ARE DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES TRANSFORMING HUMANITY AND MAKING POLITICS IMPOSSIBLE?
ARE DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES TRANSFORMING HUMANITY AND MAKING POLITICS IMPOSSIBLE?

Summary/Abstract: My question in this paper is whether digital technologies transform humanity and make politics impossible. Digital technologies, no doubt, are revolutionary. But I argue that what they have done in the Post-Cold War era are: (1) to further contract the spaces between politicians and the people; (2) transform actors from subjects to objects, such that we may in addition to social identities, talk about digital identities; (3) relocate the public sphere from squares to ilosphere where individuals are granted enormous expres- sive powers but at the same time become vulnerable to large scale manipulations; (4) and escalate the tools of politics. My argument will be that digital technologies in a subtle way are transforming humanity in the digital space and that this might have costly moral consequences not only in politics generally but specifically in liberal de- mocracy. However, I will contend that this transformation of humanity does not make politics impossible; it only escalates it with troubling consequences like those we saw in the 2016 American presidential election.

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