Nicola Liberati’s research while affiliated with Shanghai Jiao Tong University and other places

This paper introduces a novel narrative centered around the liquidity and viscosity inherent in interactions with digital technologies through digital intimacy. Traditional approaches to studying digital technologies are often “dry,” “detached,” and “clean,” overlooking the materiality of human-technology interactions, particularly the role of bodily fluids. In postphenomenology, subjects, technologies, and objects are treated as distinct entities with clear boundaries, even if they affect each other. However, this approach ignores the continuous material exchanges that blur these boundaries, such as the bodily fluids involved in digital intimacy. By focusing on the “dirty” materiality of these interactions, this paper aims to use the discourse on digital intimacy to challenge the prevailing narrative in postphenomenology that treats bodies and technologies as separate, clearly defined entities. Instead, it acknowledges these interactions’ sticky, fluid, and porous nature, offering a different understanding of how digital technologies shape our lives. This perspective not only opens up new avenues for research but also invites a rethinking of the way we conceptualize the presence of “solid” digital devices around us, and it introduces sexual connotations in the context of digital technologies in general. For these reasons, it makes digital intimacy an essential element of the relations with digital technologies.

This paper explores brain-to-brain interfaces (B2BI) as innovative human-technology interactions from a philosophical perspective to show how the implementation of this technology raises new philosophical questions about who we are and how we live in the world. More specifically, this text introduces the emergence of a collective living body through digital technologies from a phenomenological perspective to open the path to analyzing its effects on society. Few studies in the humanities have been focusing on how new human-technology interactions can connect several subjects into one living body by enabling subjects to literally "walk in the shoes of others". This novel ability radically reframes some philosophical assumptions about what individual subjects are and how to think of them since the boundaries dividing them seem to blur. The constitution of a new type of human-technology interaction changes who we are and how we live, and we need to focus on such a change to tackle the challenges we will have to face in how we think of ourselves and live with others.

This chapter aims to analyze the effects on the intimacy of introducing VTubers in the East Asia region from a phenomenological perspective. Digital technologies are pervasive, and they are becoming intimate in many different ways. There are dating apps dominated by algorithms and artificial intelligence generated to be digital companions of the users. Much attention has been given to the creation of virtual characters who can be controlled by artificial intelligence for their potential use in Augmented Reality (AR) and Metaverse. China is one of the predominant countries implementing digital technologies within society in order to shape a novel way of living in the world. Chinese virtual characters are used by millions of people in their daily activities. For example, VTubers are virtual avatars created by an entertainment company to be used for social media. The virtual characters generated in Augmented Reality and usable in Metaverse can have deep repercussions on who we are and how we live our intimacy by becoming intimate with us. This chapter focuses on the implication and the use of such virtual characters for developing intimacy with the users through phenomenology and post-phenomenology. The chapter is divided into three parts. The first part considers the introduction of VTubers into the Chinese cultural context and the impact these characters have on Chinese daily life (by relating the societal and Augmented Reality applications). The second part focuses on phenomenology to highlight the links binding people together and to show how people are shaped through this intimate connection and exposure to others. The third part intertwines VTubers in China with the findings highlighted in phenomenology to show how virtual characters can generate different subjectivities through their actions in daily contexts.

This paper revives phenomenological elements to have a better framework for addressing the implications of technologies on society. For this reason, we introduce the motto “back to the technologies themselves” to show how some phenomenological elements, which have not been highlighted in the philosophy of technology so far, can be fruitfully integrated within the postphenomenological analysis. In particular, we introduce the notion of technological intentionality in relation to the passive synthesis in Husserl’s phenomenology. Although the notion of technological intentionality has already been coined in postphenomenology, it is “in tension” with the notion of technological mediation since there are still no clear differences between these two concepts and studies on how they relate one to another. The tension between mediation and intentionality arises because it seems intuitively reasonable to suggest that intentionality differs from mediation in a number of ways; however, these elements have not been clearly clarified in postphenomenology so far. To highlight what technological intentionality is and how it differs from mediation, we turn the motto “back to the things themselves” into “back to the technologies themselves,” showing how the technologies have to be taken into consideration by themselves. More specifically, we use the concept of passive synthesis developed by Husserl, and we apply it to technologies to show their inner passive activity. The notion of the passive synthesis enables to demonstrate how technologies are able to connect to a wider (technological) environment without the subjects’ activity. Consequently, we claim that technologies have their pole of action, and they passively act by themselves.

Video games are one of the most popular types of interactive new media arts. In these games,controllers play an important role as the connection point between the game and the player. It seemsthat controllerschemas can affect how a player uses his body and how hisbody schema shapes.The research purpose was to know how videogame controllers map the body schema of the player in the game world. The method was case study and explanation building was useed for analyses of data, images and videos of players and also observations were used as data. Upto 20 videoswere reviewed on PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox platforms wichhad different controller schemas. esults showed that in motion-basedcontrollers using,players did more actions and the controller mapped the body schemaof the players did more actions and the controller mapped the bodyschema of the players in an isomorphic way. The conclusionwas that,due to the material distinction between the virtual andphysical words and problems, the body schema got the incorrect input information and the player could not experience a real and natural sensein the response of this action.