To what extent has human thought and personality become encapsulated by technology-related activity?

Abstract

Contemporary human behaviours using the Internet and social media are an extension of behaviours seen long before the knowledge society. In particular, online identities and avatars, and the behaviours associated with these, have strong precedents in literature, in philosophy and in medieval carnival. The philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin has described these phenomena in detail. The growth in scale of such behaviours is the major difference as vast numbers of people display their thoughts and personalities online. But the arrival, and propagation, of printed books and pamphlets in Europe from the 15th century, and the later arrival of film and TV in the 20th century show a similar - though less extensive - increase in scale. Just as these new media, in the past, gave people the opportunities to demonstrate behaviours in a new and more extensive context, the knowledge society has also extended people's opportunities. This paper argues that there is nothing inherently new, or indeed unethical, about this kind of behaviour, except for scale.