The Crisis of Presence in Contemporary Culture: Ethics, Privacy and Speech in Mediated Social Life

This book investigates three issues in particular which have captured the public imagination as ‘problems’ emerging directly from the contemporary use of communications technology: online anti-social behaviour; the problem of privacy; and the problem of free speech online. Through a critical and philosophical examination of each of these cases in turn, I will argue that these problems have at their root the issue of presence, and are evoking what I call a ‘crisis of presence’. I argue that the use of ubiquitous communication technologies has created a disjuncture between how we think we exist in the world, (how we understand our presence in time, place and in proximity to one another, and the typical social actions and ethical stances which stem from such assumptions) and how we actually do exist in the world through our use of such devices. The main problem here, I suggest, is a lack of awareness of our own and others’ presence in the world through these technologies, and thus the inability to make proper judgements about the consequences of our social actions and ethical stances in online contexts. By focussing on the concept of presence, and the challenges that our changing presence poses to our ethics, privacy and public discourse, I argue that the real task for networked humanity is the recognition that these problems are at least in part the result of a certain ‘stance’ taken to the world and enabled by technology. The solution therefore, is not to focus exclusively on content and its regulation as much as it is to examine the alienating aspects of the media itself by understanding and resisting the more destructive tendencies in technological ordering, metaphysical abstraction, disembodiment and mediation which increasingly appear in our social encounters and presences. I suggest that such resistance involves several ambitious revisions in our ethical, legal and technological regimes.