Extimate Technology: Self-Formation in a Technological World

Ciano Aydin asks us to consider how technology has become essential to self-formation and traces a new way of conceptualizing the self in relation to technology. Beginning with the central debates regarding the philosophy of the self, Aydin gives a new perspective on the classic debates regarding selfhood. Rather than existing purely as an external entity, he argues that technology has become extimate, the Other separate and within the self. Due to this shift, there are both negative and positive possibilities for our relationship to technology and how technology shapes our understanding of the self. Aydin intervenes with Technological Sublimation Theory (TST) as an alternative method of conceptualizing self-formation. In his analysis, Aydin demonstrates that the self is an interactionist project that will continue to develop alongside technology