Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-19-2019
Abstract
In the HBO-BBC miniseries "Years and Years," a teenager named Bethany (!) comes out as transhuman and tells her parents she wants to “live forever as information ... [to] be data!” As information about us increasingly takes the form of digital data, we are all of us becoming data. Indeed, so much of our attention and agency is engaged with digital information in digital environments that the philosopher Luciano Floridi describes us as “inforgs” living “onlife” in an “infosphere.” Through nearly constant and ubiquitous patterns of digital interactions with human and artificial agents, we are creating digitally extended and enhanced selves. But instead of seeing our selves as reducible to data, this presentation explores how Christianity—rooted in eschatological expectation and technological transformation—can help us understand our digitally enhanced lives.
Recommended Citation
Paulus, Michael, "Data and Identity: Notes Toward a Theology of the Digitally Enhanced Self" (2019). SPU Works. 184.
https://digitalcommons.spu.edu/works/184
Copyright Status
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Included in
Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons, Science and Technology Studies Commons
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