Abstract
This special issue fosters joint exploration of personal identity by both philosophers, on the one hand, and scholars and researchers in Internet Studies (IS), on the other. The summary of articles gathered here leads to a larger collective account of personal identity that highlights embodiment and thereby the continuities between online and offline senses and experiences of selfhood. I connect this collective account with other contemporary works at the intersections between philosophy and IS, such as on trust and virtual worlds, thereby entailing further questions and debates. I close by exploring how these collective insights illuminate larger themes regarding technology—specifically, the debate between a distinctively modern Augustinian–Cartesian account emphasizing control, liberation, and immortality by way of escape from the body, vs. more contemporary alternatives in feminist, environmental, and information philosophies that highlight autonomy through, rather than against, embodiment.
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Acknowledgments
I wish to express my great gratitude to the sponsors of the 2010 Aarhus workshop, namely the AHRC, the Department of Philosophy and History of Ideas, and the Information and Media Studies Department, Aarhus University. My colleagues Raffaele Rodogno and Johanna Seibt not only contributed their philosophical insights and acumen to the workshop itself, but also helped substantially with the planning and logistics. In addition to the participants, I would also like to thank our two keynote speakers, Maria Bakardjieva (University of Calgary, Canada) and Soraj Hongladarom (Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand), for offering workshop participants both new insights and critical but cordial commentary.
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Ess, C. At the Intersections Between Internet Studies and Philosophy: “Who Am I Online?”. Philos. Technol. 25, 275–284 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-012-0085-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-012-0085-4