Abstract
In cyberculture, human existence as being-in-the-world open to transcendence through death is turned into a being at hand, before the eyes, which must be available for calculating thinking and practical utilization at any moment. In other words, human existence in cyberculture is being turned into a closed, de-centered, artificially rounded-up presence. This artificially acquired presence of human beings in cyberculture is the essence of the new public. Thus, in the new public, the presence of cyberbeing’s essence is precisely the concealment of human existence as authenticity and resoluteness. Therefore, the essence of human presence in cyberbeing as the new public is the absence of human existence as aletheuein, and so it can be seen as an ontology of absence. In the new public regime, as determined by cyberbeing, the essence of communication is ‘interactivity.’ This means that human beings are prevented from experiencing their own existence as authenticity (self-attestation and singular responsibility) and, instead of resoluteness as individuals, they rely on others’ ‘publicness’ when it comes to experiencing and understanding their own being and their call for meaning. As decentered “minus-subjects,” human beings as bio-digital interfaces see their own experiences only as mediated by the others and, therefore, they produce relations of interdependence lacking real communication as ‘communion in freedom.’ I approach this cyberization process of the human via a phenomenological perspective to describe cyberbeing’s phenomenology, and I use a theological standpoint to understand the essence of the human, the implications of its cyber-alienation, and the meaning of cyberbeing.
Presenters
Inti Yanes-FernandezFaculty/Spanish Language and Culture/Literature and Cinemas, World Languages/Global Program, Williamsport Area High School/Susquehanna University, Pennsylvania, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2023 Special Focus—Religion in the Public Sphere: From the Ancient Years to the Post-Modern Era
KEYWORDS
Cyberculture, Cyberbeing, Public, Alienation, Bio-Digital, Existence, Transcendence, Self- Attestation, Resoluteness
