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Things Fall Apart: Identity in the Digital World

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Abstract

We are in the midst of a data revolution that has penetrated the daily life of most of the world's population so suddenly and deeply that it is impossible to grasp the extent of its impact on the concepts of self and identity. At the same time as accessing the ever-expanding realm of data via our networked devices, we are also contributing to it with every click or touch and generating a new kind of self in the free and open space of the Internet-'the world's largest ungoverned space'. Can the new inclusiveness that digital technologies have given us be understood as the fulfilment of campaigns waged by critical theories in the late twenty-first century against the authority and centrality of mainstream narratives and the visions they promulgated of the world and ourselves? Or are we facing a new kind of imperialism as we fall under the spell of algorithmic culture-the monster we ourselves have created, nurtured and set free? This paper considers identity in the twenty-first century in terms of the tensions and contradictions between freedom and chaos, definition and dissolution, location and placelessness that are inherent in the digital world.
Things Fall Apart: Identity in the Digital World*†
Published as:
Arthur, Paul Longley. “Things Fall Apart: Identity in the Digital World.” In “Locating Lives,” edited by Kylie
Cardell and Kate Douglas. Special issue, Life Writing 14, no. 4 (2017): 54150.
Abstract:
We are in the midst of a data revolution that has penetrated the daily life of most of the world’s population so
suddenly and deeply that it is impossible to grasp the extent of its impact on the concepts of self and identity. At
the same time as accessing the ever-expanding realm of data via our networked devices, we are also contributing
to it with every click or touch and generating a new kind of self in the free and open space of the Internet‘the
world’s largest ungoverned space’. Can the new inclusiveness that digital technologies have given us be
understood as the fulfilment of campaigns waged by critical theories in the late twenty-first century against the
authority and centrality of mainstream narratives and the visions they promulgated of the world and ourselves?
Or are we facing a new kind of imperialism as we fall under the spell of algorithmic culturethe monster we
ourselves have created, nurtured and set free? This paper considers identity in the twenty-first century in terms
of the tensions and contradictions between freedom and chaos, definition and dissolution, location and
placelessness that are inherent in the digital world.
Keywords:
critical theory; data privacy; network society; postmodernism.
The sole ‘identity core’ which one can be sure will emerge from the continuous change is … a
permanently impermanent self, completely incomplete, definitely indefiniteand authentically
inauthentic.
Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Life, Kindle locations 682685
Humans are an assemblage of many different algorithms lacking a single inner voice or a single self.
Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, Kindle
locations 49674968
We are choosing to live in a crystal republic where our networked cars, cell phones, refrigerators, and
televisions watch us.
Andrew Keen, The Internet Is Not the Answer, Kindle locations 28112812
We are in the midst of a data revolution that has penetrated the daily life of most of the
world’s population so suddenly and deeply that it is impossible to grasp the extent of its
impact on the concepts of self and identity in the digital world (see Schmidt and Cohen 32).
Innovations in the arena of communications technology have been proliferating with breath-
taking speed. At the beginning of the twenty-rst century there were 350 million people
connected to the Internet across the world, but by the end of the rst decade this number had
* Please note: this is a ‘pre-print’ version of a published work. It may differ from the published work in minor
ways, such as page layout, editorial style and typographical corrections.
The title makes reference to William Butler Yeats’s poem ‘The Second Coming’ (1919) which begins with:
‘Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world … .’
2
increased to more than 2 billion; by 2015 it was over 2.4 billion.1 If this momentum is
maintained most of the earth’s projected population of 8 billion people will be online by
2025.2 In one generation we have gone from having practically no access to unltered
information to being able to nd and retrieve global stores of information through devices
that can be held in the palm of the hand. At the same time as accessing this vast realm of
accumulating and circulating data via our networked devices, we are also contributing to it
with every click or touch—adding bits and pieces of ourselves. One of the consequences of
this is that over decades of engagement with the Internet, individual users will each have
generated, by default, an extensive and enduring digital life narrative. They will have
‘accumulated and stored a comprehensive online narrative, all facts and ctions, every
misstep and every triumph, spanning every phase of life’ (Schmidt and Cohen 36). This is a
new kind of life narrative that did not and could not exist only two decades ago—a new genre
in terms of its principles of operation. While much of the data will be self-generated, an
increasingly large proportion will come from sources that are external, automated,
untraceable and unknown to the subject.
It is a central paradox of the data revolution that the more freedom individuals have to
create their own online identities by sharing information and stories about themselves, the
more opportunities they provide for automated algorithmic processes to generate identities
for them. As a result we are being reconfigured—as human beings, as individuals and as
citizens (Keen, Kindle location 250). There is no longer much doubt about the answer to the
question Ihab Hassan asked in 2009—‘Are we witnessing the emergence of a new self—a
cyber or cellular self?’ (Cioffi 357).3 The ‘new self’ is continuously aggregated and updated
in a space beyond our daily reach, governed by the ceaselessly roaming search engines and
algorithms that we now depend on as we carry out routine daily activities. It is the space of
the Internet—‘the world’s largest ungoverned space’, as Zygmunt Bauman described it in
2005:
As this space grows larger, our understanding of nearly every aspect of life will
change, from the minutiae of our daily lives to more fundamental questions about
identity, relationships and even our own security. (Bauman, Kindle locations 2581–
2583)
While the term ‘space’ is a useful shorthand in this context, in reality it is a metaphor for the
non-spatial, non-physical and unlocatable milieu of digital connectivity. The Internet is the
primary ‘place’ where knowledge now resides, but it transcends—or evades—location. It is
everywhere and nowhere, with ‘no heart, no organising principle, no hierarchy’.4 In its uid,
chaotic and ungoverned operation it represents the antithesis of the published narratives that
from the fteenth to the twentieth century held the monopoly as repositories of information
about historical events and lives, within institutional systems that were solid, regulated and
hierarchical.
Are we witnessing the disintegration of systems that allowed those in power to impose
identities upon ‘others’? What does the upsurge of these new freedoms mean for identity
today? Can the new inclusiveness that digital technologies have given us be understood as the
fulfilment of campaigns waged by postmodernism, postcolonialism, feminism and other
critical theories in the late twenty-first century against the authority and centrality of
mainstream narratives and the visions they promulgated of the world and ourselves? Has the
global explosion of digital communication and digital self-representation in the twenty-first
century at last delivered the wished-for unchaining of knowledge and consequently enabled
3
better understanding of plurality and diversity of identity? To consider such questions it is
necessary first to look at key features of the digital landscape and particularly those that
represent dramatic differences from the twentieth century.
A key characteristic of the early twenty-first century is the deep interconnection of
body and machine that was foreseen in late twentieth-century cyborg theories, but is coming
true in the Internet of Things. New technologies are driving changes in the way we see, feel
and think. They are plugging us into a non-human realm of perpetual interactivity between
ourselves and digital devices and monitors and blurring the line between human and non-
human. Many of these ‘things’ are not only around us, they are within us—in our bodies,
under our skins and in our sensory systems.5 Yuval Noah Harari sets this phenomenon into
the broader historical context of the evolution of humanism. ‘At the beginning of the third
millennium’, he writes, ‘liberal humanism makes way for techno-humanism’ (Harari, Kindle
locations 5442–5443). Digital technologies are influencing the way we remember, how we
perceive ourselves and others, how we approach ageing, illness and death, how we engage
with each other, how we communicate, what we value and how we interact with the world. In
the developed world they are penetrating every corner of our daily lives—and influencing our
physical, mental and ethical selves. They are changing the way we think and talk and write,
and as they do this they are changing our narratives—of self, nation and world. It is difficult
to comprehend that many of today’s most transformational technologies were developed only
in the last 15 years.
When, more than a century ago, photography and film were increasingly enabling the
copying and sharing of visual products with wide audiences, one of the consequences was
that they opened up traditional forms of representation to wider scrutiny and critique. This
meant that they could be used by larger segments of the community to challenge the authority
of traditional representational disciplines, forms and genres, including history, ethnography,
anthropology and biography. The new technologies did this by being more inclusive, not only
in terms of accessibility but also in terms of subject matter, drawing upon their special ability
to record and bestow value upon ordinary occurrences and fleeting moments, and to view the
world from unconventional angles, through a variety of lenses.
Over the course of the twentieth century, the challenge to traditional forms of
representation was continued, with the focus turning, particularly in the second half of the
century, towards history and the role of narrative in generating and perpetuating structures of
social and political authority and domination. Technological change enabled and supported
this trend.6 Theories of postmodernism and postcolonialism,7 though diverse and often at
odds with each other, had in common a commitment to exposing and eroding the authority of
the ‘grand totalizing narratives’ that had for centuries governed the production of history and
knowledge (Terry Eagleton, in Waugh 154). These theories articulated a crisis ‘about the
legitimation of modern forms of knowledge’ (Waugh 54).8 For many theorists a key focus of
their critique was writing and its claim to represent reality, since it was through writing—as
narrative—that historical knowledge, whether relating to nations or individuals, was shaped
and disseminated. ‘Historicity itself’, wrote Jacques Derrida, ‘is tied to the possibility of
writing’ (27).
To summarise at the highest level of simplification, one could say that by going
digital writing is moving from body to machine, from slow to quick, from crafted to
instantaneous, from extended to short, from whole to fragmented, from smooth to disrupted,
from deep to shallow, from nuanced to basic, from hierarchical to flat and from private to
4
public—with multiple ramifications for identity and for human interactions. But of course
these shorthand binaries are simplifications that trigger many layers of further differentiation
and debate about the nature of writing—and also speech, since writing and speech are
converging in the digital era.
It is worth pausing to consider a current high-profile public event that seems to offer a
spectacular dramatisation of these trends, as I have just characterised them. The event is the
2016 United States election campaign, and the particular example is the performance of
elected Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, in the televised debates between
him and the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.9 Although it is his spoken, rather than
written, language that exhibits these characteristics, the same observations apply since
writing in the world of texts, Twitter, email and social media generally is closer to speech
than what we have thought of as writing in the pre-digital past. Donald Trump’s messages
emerge in chaotic fragments. They do not form coherent wholes, and, as each fades, the next
‘grab’ is punched out. It is as though he is posting onto Facebook or sending a Twitter
message as he emits slogans, promises and attacks in short sound bites. Truth doesn’t matter.
The relationship with the other person on the stage doesn’t matter.10 ‘She’ can be written
over, talked over, denigrated, as though his opponent were a 3D digital projection. Even
taking into account Trump’s experience as a showman, it is hard to imagine an equivalent
display, in a pre-social media presidential campaign setting, of short messages that do not
join up to form a narrative. Could it be that what we have been witnessing in these
performances is not just the failure of an individual to represent and articulate the values of
the United States Republican party—which surely constitute one of the old grand narratives
of the West—nor the decline of Republicanism itself to an ‘apocalyptic cult’,11 but evidence
of the depletion of language itself? Is Donald Trump the logical product of a global
texting/Tweeting culture where writing and speech are barely distinguishable from each other
and have become vehicles for self-promotion and marketing rather than explaining and
expressing one’s self? Is texting killing textuality? The presidential debate gruesomely played
out a version of Baudrillard’s postmodernist nightmare where the ideology and language of
global corporate wealth enthrals and captures the desires and beliefs of the people.12 If we
think back to writing as the thoughtful craft it used to be, could it be that with the removal by
digital technology of the requirement for discipline and sustained effort in the act of writing,
civility has also flown out of the window?13 In The Australian newspaper’s Weekend Review,
the author and critic David Free makes the comment, ‘It is hard to overstate how nakedly
greedy and assertive Trump’s language is, and how surreally starved of irony or nuance’
(19).14 Mystified by the popularity of Trump’s ‘brutally literal’ style, Free comes to the
conclusion that ‘Trump occupies the sharp edge of a culture that no longer cares about words’
(19). Trump, however, is ‘watchable’, and that is ‘the supreme asset in postmodern politics’
(18).
Almost overnight, it seems, critical theory’s preoccupation in the late twentieth
century with grand narratives appears to have been swept away as the traditional monopoly
of powerful state-sanctioned narratives gives way under the pressure of free and
instantaneous public access to vast networks of online information and entertainment. Not
only a source of data, the Internet has quickly become a gateway to infinitely renewable
pleasure as well, with information increasingly vying with entertainment—and advertising—
for attention in what David Carr has called ‘the something for nothing economy’ (qtd. in
Keen, Kindle location 120). Yet, while the new world may appear to be a cornucopia, it is
also a minefield. Andrew Keen encapsulates this paradox in his phrase, ‘the catastrophe of
abundance’.15
5
What effect have these developments had on the traditional narratives that were the
target of late-twentieth-century critical theories? While I have begun to consider the question
in terms of the democratising effect of the World Wide Web, the big question remains. Have
the digital platforms and tools delivered the desired release of knowledge and history from
the grip of official institutionalised narrative processes and put them back into the hands of
the people? Has their campaign of disruption and intervention been rewarded and validated in
the digital context? The answer is surely yes—but it has to be a seriously and disturbingly
qualified yes.
It seems that the early Web did indeed begin to fulfil in practice the disruptive goals
shared by many twentieth-century theories. In fact, many of these theories, with their
promotion of the dispersed, fragmented and un-unified self and their critique of narratives
purporting to represent subjectivity and external reality, did (in a way that now looks
uncanny) imagine and foreshadow the World Wide Web that was then still many years away.
In each case, however, there are signals that can be discerned that point to the current
dilemma of identity in the digital era, centring on the tension between freedom and chaos,
definition and dissolution, location and placelessness. It is as though by working to expose
the hidden interstices in traditional written narrative forms whose smooth surface gave the
appearance of truth and closure, these theories were opening the way for the yet-to-be-
invented digital forms of communication where the narratives are so various and clashing that
there is no longer an expectation of closure and finality. The concept of truth has been
relativised by the dynamics of the genres themselves which operate via constant updating and
changing and via gaps and multiple pathways that tend towards increased choice and
multiplicity rather than completeness and certainty. In its unmasking of narrative to reveal the
fluidity and endless openness of textuality, postmodernist critical theory depended upon
metaphors that are now routinely used to describe digital connectivity.
In the twenty-first-century digital world, knowledge—held for centuries in the hands
of a few—was quite suddenly and miraculously within the reach of many. So much so that in
2006, Time magazine named its ‘Person of the Year’ as ‘You’. The front cover of the special
issue devoted to this theme announced: ‘You. Yes You. You control the Information Age.
Welcome to your world.’ A list of the key characteristics of this new world would read like a
manifesto for the critical theorists of the late twentieth century who worked to liberate history
from the cloak of authority that had been consolidated over many centuries by narratives
purporting to represent reason, civilisation and humanity.16 With the exponentially
accelerating use of digital technologies and mass adoption of social media that followed soon
after Time magazine’s pronouncement, freedom and power did indeed seem to shift towards
individuals while networks and databases appeared to finally displace and decentre the old
grand narratives. However, there is a long shadow looming over this scene.
In this last section I will focus on the new threat to this liberated ‘You’ that is the
underside of freedom in the digital world. With the rise of databases as sources of authority
and trust, the old grand narratives have been swept up and absorbed into the endless flows of
algorithmic data. Postmodernism foreshadowed them, set up a prior familiarity with them and
welcomed them. Now at the macro level, instead of solidity, continuity, sequence and closure
in the production of knowledge, we have flows, connections, webs, discontinuities, fragments
and eruptions. Such words were the talismans of postmodernism. They echo Deleuze and
Guattari’s ‘rhizomes’ and the revolutionary language they stood for. But where is the
revolutionary target now?
6
In Trump’s election, as in the recent Brexit vote in Britain, both taking the world by
surprise, we are seeing a backlash against globalism, and the openness and freedom—enabled
by the Internet—that has been the hallmark of the last two decades. Both votes can be read as
expressions of nostalgia for the security of closure, definition and clarity of national and
personal identity. ‘I will make America great again’, Trump has said again and again, and ‘I
will build a great, great wall’ (Trump). Taking the opposite position, Hillary Clinton
repeatedly declared, ‘Instead of building walls, we need to be tearing down barriers’
(@HillaryClinton). The selling-point of the Brexit campaign was, in alignment with Trump,
to restore British control of the frontiers (‘The Brexit Delusion’). Britain and the United
States have both voted to restore something that they feel has been lost and to pull themselves
back into their own nation-space as though to stem the tide of globalism. In 1987 President
Ronald Reagan, with reference to the Berlin wall, had called on Mikhail Gorbachev to ‘Tear
down this wall!’—and there were celebrations across the world when it finally was torn down
in 1989. Now, it seems many people are signalling that this has all gone too far. They have
had enough of openness. They want closure again. They want their bounded identity back.
They want to reimagine their community and themselves in it—as located and autonomous.
In other countries of Europe similar desires are being expressed (see Whinnett), and there is a
parallel trend evident within the Asia-Pacific region. Australia’s Senator Cory Bernardi
borrowed Donald Trump’s slogan and recycled it for his own country as ‘Make Australia
Great Again’ and called for a ‘return to former glory for Australia’ (The Backburner). New
proposed legislation that tightens the rules for Australian citizenship is further evidence of a
movement in this region towards the idea of a solid and contained nation and away from
borderless, free-ranging globalism (Bloomberg News).
Language plays a central role in this process. As Benedict Anderson explains, ‘The
most important thing about language is its capacity for generating imagined communities,
building in effect particular solidarities’ (133). These solidarities act as bulwarks to ward off
perceived threats and potential oppressors (Anderson 101). It is becoming clear that we can
indeed identify a new kind of oppressor. It is algorithmic culture itself—whose capacity to
dismantle grand narratives made it appear so attractive and safe in the context of postmodern
thinking. Now with the ‘Googlisation of everything’, as I have referred to this phenomenon
elsewhere, Google knows us too well—our interests, our desires, our fears, our taste in music,
our political leanings, our histories.17 It remembers things we have forgotten about ourselves
or perhaps never knew. What Google responds to ceaselessly is the digital self—‘the feelings
and interests of the collection of biochemical algorithms known as “I”’ (Harari, Kindle
locations 5141–5146).
At the micro level, as individuals, we may feel empowered and free as we access the
endless flows of information through all the devices we hold in our hands or can access in our
homes, communities and workplaces. However, since the triumphant Time magazine ‘You’
announcement, this sense of empowerment has been progressively undermined by a growing
realisation that more may be being taken than given every time we use the Web. As millions
of users logged into smart phones, vast new data sets began to be generated continually,
producing ‘big data’ on the movement and behaviour of people, on an unprecedented scale. A
decade later, this highly personalised but ‘faceless’ information environment now ceaselessly
shapes us.18 Government legislation, privacy policies and corporate interests, all allow for
tracking of our behaviour as a condition of use of services. It is practically impossible to use
an online service without agreeing to hand over information about your location, the products
chosen, the links clicked, the time spent, and to consent for it to be re-used for unspecified
purposes at any time. Harari’s description of this state of affairs rings horribly true:
7
In the high days of European imperialism, conquistadors and merchants bought entire
islands and countries in exchange for coloured beads. In the twenty-first century our
personal data is probably the most valuable resource most humans still have to offer,
and we are giving it to the tech giants in exchange for email services and funny cat
videos. (Harari, Kindle locations 5169–5171)
Today mass surveillance of our lives has become commonplace and endemic. On the other
side of the coin, we are free to access so much information that we are overwhelmed. It is as
though with the logic of Dante’s Inferno we have been given all that our theories worked
for—but in such absurd excess that we are lost and tossed about in the maelstrom. According
to Harari’s vision, ‘The new technologies of the twenty-rst century may thus reverse the
humanist revolution, stripping humans of their authority, and empowering non-human
algorithms instead’ (Harari, Kindle locations 5230–5231). We are, it appears, facing a new
kind of imperialism, and it is that of a monster we ourselves have created, nurtured and set
free.
8
References
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. London: Verso, 1983. Print.
Australian Broadcasting Company. “Sunday Extra.” ABC Radio National. 20 November
2016, 7.30a.m. Web. 5 June 2017. <www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/sundayextra/
past-programs/index=2016>.
Baudrillard, Jean. Fragments. London and New York: Verso, 1997. Print.
Baudrillard, Jean. The Perfect Crime. London and New York: Verso, 1996. Print.
Bauman, Zygmunt. Liquid Life. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005. Kindle e-book.
Bloomberg News. “Malcolm Turnbull Tightens Australian Citizenship Rules, Makes
Immigration Next to Impossible.” The Economic Times. 20 April 2017. Web. 22 April 2017.
<www.economictimes.indiatimes.com/nri/visa-and-immigration/turnbull-tightens-australian-
citizenship-test-in-migration-crackdown/articleshow/58273096.cms>.
Christian, Barbara. “The Race for Theory.” The Nature and Context of Minority Discourse.
Eds. Abdul R. JanMohamed and David Lloyd. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. 37–
49. Print.
Cioffi, Frank L. “‘Postmodernism, Etc.’: An Interview with Ihab Hassan.” Style 33.3
(September 1999): 357–371. Print.
Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore and
London: John Hopkins University Press, 1976.
Free, David. “Rich Pickings.” The Weekend Australian. 8 October 2016. Print.
Harari, Yuval Noah. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. London: Vintage Digital,
2016. Kindle e-book.
@HillaryClinton. Twitter.
Jones, Meg. “Hassan Coined Term Postmodernism for Change in ‘60s Literature.” The
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. 14 September 2015. Web. 5 June 2017. <www.archive.jsonline.
com/news/hassan-coined-term-post-modernism-for-change-in-60s-literature-b99576689z1-
327595561.html>.
Keen, Andrew. The Internet Is Not the Answer. London: Atlantic Books, 2015. Kindle e-
book.
Macken, Deirdre. “Music Streaming Services Crunch the Data to Play My Song.” The
Weekend Australian Review. 8 October 2016. Print.
Morrow, Brendan. “2016 Presidential Debate Ratings: How Many People Watched?” Heavy.
27 September 2016. Web. 5 June 2017. <www.heavy.com/news/2016/09/presidential-debate-
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ever-record/>.
Sample, Ian. “Human Cell Atlas Project Aims to Map the Human Body’s 35 Trillion Cells.”
The Guardian. 15 October 2016. Web. 15 October 2016. <www.theguardian.com/science/
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source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+AUS+v1+-+AUS+morning+
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Schmidt, Eric and Jared Cohen. The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People,
Nations and Business. New York: Hodder & Stoughton, 2013. Kindle e-book.
The Backburner. “Bernardi Vows To “Make Australia Great Again” By Staying In The US.”
SBS Comedy. 8 November 2016. Web. 29 November 2016. <www.sbs.com.au/comedy/
article/2016/11/08/bernardi-vows-make-australia-great-again-staying-us>.
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referendum-britains-eu-membership-if-he-loses>.
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Print.
10
Notes
1 Over the same period mobile phone subscriptions skyrocketed from 750 million to over 6 billion worldwide
(Schmidt and Cohen 4).
2 An Ericsson Mobility Report in 2015 predicted that by 2018 over 60 per cent of the world’s population would
be online. Andrew Keen, observing a complex ‘map’ in an Ericsson office depicting global connectivity, made
the comment, ‘The world has been redrawn as a distributed network’ (Keen, Kindle locations 251254).
3 Ihab Hassan is widely credited with coining the term ‘postmodernism’ in its current usage. (See Jones n. pag.)
4 These words form part of a description by Andrew Keen of a map that he saw in an Ericsson Office: ‘created
by the Swedish graphic artist Jonas Lindvist, [it] showed Ericsson’s local networks and offices around the
world. Lindvist had designed the swirling lines connecting cities to represent what he called a feeling of
perpetual movement. “Communication is not linear,” he said in explaining his work to me; “it is coincidental
and chaotic.”’ (Keen, Kindle location 244)
5 New advances in ‘body’ technologies include the ‘Human Cell Atlas’ project ‘to map the human body’s 35
trillion cells … Aiming to decipher the types and properties of every cell, the project will attempt to work out
exactly what we are made from’ (Sample n. pag.).
6 Examples include the tape recorder in the 1950s, the personal computer in the 1980s, subsequent low-cost
publishing and the increasing capacity to self-publish, business and domestic facsimile machines, improved
telecommunications, as well as increased availability of television and video technologies to households.
7 Along with postmodern, postcolonial and poststructuralist critiques, feminist theory as well as theories of race
and ethnicity had in common a recognition of the central role played by dominant narratives and other modes of
representation in perpetuating discrimination and inequality. However, the new narratives were themselves
sometimes seen to be implicated in furthering exclusion. See Christian: ‘I feel that the new emphasis on literary
critical theory is as hegemonic as the world which it attacks. I see the language it creates as one which mystifies
rather than clarifies our condition’ (41).
8 Waugh also refers here to ‘the theoretical position of Lyotard and others that Postmodernism expresses a crisis
about the legitimation of modern forms of knowledge’ (54).
9 See Morrow. The estimated number of viewers for the first debate was 84 million. This number refers only to
television viewers of the first of three debates and does not include those who watched it streamed online.
10 Soon after his election to be President, Donald Trump was described as a ‘serial fabulist’ on ABC Radio
National’s ‘Sunday Extra’ programme (Australian Broadcasting Company).
11 See Free. In his review of Don Watson’s book, Enemy Within: American Politics in the Time of Trump, David
Free reports a former Republican staffer as saying, ‘These days they [the Republicans] are more like an
apocalyptic cult’ than a ‘traditional political party’ (8).
12 This example also shows this promotional form of communication as a vehicle for hatred, recalling
Baudrillard’s dark prophecy: ‘When a system becomes universal (the media, networks, the financial markets,
human rights), it automatically becomes anomalous and secretes virulences of all kinds: financial crashes,
AIDS, computer viruses, deregulation, disinformation. Hatred itself is a virus of this kind’ (The Perfect Crime
146).
13 Part of the same syndrome is occurring in everyday speech. Looking back, it is not altogether surprising that
removing the necessity for the time and care it took to write and compose ordinary communications with pen in
hand (letter, dairies, contracts, messages in greeting cards, etc.) in the pre-digital age has led to a situation where
minimal and monosyllabic communications, even cartoon faces, are all that is routinely required in a world
where ‘like’ now serves to point rather than describe.
14 A similar point was made about Donald Trump on Australian national television, on ABC TV’s ‘Media
Watch’ on 3 October 2016: ‘He speaks in punchy bursts that lack nuance’ (cited in Free 19).
15 Jean Baudrillard, in a similar vein, writes: ‘The info-technological threat is of an eradication of the night, of
that precious difference tween night and day, by a total illumination of all moments … Today we are threatened
with lethal sunstroke, with a blinding profusion, by the ceaseless feedback of all information to all points of the
globe’ (The Perfect Crime 53).
16 See Robert Young, for example: ‘humanism itself … was deeply complicit with the violent negativity of
colonialism, and played a crucial part in its ideology. The formation of the ideas of human nature, humanity and
the universal qualities of the human mind as the common good of an ethical civilization occurred at the same
time as those particularly violent centuries in the history of the world now known as the era of Western
colonialism. The effect of this was to dehumanize the various subject-peoples’ (121).
17 See Macken, in The Weekend Australian Review, who says of her music streaming service, ‘It is possible that
it knows us better than we know ourselves’ (2).
18 Baudrillard’s words from two decades ago strike a chord here: ‘In each case, a faceless analysis. The derisory
mirror of your lost identity, your dejecta, the trifling detail of your life, forced identification … ’ (“Fragments”
42).
... 3 Individuals and communities that are no longer anchored in physically bordered spaces need to create communities, real or virtual, with which they can identify and where they can engage, be supported and seek a sense of belonging and security. 4 There are many reasons for migration, ranging from voluntary migration to asylum-seeking due to political conflict, resettlement following natural disaster, labour migration and migration undertaken for educational or economic or family reasons. However, in most cases the reasons commonly involve the undertaking of a journey (by choice or pressure of circumstances) to leave one's home environment to travel to a place that is foreign in terms of language and culture. ...
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Australia is recognised as one of the world's most culturally and ethnically diverse nations. Immigration has historically played an important role in the nation's economic, social and cultural development. There is a pressing need to find innovative technological and archival approaches to deal with the challenge to digitally preserve Australia's migrant heritage, especially given the ageing of the European communities that were the first to come under the postwar mass migration scheme. This paper reports on plans for a national collaborative project to develop the foundational infrastructure for a dynamic, interoperable, migrant data resource for research and education. The Migration Experiences platform will connect and consolidate heterogeneous collections and resources and will provide an international exemplar underscoring the importance of digital preservation of cultural heritage and highlighting the opportunities new technologies can offer. The platform will widen the scope and range of the interpretative opportunities for researchers, and foster international academic relationships and networks involving partner organisations (universities, libraries, museums, archives and genealogical institutions). In doing so, it will contribute to better recognition and deeper understanding of the continuing role played by immigrants in Australia's national story.
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Full-text available
During life-threatening situations such as the Covid-19 pandemic, disinformation is rife. While people project their affective aspects into understanding the situation, their fear of Covid-19 interferes with their logical and reasonable assessment of disinformation. Less credible information such as rumors becomes reliable for some people. This study aims to map the disinformation category based on the Ministry of Communication and Information report from January to March 2020. There are 359 hoaxes with five categories and 30 sub-categories. This study uses qualitative content analysis as a method. The study results revealed that most of the disinformation during the Covid-19 pandemic was related to the spread of hoaxes on health issues. This research implies that several recommendations are made to respond to the urgency of handling disinformation during Covid-19 in Indonesia, such as initiating digital literacy and media literacy in the national education system.
Chapter
Australia is recognised as one of the world’s most culturally and ethnically diverse nations. Immigration has historically played an important role in the nation’s economic, social and cultural development. There is a pressing need to find innovative technological and archival approaches to deal with the challenge to digitally preserve Australia’s migrant heritage, especially given the ageing of the European communities that were the first to come under the postwar mass migration scheme. This paper reports on plans for a national collaborative project to develop the foundational infrastructure for a dynamic, interoperable, migrant data resource for research and education. The Migration Experiences platform will connect and consolidate heterogeneous collections and resources and will provide an international exemplar underscoring the importance of digital preservation of cultural heritage and highlighting the opportunities new technologies can offer. The platform will widen the scope and range of the interpretative opportunities for researchers, and foster international academic relationships and networks involving partner organisations (universities, libraries, museums, archives and genealogical institutions). In doing so, it will contribute to better recognition and deeper understanding of the continuing role played by immigrants in Australia’s national story.
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