Digitized Lives: Culture, Power, and Social Change in the Internet Era

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MacRury, I., & Yates, C. (2016). Framing the mobile phone: The psychopathologies of an everyday object. CM: Communication and Media, 11(38), 41–70.

My team name is known internationally as Girl Bots. Girl Bots have been competing professionally in Robotics competitions since I was in Year 7 (five years). This season I am currently competing with my Robot I have designed, engineered, built and programmed using the VEX Robotics engineering educational platform. I am the sole programmer, driver, designer and engineer of my Robot. Krüger, S. (2017a). Barbarous hordes, brutal elites: The traumatic structure of right-wing populism. E-Flux. June 2017. https://www.e-flux.com/journal/83/142185/barbarous-hordes-brutal-elites-the-traumatic-structure-of-right-wing-populism/ A distinguished scientist and data management expert who works at Microsoft said, “In 2035 there will be more ‘face-to-face’ (‘virtual,’ but with a real feel) discussion in digital spaces that opens people’s minds to alternative viewpoints.”T. V. Reed’s Digitized Lives makes an important contribution to today's increasingly mediated society and culture, in which nearly every aspect of our everyday lives is touched by digital technology. This clear-eyed demystification of digital cultures’ benefits and threats functions as an indispensable guidebook for understanding the Internet today and its status as one of the most powerful communication tools of our modern age." Mark has experienced other successes during his career, including becoming an ‘Advanced ICT Toolkit Author’ for the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT) The role included: Krzych, S. (2010). Phatic touch, or the instance of the gadget in the unconscious. Paragraph, 33(3), 376–391. Chapter 8: Are Digital Games Making Us Violent, or Will They Save the World? Virtual Play, Real Impact

McGowan, T. (2013). Virtual freedom: The obfuscation and elucidation of the subject in cyberspace. Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, 18(1), 63–70. However, those yet to be connected remain cut off from the benefits of this new era and remain further behind. Many of the people left behind are women, the elderly, persons with disabilities or from ethnic or linguistic minorities, indigenous groups and residents of poor or remote areas. The pace of connectivity is slowing, even reversing, among some constituencies. For example, globally, the proportion of women using the internet is 12 per cent lower than that of men. While this gap narrowed in most regions between 2013 and 2017, it widened in the least developed countries from 30 per cent to 33 per cent. Alongside this, Jenny leads on the 1:1 iPad strategy across the MAT and is passionate about technology complementing and enhancing teaching and learning both academically and in developing purposeful life skills. In a remarkably short period of time the Internet and associated digital communication technologies have deeply changed the way millions of people around the globe live their lives. But what is the nature of that impact? In chapters examining a broad range of issues―including sexuality, politics, education, race, gender relations, the environment, and social protest movements― Digitized Lives seeks answers to these central questions: What is truly new about so-called "new media," and what is just hype? How have our lives been made better or worse by digital communication technologies? In what ways can these devices and practices contribute to a richer cultural landscape and a more sustainable society? One aspect of VEX Robotics that I really enjoy is mentoring the younger students, as I can pass on my knowledge. I can also link and map everything Mr Sadler teaches through EBS Robotics to my GCSE Engineering curriculum.

The Impact of Digital Technologies

Katie King, Ph.D., Professor Emerita of Women’s Studies, University of Maryland, College Park; Author of Networked Reenactments: Stories Transdisciplinary Knowledges Tell Andrew Tutt, an expert in law expert and author of “ An FDA for Algorithms,” predicted, “Digital spaces in the future will be so widely varied that there will not be any canonical digital space, just as there is no canonical physical space. A multitude of new digital spaces using augmented reality and virtual reality to create new ways for people to interact online in ways that feel more personal, intimate and like the physical world will likely arise. These spaces will provide opportunities to experience the world and society in new and exciting ways. One imagines, for example, that in the future, digital classrooms could involve students sitting at virtual desks with a virtual teacher giving a lesson at the front of the room. Dweep Chand Singh, professor and director/head of clinical psychology at Aibhas Amity University in India, said, “Communication via digital mode is here to stay, with an eventual addition of brain-to-brain transmission and exchange of information. Biological chips will be prepared and inserted in brains of human beings to facilitate communication without external devices. In addition, artificial neurotransmitters will be developed in neuroscience labs for an alternative mode of brain-to-brain communication.” Hollway, W. (2006). Paradox in the pursuit of a critical theorization of the development of self in family relationships. Theory and Psychology, 16(4), 465–482.

This chapter maps the field of psychosocial/psychoanalytic digital media studies. It begins with a discussion and review of early, critical scholarship on the internet and online culture that has foregrounded potentially detrimental aspects of technology. I then discuss work that has highlighted the beneficial and nurturing aspects of online culture. I subsequently outline different, intertwined dimensions of digital lives today and how they have been reflected on in scholarship. They concern sexualities and videogames. At the core of digital lives today and how they play out on social media, dating apps, games, and other digital devices and platforms are psychosocial relations through which questions of self-reflexivity, confidence, and value have become paramount. Platforms satisfy a desire for affective validation and containment. However, such potentials are also situated in a radically fantasmatic sphere and are always unstable. This chapter also outlines some of the differences between a psychosocial and a psychoanalytic approach to the digital. Keywords

Digital spaces will live in us. Direct connectivity with the digital world and thus with each other will drive us to new dimensions of discovery of ourselves, our species and life in general (thus not only digital life). Paul Epping, chairman and co-founder of XponentialEQ The founder and director of a digital consultancy predicted, “AR and VR technologies will do more to bring us together, teach us about distant places, cultures and experiences and help us become healthier through virtual diagnostics and digital wellness tools. I suppose what I’m really envisioning is a future where the entities that provide digital social services are reoriented to serve users rather than shareholders; a new class of not-for-profit digital utilities regulated by an international network of civic-minded experts. I would like to envision a digital future where we assemble around communities – geographical or interest-based – that provide real support and a plethora of viewpoints. This is really more of a return to the days before Facebook took over the social web and development from there.” Johanssen, J., & Krüger, S. (2016, eds). Digital media, psychoanalysis and the subject. Special issue. CM: Communication and Media, 38(11). http://aseestant.ceon.rs/index.php/comman/issue/view/467/showToc Liu, L. H. (2010). The Freudian robot. Digital media and the future of the unconscious. The University of Chicago Press.