Digital conditions of self & social construction: A critical synthesis of our digital ecosystem & the implications for identity, knowledge, & ideology

This thesis represents a two-year critical inquiry into how digital information ecosystems effect human cognition and sociality; presented in part through this essay, and also through a series of short multi-media productions. While this essay explores those topics in depth, the videos serve as a more, simplified and accessible synthesis of our issues related to digital expansion. The algorithmic personalization of information and humanity’s continuing digital enmeshment constitute fundamental changes to human identity, epistemology, and ideology. This synthesis amounts to the commandeering of human identity, knowledge, belief, and overall sociality. As such, future studies involving digital sociality should consider all three concepts, in concert, in their inquiries: how does this technology effect how users know themselves and others, what they know, and their beliefs of the world