coercive informatics of the simulacrum, the fate of the technologically mediated part-human and part-cyborg body presents possibilities for adaptation and evolution as well as danger. The proactive approach also constitutes an embracing of technology, enclosing and enfolding it before it enfolds, overwhelms and assimilates us. Between the Luddites and technophiles, there is clearly a fundamental problem of classifying these new technosocial spaces and interfaces; as a threat to the future of humankind or, as others claim, simply complex sociopolitical and economic contexts within which end-users bring with them their own ethical and cultural complexities.

IV. Authenticity and technologically hypermediated spaces of social interaction

The newly emergent spatial form of social interaction which distinguishes and transforms those social practices that, in turn, inform and influence the network society, is described by Castells as ‘the space of flows’, which facilitates ‘the material organization of time-sharing social practices that work through flows’, which are rooted in tech-savvy urban structures (Castells, Reference Castells2000, pp. 442, 447). Yet the city is not just a set of processes and networks, it is a discursive space which contains the possibility of enhancing sociability mediated by physical interconnectedness. Communities produce instinctive and tacit collective memories which are founded on the concept of a poetics of space in which they have learned to live and flourish. The concept of a poetics of space implies meaning is given to a social space because of the social relationships forged between things and people; it is the expression of society (Lefebvre, Reference Lefebvre and Nicholson-Smith1991, p. 83). In this sense, societies construct and define meaningful space within which a lawful and peaceful society is ordered according to the consistent and constant performance of social habits, founded on a set of informal rules underpinned by values which allow people to plan and organise their lives without undue interference in those of others. A multiplicity of elements of different kinds are so related to each other that ‘we may learn from our acquaintance with some spatial or temporal part of the whole to form correct expectations concerning the rest, or at least expectations which have a good chance of proving correct’ (Hayek, Reference Hayek1973, p. 36). As society is a spontaneous order, it follows that repeated social exchanges create expectations about how others are likely to and ought to behave.

The dissolution of the traditional relationship between the public and private spheres has resulted in a modified sense of one's place in the world; whilst physical space no longer determines our social interactions and experiences, we still inhabit a physical locality or ‘glocality’. Whilst glocalites provide a conveniently desituated context for any number of non-sequential and overlapping experiences via the interconnected global matrix of contemporary cultural phenomena, a disadvantage is that: ‘as a result of multiple mediations of our experience, we can come to live in places without ever fully integrating into the place-defined community, such as the local government, local community groups or local religious organizations’ (Meyrowitz, Reference Meyrowitz and Nyiri2005, p. 27). As just another neighbourhood blended into urban culture, the new public cyberspace is constituted by anonymous spectators who have no first-hand connection with the event or issue, possibly no relevant expertise or specialist skill, yet are free to express an opinion or take a stand without assuming any responsibility for the consequences. Not only is their participation risk-free, since there is no commitment, there is also no threat of humiliation, loss or disappointment. Individuals are able to engage in unconditionally anonymous and ephemeral encounters, without having to invest in a consistent or authentic identity; web life encourages commitment- and consequence-free experimentation as only the self is relevant. The cyberflâneur prowls the new salons of cyberspace with the same intellectual sharpness and elegant detachment as their nineteenth-century counterpart and, similarly, being intoxicated with their own aggrandised self-image, they observe everything yet understand nothing. Characteristic of the postmodern alienated and decentred subject, this disposition is dangerously narcissistic:

The look-at-me, friend-me, follow-me popularity of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram exemplifies this fascination with any representation of the individual in material other than themselves. The phenomenon of the ‘selfie’ authenticates the self via images rather than within a distinct relationship context. Just as Echo failed to distract Narcissus from his own likeness, individuals are losing their authentic sense of self and becoming in thrall to a temporary and artificial world. Like the social displacement of those drivers too distracted by texting or talking on their mobile phones to be able to steer properly or brake in time, Narcissus could not see beyond his own reflection and was insensate to the cries of the beautiful nymph Echo. The public performance of the mobile phone conversation is an example of narcissism and social displacement as the interaction occurs within a hybrid conversational place or ‘third space’; within which, like Schrödinger's cat, both parties are neither mutually present nor absent. When the user interacts with others via their digital communicative device in real time, the boundaries between the virtual and real sphere are dissolved; yet the presence of others seems irrelevant to either the volume of the exchange or personal nature of information being divulged by the person in the crowded train carriage, supermarket or even cinema. This strident act of defiance against subtly coded social norms is symptomatic of disorientation and disengagement within a previously conceded predictable (or predictably subdued) shared environment. The ubiquity of mobile communication devices means that such acts of conspicuous conversation are routinely performed in public spaces, transforming the traditional private versus public nature of social contexts: ‘the orientations of cell phones/new media truncate our reciprocal relation with the Earth, stunting our senses and incarcerating ourselves in a technosoliloquy’ (Seegert, Reference Seegert2011, p. 47). In this way, a complex network of communicative technologies not only mediates our everyday interactions, they also participate in, and to a significant extent, shape the social.

The ubiquity of mobile technologies and the popularity of social media has encouraged the adoption of multiple identities across a range of networked spaces where information from ten years to ten minutes ago is equally accessible and indiscriminately space–time compressed into a perpetual present. It is all too easy to forget that the Internet is not a private playground, yet people willingly collude in invading their own privacy by sharing their most intimate thoughts with strangers. In the physical world, the past is forgotten, reimagined or recedes into distant memory, while in the virtual world relentless updates continually augment the past. In Google Spain SL, Google Inc. v. Agencia Española de Protección de Datos, Mario Costeja González [2014] Case C-131/12, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) established a legal ‘right to be forgotten’, concerning information which is ‘inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which it was processed and in the light of the time that has elapsed’. Since the ruling, Google has received almost 216,000 requests to delete 780,000 links from its search results, and granted roughly half of them. Aside from the bizarre spectacle of Google performing a quasi-judicial role – in effect, acting as perpetrator, judge and jury – despite a lack of accountability to the public or nation states, the implications for press freedom, freedom of speech and information are profound. The ECJ ruling does not just concern the correction of false information or deletion of defamatory remarks, but allows references to serious criminal convictions and the activities of unscrupulous corporations to be entirely expunged. Reminiscent of Winston Smith's job at the Ministry of Truth in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (Reference Orwell1949), which entailed editing historical records and specifically erasing any reference to ‘unpersons’ in books, articles and photographs. Enemies of the state were not only killed, they had to be ‘vaporised’, meaning that all history and memory be deleted; to even speak their name would be construed a ‘thoughtcrime’. Once the historical evidence was excised, and with it all proof of existence, according to the concept of ‘doublethink’ the person would be completely forgotten. Although requests for data removal are voluntary and often with good reason, the legal right to be forgotten is tantamount to privatised censorship; it effectively revokes everyone else's right to remember and right to know, and militates against the idea of freedom of expression. The central role of technology in the construction of space and our interaction with space means almost everything online is published and available for public consumption and endless circulation; mass digitisation, the Cloud and vast storage databases make it easier to remember than to forget.

Social interactions have been transformed in a variety of ways due to the sociocultural impact of communication media. Our social relationships commonly involve distance-working and web-based interaction with non-human agents; an increased variety of contexts for social engagement have emerged, such as online dating and chat forums; and new social roles have been created. We no longer use technology simply to facilitate communication in the workplace and between each other as friends and consumers; rather the way in which we interact with the medium is altering our informal habits and culture. McLuhan claimed some fifty years ago that the dominant medium has a formative role in manipulating the way in which we perceive, understand and interact with the ‘mass media’, which, in turn, has a profound effect on the world around us. This symbiotic relationship is summarised in his famous maxim ‘the medium is the message’ (McLuhan, Reference Mcluhan1994, p. 7). A saturation of news reports, entertainment broadcasts and images sourced from global agencies representing a diverse range of events and issues increase the individual's socio-cognitive repertoire, yet, as Baudrillard claimed in The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, a hypermediated representation enables the creative reconstruction of an event so that it is neither real nor unreal: ‘the closer we supposedly approach the real or the truth, the further we draw away from them both, since neither one nor the other exists’ (Reference Baudrillard1995b, p. 49). The event is reconstructed as spectacle and takes place in a new place, created by technology; Aristotle similarly observed in Rhetoric (Reference Aristotle and Kennedy1991, 1.2.1), all communication is persuasive communication. This daily diet of information delivered by increasingly recognisable media ‘personalities’ and ‘celebrities’ is held by McLuhan to increase the sense of disjunction from one's own grounded ‘life-world’ (within which significance and meaning is determined by our lived experiences):

To some extent this is always the case in all social interactions; whilst the self is embodied it is not circumscribed but is continually renegotiated: ‘we must be others before we are ourselves’ and ‘existence precedes essence’ (Mead, Reference Mead and Morris1934; Sartre, Reference Sartre1958). This is a recursive practice which binds individuals, uncritically, to the judgment of others; whilst, at the same time, the saturation of persuasive images, icons, indexes and the phenomenon of ‘self-reflexive’ hypermediation mean that information is presented in a highly stylised and self-referential format which arguably avoids transparency. Like the imaginary world discovered in an encyclopaedia, in Jorge Luis Borges's (Reference Borges1982) short story Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, it comprises an idealist society in which the Tlön language has no nouns and replaces Spanish and French, material objects have no existence, and the main discipline is psychology because its citizens understand the universe as nothing but a series of intellectual processes. Yet the simple and coherent structure of this alternative world is so compelling that it has infiltrated and superimposed itself on our own; even the history taught in schools excludes real history. We are similarly flattered by the interface in which human achievement becomes a matter of being able to deftly switch between layers of windows displaying a myriad of perspectives. Those intangible aspects comprising the soul of technological mediums, media and our relationship to them – who or what comes between the screen, the content and user – remain, therefore, largely unexplicated and even concealed; with far-reaching implications for regulation as well as for culture and society.

V. Identity and community in cyberspace

As social life becomes increasingly complex, the perfunctory blurring of boundaries between reality and the imaginary, being and appearance, knowledge and belief, is commonplace. Our daily activities are organised around various enslaving communicative mediums, without which full participation in collective social life would be impossible. Comprising an infinite set of subcultures within an overarching technoculture, the possibility of multiple geographically unbounded social encounters based on a plethora of common causes and shared interests has led to the Web being described as the ultimate connected or ‘Big Society’. As the ultimate paradigm of an agent of change, it offers a technosocial site for new modes of expression and ways of thinking about selfhood and alterity; comprising a socially constructed, rather than a geographically determined, ethnoscape. The resultant cultural deterritorialisation provides an opportunity for disparate mobile groups such as immigrants, refugees and travellers to create new identities out of ‘multiple possible existences’ (Appadurai, Reference Appadurai and Featherstone1990, p. 297). Certainly, the resettlement of immigrants within new online imagined communities can ease security concerns in both their country of origin and host society. New digital diasporas have facilitated identity negotiation, encouraged solidarity, created communities and organisations that represent hybrid identities, and contributed to the sharing of material benefits among their members (Brinkerhoff, Reference Brinkerhoff2009). The continuity and discontinuity of cultural practices between different spaces is in this way given greater emphasis, rather than their differences and disruptive properties; such mobilities are fundamental to the reorganisation of space and time because of their capacity to re-order both.

The concept of boundaries, namely who is included and excluded, define communities as much as their membership, beliefs and associations; in which case computer illiteracy, lack of conforming to online community membership standards, language difficulties, or not understanding the norms of interaction in virtual spaces can all be barriers to full online participation. In 2013, the UK Department of Work and Pensions revised its welfare benefit system to be ‘digital by default’, meaning all applications for Universal Credit must be made online. Over seventy organisations representing councils, charities, trades unions and housing associations raised concerns, including community charity Citizens Advice, who warned: ‘this risks causing difficulties to the 8.5 million people who have never used the Internet and a further 14.5 million who have virtually no ICT skills.’Footnote ¹ Although telephone and some face-to-face assistance were available at the outset, many homeless, elderly and disabled claimants have continued to find the claims process impossible. In The Age of Spiritual Machines, Kurzweil predicted the epoch of ‘singularity’ or techno-transcendence, the tipping point at which human intelligence will be eclipsed by artificial intelligence. He speculated that resistance to the rule of man–machine hybrids would be a futile exercise, as the renegade humans would be unable to meaningfully participate with the majority who have been assimilated (Kurzweil, Reference Kurzweil1999). The common feature between this dystopian view of the future and the present is the growing inability of individuals to model their own identity and long-term prospects outside the possible contexts of various technological mediums. Patterns of work and social life are expressed and facilitated via various technological mediums and a lack of proficiency or access to these forms of communication equates to being ostracised to the wrong side of the digital divide.

For the wired and technologically articulate, if genuine relationships and shared intimacies are the aim and outcome of human interaction, then the idea of lone individuals tapping 24/7 on an infinite number of ubiquitous digital screens comprises no more than a syndicate of egoisms. This spectacle emphasises the instrumental nature of humanity and evokes the spectre of homo economicus, a self-absorbed rational human who knew exactly what he was looking for. In such an environment of commodities and needs-related exchange value, the person themselves becomes no more than commodity and exchange value. For Beck: ‘[w]hat emerges from the fading social norms is a naked, frightened, aggressive ego in search of itself and an affectionate sociality … someone who is poking around in the fog of his or her own self is no longer capable of noticing that this isolation, this solitary-confinement of the ego is a mass sentence’ (Beck, Reference Beck and Ritter1995, p. 40). As the opposite of close familiarity gleaned from authentic presence, atomised behaviour characterised by an insidious form of individualism corrupts what it means to be social in the traditional sense; ‘malnourished’ individualised public spaces of anomie undermine the ideal of citizenship and citizenship-based politics.

The reimagining and recalibration of the fundamental concepts of democracy, freedom, fairness and justice have exacerbated the imbalance of power, fostered feelings of alienation, and contributed to the destabilisation of society. Public space has been colonised by private concerns as the public interest is reduced to mere curiosity about the private lives of others, whilst simultaneously public issues which resist such dilution are becoming all but incomprehensible (Bauman, Reference Bauman2006, p. 37). This is evidenced in the imposition of a self-interested corporate mindset which priorities rapid mobility, flexible relations and short-term or zero hours contracts, whilst simultaneously devaluing the spatial and social commitments which produced industrial epoch cities based on the idea of settled communities and career progression. As informational needs grow, so does the need for research into appropriate redistributive models which are capable of recognising and addressing the needs of educationally and culturally disadvantaged groups along with the increasing ranks of low-income users. Baroness Neville-Rolfe observed recently that ‘Broadband and mobile coverage have become essential utilities, like water or power. Without coverage it is like living in the old world without a post box or hot water.’Footnote ² Edward Soja insists that we must spatialise political debate and social struggle in order to ensure more equal distribution of access, resources and services as a basic human right. This requires ‘focusing in on specific examples of where and how (in)justice takes place [which] helps to ground the search for spatial justice in socially produced contexts rather than letting it float in idealized abstractions and too easily deflected calls for universal human rights or radical revolution’ (Soja, Reference Soja2010, p. 31). For the digitally excluded, those who arguably have the most to benefit from enhanced Internet flexibility and fair pricing of devices, bandwidth and speed, some practical improvements have been made, for example the availability of more computers for general use in public libraries; however, the development of a more advanced conceptual vocabulary is necessary if the vision of a fully-inclusive online society is to be realised.

VI. The transformative influence of calm technologies and the Internet of Everything

The twentieth century saw the development and successful implementation of a variety of scientific and technical innovations, and in 1988 the Chief Technologist at Xerox, Mark Weiser, predicted a new era of ‘ubiquitous computing’ based on ‘calm technologies’ in which computers blended into the backdrop of human life; sensing the informational and practical needs of humans and performing repetitive mundane tasks on our behalf. The equipment that unobtrusively comprises ubiquitous computing in the early twenty-first century is not the personal computer or smartphone, but a series of devices embedded in everyday objects such as cars, home appliances, tools, clothing and other consumer goods; each one capable of transmitting data from smart homes and smart cities via the Internet of Things. As these devices become smaller, more connected and integrated into our environment, the technology dissolves into our surroundings until only the user interface remains perceivable by users. Weiser believed we would be free to use these technologies without thinking and so be able to focus beyond them on new goals. However, the capacity to process vast quantities of information has become the goal of a sequence of clandestine technological processes and this type of knowledge is privileged over the human ability to make decisions based on any amount of information. Lingis refers to ‘the obsolescence of the concept of human subjectivity in our sciences and our philosophy, the reduction of subjectivity to cybernetic circuitry, and the reduction of human initiative to the power to precipitate nuclear extinction’ (Reference Lingis1989, p. 1). Modern life affords less time to consider worthy objectives such as sustainability or social justice, which are unachievable by technology without human consciousness and endeavour.

With their unique ability to project into the future, authors of fiction – particularly science fiction – have grounded the fantastic into reality via a dramatised rational, scientific and social discourse. Such narratives present a realm of dreams, nightmares and speculation. However bleak or optimistic that vision may be, their distinct portrayal of the future has more to do with an extrapolation of contemporary anxieties concerning, for example, the Anthropocene, disease and crime. Sci-fi writers have for some time been foretelling a world without crime, where criminal activities are predicted and prevented by intelligent machines, as in Jonathan Nolan's screenplay for TV network CBS, Person of Interest. A long way from calm computing, recent augmented reality and virtual reality innovations in mobile technology have moved us closer to the line between real life and online life, which has blurred almost to the point of dissolution. Flesh and machine are not yet melded as in Philip K. Dick's short story ‘The Minority Report’ (Reference DICK2002), the inspiration for the Hollywood movie Minority Report; even so, it would be imprudent to underestimate the personal, social and ethical consequences of any large-scale extension of ourselves. Whilst machines do not determine different kinds of society, they are able to express the social forms capable of producing and making use of them. The idea of a continuous flow of information and instant mobile communication could be construed as a tacit form of control, not least of all in its capacity to overwhelm and inhibit other, more tangible, forms of social contact. The structures and processes of digital change agents insinuate new methods of thinking along with a new lexical map of meanings according to web-compatible representational language frameworks based on lexical ontologies. These semantic relations are evident in relatively novel yet often vague concepts such as digital democracy, eGovernment, cybercrime, Web 2.0, Web 3.0 or the ‘Semantic Web’ and the latest incarnation Web 4.0, heralding a new era of the ‘Intelligent Web’ or the Internet of Things (IoT), often used interchangeability with the Internet of Everything (IoE).

Many of the major issues arising from the inexorable march of technological advancement are reimagined in terms of either utopian or dystopian discourses. The dystopians offer terrifying visions of humans enslaved to the whims of the machines that control us. Such societies are often characterised by (i) an absence of privacy (physical impact), (ii) a lack of individual autonomy (intellectually/mentally restrictive), and (iii) negative social and psychological damage to human relationships (emotional dimension). Various accounts, fantasy folklore as well as science fiction, predict ecological disaster, even the Singularity or the end of the world following the creation of many monsters. Whether or not these futuristic tales prove to be accurate predictions, they offer a device for ‘othering’ or defamilarising the present by creating a utopos, a ‘no place’ or ‘good place’, within which to critique injustices and the misuse of power. Occasionally such stories have proved to be prescient, such as William Gibson's description of ‘cyberspace’ in his Burning Chrome (Reference Gibson1986, p. 178), and George Orwell's depiction of the destructive combination of political and technological power in Nineteen Eighty-Four, portraying a future in which a range of human and electronic surveillance agents spy on all forms of human interaction and communication. Legally sanctioned hierarchical observation techniques permitted the monitoring and control of people in hitherto private situations with severe punishments meted out to those who offended ‘Big Brother’. His writing eerily presages modern phenomena such as the manipulation of mass media, obsessive information gathering and the widespread use of CCTV surveillance in modern Britain. Supported by legislation such as the UK's Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014, the technologies constitute a legally and technically unlimited ‘panoptic power’ which functions as an inducement to conforming behaviour; an anticipatory conformity. The normalising influence of the electronic evaluative process means power is assured as, even when there is nobody asserting it, the exaggerated visibility of the subject presents a continual risk of shame and humiliation.

An important aspect of Baudrillard's often dystopian vision is that the technologically mediated mass media does not simply parody reality, it replaces reality; purporting to be more real than reality itself. In support of his view that science and technology would eventually overcome and obliterate nature, Baudrillard (Reference Baudrillard and Zurbrugg1997, p. 23) refers to the 1953 Arthur C. Clarke short story ‘The Nine Billion Names of God’, which describes a project undertaken by Tibetan monks to decode and list all the names of God, as they believed this was the ultimate purpose of creation, and once the naming was complete then God would end the universe. To write the names out by hand would take many centuries, so with the help of two Western computer engineers, they devise a program for their Automated Sequence Computer Mark V which will complete the exercise within three months. Confident in their belief that nothing will happen, the engineers plan their return to civilisation to coincide with the final print run. As the final names are printed and the pair are standing on an airfield awaiting their plane, they notice ‘overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out’ one by one (Clark, Reference Clarke and Pohl1953). The story characterises humankind as moving towards a final resolution which is absolute catastrophe and death, accelerated by technology. The exhausted monks assign all their efforts and actions through history to a machine which transforms their energies and substance into pure data which results in the eventual disappearance of the world. Baudrillard claims the rise of our reliance on technology is purposive; it represents an abdication of the responsibility to nurture our own intelligence through gaining knowledge. He explains: ‘if men create intelligent machines, or fantasize about them … it is because they secretly despair of their own intelligence … By entrusting this burdensome intelligence to machines we are released from any responsibility to knowledge, much as entrusting power to politicians allows us to disdain any aspiration of our own to power’ (Baudrillard, Reference Baudrillard and Benedict1996, p. 51).

The adoption of mediating technologies which remove the need or will to think is perceived to signify an indifference to our own human nature, characteristic of a ‘depersonalised and groundless society distracted from the realities of life’ such as poverty, injustice, racism and ageism (Marx and Engels, Reference Marx, Engels and Tucker1978, p. 349). As we spend more time interacting with various applications than each other, there is a danger of losing our sense of a distinct self, as bonded to others by means of historically contingent spatial and temporal attachments which connect to tradition, beliefs and moral attitudes. Defined by particular desires (becoming more object-oriented than instinct-oriented), our relationships with others and objects become centred on the fulfilment of particular needs, utility, satisfaction and use-value (Baudrillard, Reference Baudrillard and Poster2002, pp. 72, 73). Along with the functional properties of the Web, the pursuit of self-satisfaction and those objects which deliver gratification seem rather meagre aspirations of this new order. All that is left once socioculture, historical particularity and our communal sense of identity are obfuscated, diluted and lost is an abstract present or perpetual now, which is more concerned with simulacra than material objects or authentic subjects.

VII. From normalising technologies to societies of surveillance and control

The semiological theory of the sign is used by Baudrillard to explore how commodities, media and technologies present a universe of illusion and spectacle in which individuals are overwhelmed by consumer values, media ideologies and enticing new technologies which comprise the seductive world of cyberspace. In Simulations, Baudrillard presents all aspects of life as being part of a structural process of communication comprising a system of ‘signs’, also referred to as simulacrum, image and model. In the first of his four stages of the sign, it is a true and opaque reflection of reality; this is the mirror phase. In the second stage, the sign masks, disfigures and obscures those natural properties which render an object real. In the third stage, the sign conceals the absence of any reality; the sign itself pretends to be real by taking on the appearance of, resembling, reality. The final stage sees a reversal of the relationship so that the sign precedes reality; it is pure simulacrum (Baudrillard, Reference Baudrillard1983b, p. 6). The system of signs which refer to an infinite range of signifiers has now been modified in its relation with machine-led technology, so that the human subject is subsumed into a commodified and reified system of signification. In this way the objective world of reality has been replaced by hyperreality. So it becomes pertinent to ask what becomes of the body, the emotions and the social. For Baudrillard, hyperreality is the end product of a historical simulation process in which the natural world and all its referents are progressively replaced by technology and self-referential signs. Consequently, there is little to support the idea of the social or legal subject qua human in this ‘order of simulacra’ or appearances. Ultimate meaning is found only within a closed and self-referential system of codes which constitute both the end-point, and negation, of the law of value.

The ubiquity of the ‘code’ and the sign constitute an infinite regress of self-reference and, for Baudrillard, this typifies the same Marxian notions of alienation and reification which underscore the controlling culture of capitalist consumption. It is ultimately we who are consumed and thereafter endlessly reproduced as simulacra and simulation in the realm of hyperreality. He offers a three stage process of: (i) the replacement of production, based on the relationship between labour and capital, as the ordering principle of society, which led to mass production; then (ii) consumption, the consumer society; and finally (iii) social reproduction in the form of the knowledge industries and information processes for example. This is the final stage of history in which the simulacrum (the replica, mirror image, one's doppelgänger) and the interplay of signs replaces production, class conflict and other elements of the political economy. According to this paradigm, from now on all social life is organised into abstract categories as manipulated by cybernetic models. In the concluding pages of The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures, Baudrillard refers to the 1930s silent German expressionist film The Student of Prague, which portrays a Faustian bargain in which the student relinquishes part of himself, his image, for money:

The film dramatises a form of contemporary alienation, in which, although we may exist, there is a loss of unconscious meaning in the projected mirror image. An essential part of our nature escapes from us in this process (our essence, soul) yet we are incapable of escaping it, so it is forever present in its aching absence. In other words, the transparency of our relation to the world is expressed by our unimpaired relation to the image in the mirror, and symbolically this indicates reciprocity between the world and oneself. When this connection is broken or weakened, or if the image is missing, it signifies the world is becoming opaque and we have no perspective on our identity – as if we are at once estranged from ourselves. Separated by its owner, the mirror is solid and takes on a magical life of its own, yet the alienated person is not merely diminished, rather he is ‘turned inside out, changed into something evil, into [his] own enemy, set against [himself]’ (Baudrillard, Reference Baudrillard and Foster1998, p. 190). According to this hypothesis, there is nothing left with which to protect us from the ‘obscenity’ and excess of the virtual as ‘we are no longer the actors of the real world, but double agents of the virtual’ (Baudrillard, Reference Baudrillard1995a, p. 125).

Baudrillard explains that, in the specular sense, ‘there is no longer any soul, no shadow, no double’, and therefore ‘no longer any contradiction within being, or any problematic of being and appearance’ (Reference Baudrillard1998, p. 191). This ‘final irreversibility’ has imploded any distinction between reality and the imaginary, being and appearance, knowledge and belief. The social, cultural and economic realm is characterised by an assortment of fleeting and disconnected ‘floating signifiers’ which are free from any objective grounding. As Bauman states in Postmodern Ethics, ‘all things stand ultimately for nothing but themselves – there is no division between things that mean and things that are meant’ (Reference Bauman2000, p. 36). The artificial world of simulation functions on the basis that ‘signs are exchanged against each other rather than against the real – on condition that they are no longer exchanged against the real’ (Baudrillard, Reference Baudrillard1993, p. 7, emphasis in original). The current condition of late modernity means simulacra are no longer associated with any authentic referent; there is simply nothing behind the codes, signs and images that circulate detached from any real material objects or emotional attachments. They continue to exist and replicate themselves by obliterating their foundations in an orgy of destructive continuity, from which emerges a discontinuity in the social systems of culture, politics, science and economy.

Recent research has examined the impact of the Internet, on the traditional human stratagem, the transactive memory system, for sharing information or remembering events. The transference of information between friends and families or professional specialists such as doctors, lawyers and librarians typically took place via face-to-face interaction, whilst these exchanges are now more likely to be impersonal and mediated by Google. Our syntax and spelling has been outsourced to Microsoft Word and our fondest memories have been entrusted to the database of a mobile phone or Cloud storage services – a virtual space with no tangible physical properties. Just as the values of the Catholic Church captured the medieval consciousness, it is suggested that this unquestioning reliance on, and trust of, digital information systems has blurred the line between our own human capacity for knowledge retention and that of the Web. As we outsource responsibility for safekeeping personal information to the Internet, we may be ‘replacing other potential memory partners – friends, family members and other human experts – with our ever-present connection to the seemingly omniscient digital cloud’ (Wegner and Ward, Reference Wegner and Ward2013). This late-modern era is characterised by Baudrillard as an era of ‘radical alienation’ because culture, sexuality and human relations no longer offer the possibility of transcendence, as all options are pre-coded and based on models of consumption within a system of signs under which ‘the human being is currently domesticating itself by means of its technologies … submitting collectively to the same rituals as insects’ (Reference Baudrillard and Turner1994, p. 84). The utility and ubiquity of communicative technologies has fuelled a culture of compulsion and, in this way, is privileged over what is lost by the uncritical acceptance, even absorption, by such totalising forms of mediation.

The ability of signs to imitate, and even disfigure, real objects and ideas has resulted in the proliferation of artificial representations of natural phenomena in our relationships, aesthetic objects and architecture. In semiotic terminology, these signs ‘play’ at mirroring the real, feigning authenticity in order to mimic nature. In the UK, shiny new shopping malls depict tropical rainforests, and museums recreate working coal mines whilst simultaneously most of the latter have closed with disastrous consequences for entire communities. Historic town centres and villages are economically marginalised by these simulated cities of consumption whilst the original loci of social life have become peripheral (Shaw, Reference Shaw2008). A Baudrillardian view would be that as nature and history are simulated to vanishing point, there will soon be no difference between the Industrial Revolution and its commemoration at the 2012 London Olympic Games. Baudrillard uses the paradigm of the shopping complex, or hypermarket, as the new model for social relations because of the manner in which it subverts the idea of regular living conditions and habits. Traditionally, communities have been formed around the locus of an agora, a political and commercial centre, from which the city has extended organically over time. The hypermarket, rather, imposes an artificial environment served by a programmed traffic infrastructure usually accompanied by new housing developments, in order to supply these deterritorialised poles of simulation with a workforce. The new centres of consumption have no past and no future; they no longer have anything to do with the idea of a city or a people (Baudrillard, Reference Baudrillard1995b, pp. 77, 78). These new public spaces are non-places in that they lack the symbolic expressions of identity, history and culture and therefore they comprise empty places to which no meaning is attributed. The gap between artifice and nature is lost as ‘the territory no longer precedes the map … it is the map that precedes the territory’ (Baudrillard, Reference Baudrillard and Glaser2003, pp. 1, 2). Although Baudrillard's simulacrum has in more recent times been considered to be, variously, idiosyncratic, passive and epistemologically flawed, his ideas continue to influence the work of postmodern cultural theorists and artists. Whether or not we agree with his theories of simulation and hyperreality, as a result of our technologies we inhabit a transformed space which is not even a simulacrum of the old world, rather it constitutes a world beyond; without death, without ends and without end.