In the companion volume to the 2007 Ars Electronica Festival, artists, theoreticians and experienced network-nomads elaborate on our culture of everyday life and these late-breaking phenomena that are being played out between angst-inducing scenarios of seamless surveillance and the zest we bring to staging our public personae with digital media.
At any time, at any place, we’re capable of switching into telematic action, of reaching anyone and being accessed by all. With the help of our avatars, blogs and taggings, we assume digital form and adopt more or less imaginative second identities. But it’s not merely technology, information and communication that have become omnipresent. To a much greater extent, it’s we ourselves: traceable at all times and anywhere via our cellphone’s digital signature that makes it possible to pinpoint our location to within a few meters; classifiable via the detailed and comprehensive personality profiles that we unwittingly leave behind, the traces of all our outings in digital domains.
What’s occurring in the wake of these developments is a far-reaching repositioning and reevaluation of the political, cultural and economic meaning of the public and private spheres.