The Digital Worlds Workshop invites proposals for participation in our first in-person meeting, taking place this October 13, 2022 in conjunction with the 60th Meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy at Texas A&M University. We seek papers that interrogate the way modern digital technology enhances, hampers, or alters our experience of our lived worlds.
The distinction between “being on the internet” and “being in the real world” is eroding. People can increasingly be said to “live on their phones” or other devices. This workshop aims to interrogate the meaning and structure of the world as mediated by such devices.
For example, Google Maps changes what it means to get lost and Air BnB changes who our neighbors are. Texting and social media change what it means to be close to or far from our loved ones, while dating apps dominate the way many of us evaluate and meet romantic partners. Online shopping disrupts the institutional structures of commerce while augmented reality fractures our collective experience of a shared environment.
We invite submissions on these and other themes from a variety of perspectives such as environmental philosophy, phenomenology, philosophy of technology, or social and political philosophy. Papers might address such questions as:
- How is the world given through the mediation of digital technology?
- What notions of self are deployed or instantiated?
- How are structures of intersubjectivity shaped or assumed by digital technology?
- How is our sense of place enhanced, diminished, or altered?
- What sorts of groups become possible and what sorts disappear?
- What underexamined implications for social justice are raised by new technologies?
We invite extended abstract submissions of up to 500 words by April 21, 2022. We also invite expressions of interest to be a commenter on a paper, independent of a submission (it is not necessary to submit a paper to provide commentary).
Abstracts can be submitted to digitalworldsworkshop@gmail.com