The Digital Turn. How the internet transforms our existence

The presentation is based on my book The Dital Turn. The swift virtualisation of the world implies a radical change of the conditions of life. We have to cope with the fact that our experiences of the world will largely be mediated experiences, fuelled by data, cameras, sensors, indicators and virtual scenes rather than direct sensory observations. Consequently, our view of the world will be indirect, partial, distorted and detached. Our understanding of the world will be challenged. Living in virtual spaces, detached from a material reality reduces our understanding of the impact of our actions, e.g. mouse clicks. As the world may look more and more like a video game, we are destined to act as “drone operators” on a remote site without really understanding the consequences of our actions. The presentation analysis the impact of new media technologies on the ways we arrange our lives and experience the world that surrounds us