A New Digital Phenomenology

Short of an explication of the framework (which can be found in Appendix A, B, and C), this report serves to document key themes that have shaped and continue to shape the project, namely: (1) a refrain from prescribing an ideal mode of being; (2) a non-moralistic approach; (3) the implied ontologies of different selfhoods.

Screened at 2023 Building 21 Exhibition. "Digital as Physical", 2023. Technologies for the Self, Alex Nicholas Chen.

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Refrain from Ideal-Being

As previously mentioned, this project began as a conceptualisation of what I termed ‘SlowSocial Media’. Inspired by the food culture I grew up with in Singapore—what I experienced as "slow, communal, local, intentional, nourishing, artisanal, engaging without addicting, satisfying, shiok!” (qtd. from Appendix A)—I was convinced that this version of consumption could be extended to social media, “that another genre of social media can exist: one that is more intuitive and psychologically-sustaining than its current iterations” (qtd. from B21 2023 Scholars page). To this end, I looked to other ‘Slow’ movements as potential case studies that my project could model after.

To my surprise, I was neither the first person to conceive of such an idea nor was the idea new. I came across ‘The Slow Media Manifesto’ written in 2010, an entire Slow Media issue of the Transformations Journal of Media, Culture & Technology published in 2011, and a book written by journalism and media scholar Jennifer Rauch titled ‘Slow Media: Why Slow is Satisfying, Sustainable & Smart’, published by Oxford University Press in 2018. Rauch was particularly active in the Slow Media movement. She started the blog slow-media.org in 2009; led the Slow Media issue of Transformations with her article ‘The Origin of Slow Media: Early Diffusion of a Cultural Innovation through Popular and Press Discourse, 2002-2010’; and published an award-winning book on the topic. Consulting these sources as research material, I faced a reoccurring question: despite the persuasive arguments put forward by these ‘Slow’ proponents, let alone their good intentions, why had this counter-concept not yet actualised into a counter-culture? After all, the notion of slow media had been circulating since 2002, formalised in 2011, and cemented in the mainstream from 2018 onwards.

I refer to two phenomenological insights suggested by Heidegger to answer this question.

Firstly, “Authentic Being-one's-Self does not rest upon an exceptional condition of the subject, a condition that has been detached from the ‘they’; it is rather an existentiell modification of the ‘they’- of the ‘they’ as an essential existentiale” (Heidegger 1962, 168). In other words, it is not anew, ‘exceptional’ mode of being—through slow social media or slowness, more generally—that will eradicate the problems associated with digital technology; instead, it is through a modification of our relationship with current technologies wherein the solution lies. Secondly, struggle is constitutive of authentic freedom rather than a symptom of not-being-free (Buckley 2021, 2). Accordingly, a mode of being free of struggle may be appealing insofar as it is idealistic. A project that aims to address the predicament with digital technology—in its current fast, addictive, and trance-inducing design—ought to give ownership to the struggle rather than eliminate it.

Consequently, I decided to move away from “[collecting] concept-things to insist on a mode of ideal-being” (qtd. from Appendix A).

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A Non-moralistic Approach

Initially, the fast-slow dichotomy proved effective in persuading others how ‘slow’ was a necessary antidote to ‘fast’. However, the underlying moralism—that ‘slow’ was good and ‘fast’ was bad—further constrained the scope of the project.

Following this reasoning, ‘Digital Suicide’—the voluntary biopolitical decision to delete one’s social mediapresence (Karppi 2011, 1)—was a natural and logical conclusion to the social media predicament. Nevertheless, the radicality implied in the phrase ‘Digital Suicide’ demonstrated a total closing-off to future possibilities, which was too limiting, unsatisfactory and unrealistic for my liking; yet such an outcome was always implied by taking a moralistic approach.

What, then, would a non-moralistic approach entail?

I drew from Nassim Taleb’s notion of optionality as a substitute for moralism. In summary, Taleb recommends accumulating options—'vectors of antifragility’—which exposes oneself to various upsides instead of subscribing to narrative predictions (or what he calls ‘The Teological Fallacy’). These options had no moral conations. Moreover, they expanded the limited options afforded by the good-bad/slow-fast dichotomy.

‘Slow’ was then to be taken as another way of relating to digital technologies amongst other modes: ‘local’, ‘compartmental’, ‘playful’, ‘escapist’, etc. The project pivoted into collecting, documenting, and expanding upon these modes to provide optionality for digital being.

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Implied Ontologies of Selfhood

At this juncture, the project had taken on its current form.

Inspired by Michel Foucault’s conception of ‘technologies of the self’—"which permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality” (Foucault 1988,18)—Technologies for the Self looked to enable a self-fashioning of one’s digital way of being. By providing a framework to interpret one’s current relationship with digital technologies and, subsequently, presenting a myriad of diverse ‘modes’ one could try out without any moral commitments, Technologies for the Self seeks to facilitate a ‘digital-self-forming activity’, “understood as a work on oneself through which the individual bestows his life with a unique form and style” (Nilson 1998, 100).

However, there is still great caution in what kind of selfhood is implicated in such a project.

While the Heideggerian concept of being-in-the-world shapes the co-constitutive model of selfhood this project subscribes to, self-curation implies a detachment from the world. It is then important that self-curation is situated in an appropriate ontology of selfhood, one that considers self-fashioning as a dynamic process between self and world (KIV: comportment).

Notwithstanding, the project now departs from its theoretical phase and takes a creative turn to communicate these phenomenological sensitivities through digital media. This turn reflects how “‘Being-ontological’ is not yet tantamount to ‘developing an ontology’”; rather, “’Being-ontological’ is to be designated as something ‘pre-ontological’” (Heidegger 1962, 32). Subsequently, Technologies for the Self will communicate ‘pre-ontologically’: through carefully crafted interview questions and prioritising anecdotal accounts over abstraction.

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The Framework: Orientation, Affectivity, Subjectivity

This framework serves as a starting point for subsequent Digital Phenomenology projects or as a hermeneutic activity for investigating one’s relationship with technology.

It intentionally avoids culturally-conditioned ways of making sense of digital phenomena (technophobia, psychopathology, inauthenticity, etc.) which produce grand, conceptual narratives that overlooks the immediate phenomena at hand. Instead, this framework is designed to navigate the phenomenological dynamic in which “Dasein is ontically ‘closest’ to itself and ontologically farthest; but pre-ontologically it is surely not a stranger.” (Heidegger 1962, 32). As such, it references the seemingly self-evident, invisible, and everyday in order to interpret how we cope with digital technologies.

Inspired by the perspectives of Sara Ahmed and Samuele Collu, this Digital Phenomenology is constructed in terms of Orientation, Affectivity, and Subjectivity. These three elements make up the theoretical basis of an initial analysis of Digital Being.

The version of this framework takes the form of a set of guided questions designed to tease out idiosyncratic aspects of a digital phenomenon in question.

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1. What is the digital phenomenon in question?

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2. Orientation

What specifically are you oriented to in the phenomenon of _______?

What is your bodily orientation to the _______?

In what non-digital (physical) situations are you oriented in the same way?

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3. Affectivity

How are you affectively attuned to _______?

What non-digital (physical) situations involve similar affective attunement?

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4. Subjectivity

What kind of subjectivity does _______ require you to adopt?

What non-digital (physical) situations subjectifies you similarly?

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Appendix A

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Appendix B

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Appendix C

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Bibliography

“2011 Issue No. 20 - Slow Media: Transformations Journal.” Transformations Journal | Transformations Journal of Media, Culture & Technology, January 23, 2017. https://www.transformationsjournal.org/issue-20/.

Ahmed, Sara. "Orientations: Toward a Queer Phenomenology." GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, vol. 12 no. 4, 2006, p. 543-574. Project MUSE, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/202832.

Buckley, Philip. “Lecture Notes - April 13,2021.” MCGILL UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY (2020-2021) PHILOSOPHY 474 (Winter Term): PHENOMENOLOGY. Lecture, 2021.

Heidegger, Martin, John Macquarrie, and Edward Robinson. Being and Time. Malden: Blackwell, 1962.

Karppi, Tero. “Digital Suicide and the Biopolitics of Leaving Facebook.” TRANSFORMATIONS Journal of Media, Culture & Technology, no. 20 (2011).

Köhler, Benedikt, Sabria David, and Jörg Blumtritt. “The Slow Media Manifesto.” Slow Media, January 2, 2010. https://en.slow-media.net/manifesto.

Martin, Luther H., Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton. Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. London: Tavistock publ., 1988.

Nilson, Herman. “Technologies for the Self.” Essay. In Michel Foucault and Games of Truth, 97–102. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998.

Rauch, Jennifer. Slow Media: Why "Slow" Is Satisfying, Sustainable, and Smart. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Rauch, Jennifer. “The Origin of Slow Media: Early Diffusion of a Cultural Innovation through Popular and Press Discourse, 2002-2010.” Transformations Journal of Media, Culture &Technology, no. 20 (2011).

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For questions, clarifications, and future collaborations, please contact me through Building 21.