Introduction digital identities, digital ways of living: Philosophical analyses

This special issue seeks to problematize the role of digital technologies in the constitution of the self, taking up the phenomenological premise that experiential structures are shaped and renegotiated through interactions between subjects, environments, and the manipulation of both real and fictional objects. The articles herein address the effects of digital technologies on the human self and, conversely, the active, open, and plastic ways that the self experiences and shapes the digital world. Within contemporary phenomenological debate, macro questions concerning digital technology and identity constitution are increasingly popular topics, soliciting different approaches and theoretical perspectives. With this special issue, we hope to further contribute to this flourishing debate through its three main lines of investigations – corresponding to the three sections into which this issue is organized. We aim primarily to show how digital technologies are re-defining our activities and lives, while also affecting our senses of our identity and selfhood. Each of the three sections analyses interaction between digital technologies and the many layers of self constitution. Section one interrogates the role played by digital technologies in shaping identity. The second section investigates how digital technologies shape our use of language, enabling new forms of communication and social struggle. Finally, the third section explores different ways in which new technologies might affect change in our socio-political world. In this way, the articles collected in this special issue offer an extensive overview of the implications of new technologies in our everyday experience, from the formation of our personal identities to their potential institutional impact.