Living a Digital Life: Objects, Environments, Power

Everyone thinks they know what digital means. So pervasive are digital technologies in the 21st century that it is difficult to find critical distance from this immersive new world of ubiquitous connectivity, social media feeds, smartphones, mobile apps, responsive design, algorithmic recommendation systems, and voice-controlled home shopping assistants. While the question “what is the digital?” is compelling, the more pressing question might be instead: what does it mean to be alive in the digital age?

Across campus, this question will emerge in courses, colloquia, lectures, and informal conversations among students, faculty, staff, and peers. Critically engaging with the big issues, urgent consequences, and radical possibilities for grappling with the meaning of life in this era of digital ubiquity. Whether defined as “animated corporeal existence,” “vitality,” or “to continue, to remain,” we see a profound opportunity to approach the digital world through a spectrum of the meaning of life-ness - alive, liveness, animated, lifelike, life-adjacent, consciousness, awareness, attention, awoke.

“Living a Digital Life” is the 2019 Michigan Meeting.