A Crisis of Presence: Online Culture and Being in the World

This art icle was downloaded by: [ Universit y of Kent ] , [ Vincent Miller] On: 07 Novem ber 2012, At : 03: 30 Publisher: Rout ledge I nform a Lt d Regist ered in England and Wales Regist ered Num ber: 1072954 Regist ered office: Mort im er House, 37- 41 Mort im er St reet , London W1T 3JH, UK Space and Polity Publicat ion det ails, including inst ruct ions for aut hors and subscript ion informat ion: ht t p:/ / www.t andfonline.com/ loi/ cspp20 A Crisis of Presence: On-line Culture and Being in the World Vincent Miller a a School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, Universit y of Kent , Cant erbury, CT2 7NF, UK To cite this article: Vincent Miller (2012): A Crisis of Presence: On-line Cult ure and Being in t he World, Space and Polit y, 16:3, 265-285 To link to this article: ht t p:/ / dx.doi.org/ 10.1080/ 13562576.2012.733568 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTI CLE Full t erm s and condit ions of use: ht t p: / / www.t andfonline.com / page/ t erm s- andcondit ions This art icle m ay be used for research, t eaching, and privat e st udy purposes. 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The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, act ions, claim s, proceedings, dem and, or cost s or dam ages what soever or howsoever caused arising direct ly or indirect ly in connect ion wit h or arising out of t he use of t his m at erial. Space and Polity, Vol. 16, No. 3, 265 – 285, December 2012 Downloaded by [University of Kent], [Vincent Miller] at 03:30 07 November 2012 A Crisis of Presence: On-line Culture and Being in the World VINCENT MILLER [Paper first received, February 2012; in final form, August 2012] Abstract. This paper is a discussion about presence and its relationship to ethical and moral behaviour. In particular, it problematises the notion of presence within a contemporary culture in which social life is increasingly lived and experienced through networked digital communication technologies alongside the physical presence of co-present bodies. Using the work of Heidegger, Levinas, Bauman and Turkle (among others), it is suggested that the increasing use of these technologies and our increasing presence in on-line environments challenges our tendencies to ground moral and ethical behaviours in face-to-face or materially co-present contexts. Instead, the mediated presences we can achieve amplify our cultural tendency to objectify the social world and weaken our sense of moral and ethical responsibility to others. In that sense, an important disjuncture exists between the largely liminal space of on-line interactions and the ethical sensibilities of material presence which, as these two spheres become more intensely integrated, has potential consequences for the future of an ethical social world and a civil society. The examples are used of on-line suicides, trolling and cyberbullying to illustrate these ethical disjunctures. Introduction “It seems as though man everywhere and always encounters only himself.” (Heidegger, 1977, p. 27) On Christmas day, 2010 Simone Back, a 42-year-old social worker in the UK shared the Facebook status update “took all my pills, be dead soon, bye bye everyone”. Simone had 1082 friends on Facebook, but instead of prompting a reaction or response to this cry for help, the message provoked an on-line debate on Simone’s Facebook wall. Some friends mocked and/or openly doubted the sincerity of the attempt and others suggested that previous responders would soon regret their comments if the message was, in fact, sincere. To the observers, the event was seemingly abstracted and objectified. No one called for help or attempted to contact Simone by other means, despite the fact that several friends lived Vincent Miller is in the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, University of Kent, Canterbury, CT2 7NF, UK. E-mail: v.miller@kent.ac.uk 1356-2576 Print/1470-1235 Online/12/030265-21 # 2012 Taylor & Francis http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13562576.2012.733568 Downloaded by [University of Kent], [Vincent Miller] at 03:30 07 November 2012 266 Vincent Miller within walking distance of Simone’s apartment. Seventeen hours later, Simone’s mother was informed of the status update via text message and police found Simone dead shortly after. Simone’s mother was, of course, left baffled as to why none of her daughters’ ‘friends’ did anything to help. In this case, connectivity did not equate to community, care or responsibility. In a similar, but perhaps even more shocking, case a 19-year-old Floridian, Abraham Biggs, committed suicide in November 2008 live on webcam after posting his intentions on one Internet forum and his suicide note on another. Some 1500 people watched his suicide live on ‘Justin.TV’. During this period, Abraham was both encouraged to commit the act and berated by several online spectators. After several hours of Abraham lying motionless, police were eventually called. A year earlier, a British man hung himself live on webcam in front of 100 on-line spectators after being goaded into the act in an Internet insult chat room. It is estimated that, in the UK alone, several dozen suicides have been attributed to suicide-focused Internet chat rooms and forums, which portray suicide as a reasonable option to a wide scope of people and will even provide useful tips and instructions on technique (Slack, 2008; Hurst, 2011). All of these incidents provoked shock and debate within the popular press and on-line media, not only because of the inaction of the witnesses involved, but also because of the cruelty on the part of some in encouraging and insulting the unfortunates involved. In the aftermath of the Simone Back incident, there were calls for Facebook to take more responsibility for the actions of its users and their on-line content. Indeed, in recent years there has been an increasing amount of concern in the popular press over how social life is being conducted on the Web and on the amount of anti-social or problematic behaviour that seems to be endemic in digital culture. Calls remain in the popular press and among the families of victims for governments to step in to regulate interpersonal behaviour on-line, despite the technical difficulties involved and a general reluctance on the part of the Internet community at large to curtail speech or increase censorship. Nonetheless, there have been renewed efforts on the part of states to regulate such behaviour, much in the same way that on-line commercial exchange and notions of ‘property’ have become more regulated in the past decade. This paper is not a discussion of Internet-related suicide. The extreme and deliberately provocative examples already described are designed to demonstrate a certain moral and ethical problematic: about responsibility, about how people in contemporary (and increasingly on-line) life encounter the world and each other, and how these issues are related to geographical notions of presence, copresence and proximity. Thus, this paper is an enquiry into the relationship between ethical behaviour and the changing nature of presence in modernity through contemporary communications technology.1 This is significant because the on-line sphere is still often considered (and often celebrated) as a ‘liminal’ space with its own set of norms and where the conventions of civil society are less apparent. However, the spaces of networked digital technologies are no longer liminal since they are now part-and-parcel of the experience of everyday life and the medium through which an increasing amount of social life is conducted. In that sense, an important disjuncture exists with potentially serious consequences for the future of an ethical social world and a civil society. I suggest that, if we desire ethical behaviour in social environ- Downloaded by [University of Kent], [Vincent Miller] at 03:30 07 November 2012 On-line Culture 267 ments that are often technologically mediated, increasingly large in geographical extent, and dynamic in terms of our presence to one another, then these changes in presence we are experiencing demand a more thoughtful and critical understanding in terms of their implications for ethical behaviour. I argue that the relationship between presence,2 ethics and communications technology can be examined in two ways. First, the way we see ourselves as present in the world influences how we understand, approach and treat the world, and thus has ethical consequences. Such a statement is investigated through Heidegger’s critique of metaphysical presencing, the use of technology and the resulting nihilism in modern technological life. Secondly, I will examine the relationship between ethics, responsibility and physical proximity to other people. This will be discussed largely through the work of Emmanuel Levinas and the ethics of encounter. In terms of structure, this essay will first present an overview of recent popular and academic critiques of social life as mediated through digital networking technologies, focusing on social isolation, anti-social behaviour and attempts by states to manage interpersonal behaviour on-line. It will then briefly discuss the notion of presence and how presence is complicated by the use of information technologies. In subsequent sections, I will move on to discuss Heidegger’s characterisation of Western metaphysical ways of being, his concept of Enframing, and then look at Levinas’ discussion of ethical encounter and the mediation of ‘face’. I conclude by suggesting that, if we desire ethical conduct within an increasingly significant on-line social sphere, we need to recognise and work against our cultural and technological tendency towards abstraction, instrumentalism and metaphysical presencing, re-examine our focus on locality in our horizons of care and strive for ways to re-establish sensual aspects of physical presence in mediated encounter. The ‘Tone of Life’ On-line Georgina was a beautiful young girl. She will be missed dearly. It’s such a shame to loose [sic] her. Everyone who knew her said she was an amazing person. To all you trolls, fuck off, you low life pieces of shit (Facebook memorial page, anonymised). If anybody sees a nasty comment from a troll, please just DELETE it and IGNORE it. Don’t fire back! (Facebook memorial page, anonymised). The past two years have seen the phenomenon of ‘trolling’ emerge into popular concern through the mainstream press as well as in legislative arenas. These two examples, taken from different memorial pages on Facebook, are indicative of the effect of the recent phenomenon of ‘RIP trolling’, in which pages set up to mark the death of a particular individual (usually by friends or family members) become the means to taunt these friends and family members through cruel comments about the deceased. These sometimes even involve the creation of bespoke images and video clips depicting the deceased in upsetting ways.3 Just as in any other form of trolling, the aim of RIP trolling is to provoke reactions, cause disruption and argument, and create emotional distress for one’s own enjoyment. The 2010 jailing of Sean Duffy (the second person in the UK to be jailed for trolling behaviour) for posting abusive messages on Facebook Downloaded by [University of Kent], [Vincent Miller] at 03:30 07 November 2012 268 Vincent Miller memorial sites seemed to mark the ascendency of the troll into public consciousness, at least in the UK. In its original incarnation, trolling referred to the use of interactive features of the Web, such as comments facilities and forums to create disruption and conflict. However, the recent popularisation of the term ‘troll’ has meant that the term is now used very loosely to describe any form of serial abusive or anti-social behaviour on-line and tends to occur anywhere on-line content or opinions are posted: social networking sites, on-line forums of all descriptions, chat groups and blogs. ‘Trolling’ as a term now encompasses behaviours such as ‘flaming’ and ‘cyberbullying’. Flaming,4 was the first term to describe on-line abuse of aggressive behaviour, having been present and studied since the early days of psychological research into computing behaviour. As early as 1984, Keisler et al. were studying the high levels of swearing, insults and name calling related to CMC settings. Indeed, Moor et al. (2010) found that 64.8 per cent of their sample of YouTube subscribers found flaming to be common on that site and that 5.3 per cent of those flamed for their own personal entertainment. Alonzo and Aiken (2004), in an experimental psychological study, found that 68 per cent of males and 32 per cent of females in an on-line forum wrote flames for entertainment (with 11 per cent of all comments on the forum deemed to be ‘flames’). In another study, Castellà et al. (2000) found ‘flaming’ interactions to be 10 times more common in computer-mediated communication versus both face-to-face meetings and video conferencing. ‘Cyberbullying’ is also gaining attention within the mainstream press, especially following a number of suicides that were seen as a direct result of cyberbullying (see, for example, BBC, 2011; USA Today, 2012).5 There have also been a number of recent academic studies on the prevalence of cyberbullying (or ‘on-line harassment’) especially involving school-age teens. While the reported frequencies vary greatly by study, Tokunaga (2010) suggests a general range of 20– 40 per cent of school-age teenagers have experienced cyberbullying. A very recent large study in the UK found that 28 per cent of children between 11 and 16 (and 1 in 10 teachers) have been bullied through digital technologies, with text messaging and social networking sites being the main media (Beatbullying, 2012). In terms of the overall environment of conduct on social networking, Rainie et al. (2012) recently investigated the social and emotional climate or ‘tone of life’ on social networking sites and found that, while the overall experience of these sites was positive, 25 per cent of adults and 41 per cent of teens had seen mean or cruel behaviour either ‘frequently’ or ‘sometimes’, with 69 per cent and 88 per cent respectively seeing such behaviour at least ‘every once in a while’.6 Such findings support Lanier’s assertion that “Trolling is not a string of isolated incidents, but the status quo in the on-line world” (Lanier, 2010, p. 61). Outside psychology, there has been very little research or mention of trolling, flaming, cyberbullying and on-line anti-social behaviour within the social sciences. This is despite a demonstrated public and governmental concern about such issues articulated in the popular press, which has precipitated calls for the state to control such on-line anti-social behaviour. The UK government is now considering legislation that will force on-line service providers to identify trolls so that they can be prosecuted. In the US, the states of Arizona and Downloaded by [University of Kent], [Vincent Miller] at 03:30 07 November 2012 On-line Culture 269 Alabama have also recently passed anti-trolling legislation and a federal law on ‘cyberstalking’ (which can include troll-like behaviour) is under consideration. The attempt to regulate on-line interpersonal behaviour stems largely from the popular conception that anonymity is primarily responsible for on-line abuse.7 The assumption is that, if the assurance of anonymity is lifted, the tone of life within digital culture will change (for example, see Adams, 2011). This has been articulated in proposed legislation that gives states much more power to unveil otherwise-anonymous individuals. Some high-profile persons within the technology industry, such as Facebook marketing director Randi Zuckerberg and Google CEO Eric Schmidt have even followed this line, suggesting that anonymity on the Internet should be phased out in the coming years. However, this is a simplistic assumption on at least three counts. First, this assumes that people are inherently malicious and that only the threat of being held accountable for one’s actions is the reason people are not malicious all the time. Secondly, it ignores the fact that there are plenty of anonymous environments where people are very civil. For example, e-Bay, is an environment where anonymity is necessary, yet it is also an extremely civil and kind on-line environment. Thirdly, it is blind to the fact that there are plenty of nonymous on-line environments where anti-social or aggressive behaviour occurs. For example, many cyberbullying studies demonstrate that the perpetrator is known to the victim 40– 50 per cent of the time (Tokunaga, 2010). Social networking sites (not withstanding purposely created false identities) are nonymous environments, as are text messages.8 Such logic suggests that there is a need to introduce alternative theoretical accounts of how technologically mediated presence may affect ethical social conduct.9 A ‘Wrong Turn’ The recent picture painted by media, advocacy groups and legislators of a Web plagued by trolls, flaming and cyberbullies is in fairly stark contrast to most academic work on the social life of the Internet. Certainly, early Internet research was, for the most part, optimistic, even hyperbolic, in terms of its praise of the potential for cyberspace to provide an escape from the body and social structures built around the oppression of co-present bodies. The Internet, it was suggested, would reactivate a moribund public sphere through increased access to information and the ability to provide a more reasoned and authentic dialogue between citizens (Dakroury and Birdsall, 2008; Hague and Loader, 1999). The Internet also would allow for more just and fulfilling communities built around reciprocity (Rheingold, 2000; Day, 2006; Miller and Slater, 2000; Baym, 2002), and also allow for unhindered expressions of self (Turkle, 1996; Stone, 1995). However, recent high-profile studies have taken a more pessimistic tone, with a number of commentaries now lamenting various forms of ‘wrong turns’ taken by digital culture in terms of social life. These range from complaints about how the technology itself is being configured in ways that limit, rather than expand, human freedom and expression (Lanier, 2010; Morozov, 2011; Pariser, 2011; Carr, 2011), to studies that demonstrate how ubiquitous presence and constant communication are leading, ironically, to a decline in the quality of social engagement and even to increased social isolation, as a result of communications overload (Turkle, 2011; Harper, 2010; Baron, 2008). Downloaded by [University of Kent], [Vincent Miller] at 03:30 07 November 2012 270 Vincent Miller For example, Turkle (2011), finds that the demands of an increasingly networked, ‘always on’, world creates a milieu of shared attention, where people focus less on “here and now” face-to-face interactions (i.e. the material presence of others) and are continually elsewhere, in a kind of disembodied networked presence with others. It is important to understand here that Turkle is not suggesting that people have fewer face-to-face interactions in digital culture. The overall empirical evidence for this is mixed. The suggestion here is that face-toface interactions are now conducted in a more distracted or absent manner because of the continuous multitasking involved with immersion in ubiquitous digital communication technology. This is a conclusion also drawn by Kenneth Gergen (2002), who suggested that consciousness is becoming increasingly divided between the context of physical presence and the elsewhere available to us through communications technologies. He argued that this results in a loss of shared meanings as people become increasingly involved in virtual worlds not available to physically present others. In that sense, people may be physically present, but socially or attentionally absent or elsewhere. Other more theoretical work has called for a more detailed critical understanding of being together digitally (Silverstone, 2003; Willson, 2012). This research questions the implications for the social of the lifting out of social relations from a physical grounding in the face-to-face social world and physical proximity, to a being together that is increasingly maintained (one cannot say ‘grounded’) through electronic networks and technological interfaces that are primarily focused around individual social networks. These create an experience and a social presence that is largely metaphysical (in the sense of being beyond the physical, incorporeal, transcendent or abstract) alongside the physical presence of embodied everyday life, problematising the distinction between absence and presence, subject and object, self and other (also see Willson, 2012). This questioning of the social and ethical implications of an embodied versus metaphysical mode of presence in the world on the one hand seems like a contemporary questioning of a set of contexts that have been brought about by recent communications technologies but, in fact, similar concerns had been the focus of phenomenological and existential philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas since the early part of the 20th century. Such work provided a powerful comment on modern, Western cultural and philosophical attitudes and the consequences of these attitudes through the exploration of the relationship between presence, technology, and ethics. In many respects, their work seems exceedingly relevant (yet largely unexplored)10 when considering how the move to a technologically maintained social life may influence people’s ethical and moral behaviour, or, as I suggest, exaggerate tendencies that are already inherent in modern, Western culture. Metaphysical Presence, On-line Presence and Modern Ways of Being While Heidegger himself never explicitly acknowledged an ethical dimension to his work, many scholars point to the implicit ethical dimension in his critique of metaphysical presence and the resulting nihilistic relationship that modern Western technological culture has with the world (Hodge, 1995; Aho, 2009). In Being and Time and subsequent works, Heidegger argued that the history of Western philosophy and culture has entailed a ‘forgetting’ of being and that this Downloaded by [University of Kent], [Vincent Miller] at 03:30 07 November 2012 On-line Culture 271 was the result of a dominant metaphysical conception of being in Western culture (often referred to as a ‘metaphysics of presence’). He saw the Western mode of being as one of alienation: from nature, from the things of the world and, ultimately, from humanity itself. Thus the key element of Heidegger’s project is to reconsider the notion of being by deconstructing prominent philosophical and cultural notions such as ‘mind’, ‘subject’, ‘consciousness’ and ‘human being’ and instead offer concepts such as Dasein11 or ‘being-in-the-world’, which embeds what it is to be human outside the individual subject and within space, materiality, time and history. For Heidegger, the roots of the metaphysical worldview begin in ancient Greece with the move from mysticism to classical philosophy. Whilst pre-Socratic thought did not objectify beings and objects by reducing them to an object or objects for a thinking subject, but tried to consider them in their phenomenality of presence or self-showing, ‘Being’ under Plato and Aristotle begins to be considered within the realm of subjectivity and as a transcendental subject of consciousness. This tradition holds that knowledge of the world is obtained on the basis of reason, which means two things 1. There is an orientation towards Being, which is centred around ‘mind’, ‘psyche’ or ‘subject’, which has the potential to be apart from the world and can thus seek a ‘truth’ of the world and give it meaning. 2. The things of the world are seen as objects for a thinking subject to consider. The ‘ground’ or meaning of objects in the world, in this view, resides in the thinking subject, which considers it as something present and with essential substantive properties, not, as the pre-Socratics thought, in their own phenomenality or unconcealment (Heidegger, 1962; White, 1996; Gumbrecht, 2004). What we inherit from the Platonic tradition is a kind of subject-centred encountering of the world in which we see ourselves as present but separate: a firm distinction between the intellectual, immaterial or spiritual subject, and the material object—a faith in the thinking psyche and a mistrust of the material, sensual or perceptual. This metaphysical form of being and presence becomes solidified in Western thought through the works of Descartes, who again focused the entirety of being within the concept of the transcendental subject and the thinking or rational mind. In Descartes’ formulation, the only certainty is the presence of oneself to oneself. ‘I think, therefore I am’ separates the subject as ontologically prior to the world of objects around it. This again entails a strong division between immaterial subject and material object. Descartes formulated what it is to be human as an abstract, self-enclosed, metaphysical, thinking individual subject, which views the other beings in the world as separate substantive objects of experience to be considered, thought about and empirically examined. As Aho summarises This method of radical doubt establishes the res cogitans as indubitable. The free, thinking ‘subject’ becomes the self-enclosed first ground from which ‘objects’ of experience are to be observed. From this standpoint, the external world comes to be understood as a system of causally determined parts. Beings are no longer experienced in terms of historically embedded social meanings and values but in terms of brute, mechanistic 272 Vincent Miller Downloaded by [University of Kent], [Vincent Miller] at 03:30 07 November 2012 causal relations that can be objectively researched, measured, and predicted based on scientific principles (Aho, 2009, p. 9). Descartes effectively presented an understanding of being as something more akin to “modern mathematical physics and its transcendental foundations” (Heidegger, 1962, p. 129). Thus we have a metaphysics of presence, where we understand our being and presence in the world as a presence to ourself as the subject, and approach the world and the things in it reflectively, in relation to how we conceive of their essential properties and can use them as objects available to us for use. This understanding lends itself to our experience of digital culture in two important ways. First, the world of the Web is one that is set up to satisfy calculated human intention. We do not stumble upon things or beings on the Web as we would stumble upon a porcupine or a rock when walking through a wood. We do not encounter an Internet community in the same way we might happen upon an unexpectedly enchanting village while on a road trip. The Web brings things to us either directly by our own intention (i.e. searching for something specific in which we are interested) or brings things to us because they have a categorical property in which we may be interested. With regard to the former point, it is reasonable to suggest that our on-line presence is generally motivated by specific intentions and goals: we go on-line to get something. That could be information, companionship, entertainment or the purchase of consumer goods. The point is that there is a reason why we are there. When we search for things, we are engaging with the (virtual) world in a particular way, which revolves around the specific demands of a self-enclosed thinking subject. Indeed, the work of Eli Pariser (2011) demonstrates quite forcefully how technologies of personalisation such as the Google algorithmic search facility actively work to create an on-line world that is unique to the histories and interests of the individual human being, atrophying the ‘rizomatic’ nature of the Web much lauded in earlier techno-utopian discussions of the Internet such as Hamman (1996) and Wise (1997). In this respect, there are no ‘accidents’ or ‘happenstances’ on the Web. What we encounter is presented to us as always something potentially useful to us, and in the very instrumental, rational, calculated, mathematical manner that Heidegger describes and critiques in the figure of Descartes’ res cogitans and the concept of a metaphysical presence. Secondly, the on-line sphere encapsulates Descartes’ formulation of thinking subject/perceived object (or mind/body distinction) in the sense that the experience of the Internet is much more subject-centred and transcendental, as opposed to an encounter with the bodily or material. This is simultaneously an obvious and yet still highly contested point. On the one hand, on-line presence is quite obviously a ‘mental’ presence in comparison with off-line presence. Such assertions are implicit, for example, in the mountain of work on ‘Internet identity’ and ‘Internet community’ (see, for example, Turkle, 1996; Stone, 1995, with regard to early textbased environments; or Boellstorff, 2008, for more contemporary virtual worlds; and Rheingold, 2000, on Internet community). Here, the basic premise for the radical nature of the Internet was purported to be that the absence of physical bodies, cues and voices allowed one to construct asubjectivity free of such social constraints that have their roots in the categorisation and oppression of bodies. One could effectively write oneself into existence, project inner qualities of an inner ‘self’ (or states of self) through textual descriptions and avatars, and be Downloaded by [University of Kent], [Vincent Miller] at 03:30 07 November 2012 On-line Culture 273 judged solely on one’s intellectual capacities of creativity, argumentation, intelligence and semiotic skill.12 In this respect, networked life on-line is widely considered to be a more ‘mental’, disembodied life (Barney, 2004). However, it is important to recognise, as much recent work does (for example, Hansen, 2006), that the body has not disappeared in on-line life. First of all, that would apply a strict distinction between ‘on-line’ and ‘off-line’ worlds, which clearly is not the case. This also ignores the fact that much on-line behaviour, such as purchasing goods, listening to music, gaming, dating, viewing pornography, getting medical and dietary information, has at its root the satisfaction of bodily needs and stimulation of the senses. Nonetheless, while this is recognised, it can be suggested that—despite increasingly sophisticated interfaces, connection speeds and graphical presentation of virtual environments—it is clear that (at least for the vast majority) on-line virtual environments are still relatively povertystricken in terms of sensual experience, especially when experienced through mobile technologies. Such environments are overwhelmingly based on vision and text; secondarily by sound. The experience of other senses (smell, touch, taste, proprioception) is minimal at best, if existent at all. Thus, ‘imagination’, cognitive inference and self-projection play an essential role in the experience of the on-line world, filling in the gaps left by a lack of sensory input.13 Again, this demonstrates a certain amount of concurrence between Descartes’ formulation of res cogitans of which Heidegger was so critical. Technology, Enframing and Digital Revealing Accordingly, man’s ordering attitude and behaviour display themselves first in the rise of modern physics as an exact science. Modern science’s way of representing pursues and entraps nature as a calculable coherence of forces (Heidegger, 1977, p. 21). In his subsequent works, and particularly in The Question Concerning Technology, Heidegger related his concerns about modern philosophy and a metaphysics of presence more directly to the human relationship with technology. In the modern era, Heidegger sees the rational, calculative manner of being indicative of metaphysical presencing as enhanced by our relationship to modern technology, which further encourages encountering the world with a calculative, instrumental eye. Heidegger first considers the impact of the spread of technical relations in our world through a questioning of our understanding of technology itself throughout history, arriving at the point where he suggests that technology is more complicated that a simple ‘means to an end’ or a tool for humans to accomplish something, but that in its essence technology can be considered a ‘revealing’. “Technology is no mere means”, he argues, “technology is a way of revealing” (Heidegger, 1977, p. 12); therefore, “Technology comes to presence in the realm where revealing and unconcealment take place” (p. 13). What he means by this is that technology is a way in which things are shown and made present to us. Modern technology is a revealing as well, but a particular kind of revealing: The revealing that rules in modern technology is a challenging which puts to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy that can be extracted and stored as such (Heidegger, 1977, p. 14). Downloaded by [University of Kent], [Vincent Miller] at 03:30 07 November 2012 274 Vincent Miller Modern technology presents the world to us in such a way that nature and the world are seen as something to be ‘set-upon’. Nature ceases to be something that is simply harnessed or worked with, but is transformed: aggressively challenged to prove itself as something useful and at our continual disposal. The world is viewed as and through powerful technologies unnaturally altered to become, a ‘standing reserve’ for our use. By ‘standing reserve’, Heidegger means two things. First, that everything is seen to exist to serve our needs and that things and beings are thus robbed of their capacity or possibility to exist outside the use we potentially make of them. Everything attains meaning merely as a consumable. Secondly, because things are only seen to have a meaning in terms of utility to our needs, when that utility is exhausted they have no value at all, thus they become eminently disposable. Thus, in the modern technological age, beings appear in the light of disposability (Rojcewicz, 2006). For Heidegger, metaphysical presence and technological ways of being create a nihilism in which the only meaning or worth the things of the world possess is how they can be used or exploited. In that sense, objects themselves are denied even the status of being objects As soon as what is unconcealed no longer concerns man even as an object, but does so, rather, exclusively as a standing-reserve, and man, in the midst of objectlessness is nothing but the orderer of the standing-reserve. . . he comes to the point where he himself will have to be taken as standing-reserve. Meanwhile man, precisely as the one so threatened, exalts himself to the posture of lord of the earth (Heidegger, 1977, p. 27). However, as we see, Heidegger goes one step further to suggest that such nihilism not only involves our presence to, and relation with, nature and inanimate objects, but ultimately gathers up our social relations as well. The irony is that the feeling of control we in contemporary society feel we have over nature through technology is illusory, because we ourselves are caught up in this technological way of being, a process he refers to as Enframing Enframing means the gathering together of that setting-upon which sets upon man—i.e. challenges him forth, to reveal the real, in the mode of ordering, as standing-reserve (Heidegger, 1977, p. 20). Enframing is not only what technologically advanced humans do to the world, humanity itself is Enframed: reduced to the status of a resource (Pattinson, 2000). So Enframing is ‘an all-encompassing imposition’ (Rojcewicz, 2006) in which humans are potentially revealed in the same way as nature: shown for their useful, calculable functions; seen as consumables and disposables. Heidegger pointed out how this could even be seen in his day, through the increased uses of terms such as ‘human resources’, ‘supplies’ and ‘reservoirs’ of different labour pools. Importantly, in modern technological society, Enframing crowds out other possible forms of revealing, so that the only way beings can exist or be present to us is through the light of calculable properties of potential use or exploitation. In this sense, the world in which we live increasingly takes on the properties of rigid technical relations that are not simply responsive to the needs of humans (as would be seen if technology were simply a means to an end), but orders the world (humans included) in a certain way, and presents it to us as a given fact (Hodge, 1995). Downloaded by [University of Kent], [Vincent Miller] at 03:30 07 November 2012 On-line Culture 275 We can see this demonstrated in on-line culture in several ways. Again, Pariser’s (2011) discussion of the power of algorithmic functions involved in websites like Google and Facebook is an interesting elucidation of Enframing in that, in the case of Google in particular, our encountering of the on-line world is personalised: filtered so that in any search action we are presented with links to objects (advertisements, web pages) that possess characteristics that are algorithmically perceived to be relevant to a set of characteristics indicative of us (gleaned from previous web behaviour). In other words, Google (or Facebook, or any similar site) reduces us to a set of measurable and calculable properties, orders these properties in terms of relevance and reveals the on-line world to us individually on this basis. Lanier’s (2010) polemic You Are Not a Gadget also articulates a critique that echoes the notion of Enframing. He suggests that the inherited limitations of software created in the past for specific purposes have now been ‘locked in’ as the architectural basis for contemporary software. As the Web has become part of everyday social life, and as people increasingly connect to each other through computers, much software as it is currently configured, is not fit for the purpose for which it is now put: conveying human communication, expression or personhood. Instead, he argues, humans are increasingly steered to communicate with each other and portray themselves through ever more reductionist models of abstraction.14 Lanier suggests that reductionist software architecture compels (challengesforth) people to express themselves through templates, categories and pre-formatted options (endemic to any social networking website, for example), prioritising software demands, technical efficiency and the need to collect calculable data, over personal expression. This revealing ultimately brackets the sense of personhood that one is able to achieve or experience in on-line contexts and tends to present others only as sources of fragments or ensembles of categories. The “deep meaning of personhood”, he suggests, “is reduced to illusions of bits” (Lanier, 2010, p. 20). Again, this parallels Heidegger’s notion of Enframing, as humans become caught up in the technical relations of which they are supposed to be the master. Far from being a human-centred means to an end, our use of digital technology begins to dictate how it is we ourselves can be revealed, ultimately transforming the nature of human relations themselves. This can be seen in Sherry Turkle’s latest work, Alone Together, where such concerns regarding technologically mediated human relationships are reproduced Networked, we are together but so lessened are our expectations of each other that we can feel utterly alone. There is the risk that we come to see each other as objects to be accessed—and only for the parts we find useful, comforting, or amusing (Turkle, 2011, p. 154). She argues that people are increasingly using networking technology to maintain useful instrumental connections to others. However, despite the apparent convenience of technologies that allow us to maintain a much larger and wider set of social relationships and interactions than ever before, her research suggests that we have become overwhelmed with the amount of communication (and thus social obligations) we are tied into through these technologies. The result has been a pressure to be ever more efficient in our exchanges with others and thus rely even more on networked connections to stand in and moderate our interactions with other people. Thus, technologies (in the name of instrumental effi- 276 Vincent Miller ciency) are increasingly used to keep an emotional distance and avoid intimacy (or indeed, awkwardness) with others in everyday interactions. Again, recalling Heidegger, the technologies that were supposed to help take command of our relationships with others have instead ‘set upon’ these relationships Downloaded by [University of Kent], [Vincent Miller] at 03:30 07 November 2012 It’s also that I don’t want to talk to people now. I don’t want to be interrupted. I think I should want to, it would be nice, but it is easier to deal with people on my Blackberry (interview data; from Turkle, 2011, p. 203). In short, Turkle argues that we end up expecting more from technology and less from each other in terms of social interactions. Indeed, Turkle is not the only one to have demonstrated empirically how the demands for ubiquity involved in a networked presence affect communications between individuals. Licoppe and Smoreda (2005) and Grinter and Eldridge (2001) also found a correlation between technologically connected presence and a rise of compressed forms of communication that avoid social interaction or dialogue in the name of efficiency. These lessened expectations manifest themselves in the everyday mendacity of on-line life, where this tendency to take a convenient instrumental distance in digital communications, leads to behaviour which, in many respects, can be seen as ‘anti-social’ because their whole sphere of conduct seems to be towards avoiding the encounter of others as beings that are a part of the world in their own right. This way of being instead sees any kind of unpredicted, unscripted two-way communication as excessively demanding, awkward, inconvenient or inefficient. Thus, telephone conversations are avoided in favour of texts, the intricacies of romantic relationships (such as break-ups) are increasingly mediated through technologies as an avoidance tactic, and an increased indifference to the sensitivity of others means that arguments, disagreements and abuse escalate in on-line environments far more quickly and more intensely than they would offline (Turkle, 2011). Groundlessness, Proximity, and Ethics There is a contrast here between being human as a metaphysical, generalised abstraction and as an ethical, located, lived relation (Aho, 2009, p. 112) One can point out two major ethical concerns that result from Heidegger’s assessment of modern forms of presence. First, he suggests that life, when subordinated to reason under metaphysical presence, becomes “technical and monstrous” (Aho, 2009, p. 16). The previous section suggested that, once the world is given over to the purely calculable, it ceases to have any meaning other than the purely instrumental and useful: a nihilist position. The Enframing, which is part-and-parcel of modern technological ways of being, parlays this instrumental, calculative existence inherent in the metaphysics of presence to new heights, gathering up all beings in the world (including humans) in a context where the only possible way that they can be revealed is as a calculable resource or standing-reserve. The quote by Aho points out another aspect in the relationship between presence and ethics: the idea that ethics has a location. Aho draws from Heidegger the assertion that an abstract, metaphysical subject has a different ethical relationship to the world from one that is embodied, located and grounded in place. The location of the metaphysical modern subject is decidedly unlocated in that it Downloaded by [University of Kent], [Vincent Miller] at 03:30 07 November 2012 On-line Culture 277 occupies a position in which we have a relation as subjects to the world of objects, and yet remain aside or estranged from the world. As Aho (2009) suggests, this gives modern technological subjects a limitless domain, generating a groundlessness and a homelessness in which it becomes difficult for humans to make any meaningful connections to any location. There is, however, a much more straightforward discussion that follows from this assertion—namely, the question of whether it matters where people ‘are’ in terms of their ethical behaviour. In contemporary times, this becomes important to consider given that physical and social presence have become decoupled as a result of the use of digital communications technologies. However, despite its contemporary relevance, the locatedness of ethics is, in itself, an old question. Aristotle, in The Nicomachean Ethics, contrasted ‘natural justice’, a universal abstract notion of justice and ethical behaviour that is applicable to all times and all places, with conventional justice, which was based in localised, legal and practical circumstances. He suggested that universal notions of justice and ethical behaviour gave way to particular legal and practical regimes tied to space. Aristotle also identified that proximity breeds familiarity and a sympathy for the other through identification. Thus he stated that ‘sufferings are pitiable when they appear to be close at hand’ (Aristotle, Rhetoric: 227 – 228 (2.8.1386a). Thus pity (used here akin to ‘sympathy’) is constrained by both space and time. In the 18th century, Adam Smith, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, noted that the presence of others is indispensible in moral behaviour, as we need the ‘mirror’ afforded to us by the eyes of others to gain a certain reflective capacity with regard to our own actions. Seeing the eyes of others and, really, seeing ourselves reflected in the eyes of others as a mirroring gaze, for Smith, is the only way we can scrutinise our own conduct. Without this ‘looking glass’ of the gaze involved with the presence of others, we risk becoming overselfish (Smith, 1759/1976; Paganelli, 2010). Yet it is the 20th-century ethical philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1969; Levinas and Nemo, 1985) who has perhaps gone furthest in developing the argument that ethical behaviour is born out of the concrete, embodied situation of person-toperson contact and not abstract or universal principles. Similarly to Heidegger, he sees the contemplation of the object as a part of a general forgetting of being within modern culture, but as a post-holocaust philosopher, Levinas critiqued Heidegger by arguing that ethics, and not knowledge of being, should be the primary concern of philosophy, and thus explicitly tied ethics and being (Manning and Sheffler, 1993),. Levinas does this by placing the face-to-face encounter with another person, and not an encounter with the world, as the first and primary human encounter. It is this intersubjective encounter, inevitably an ethical encounter, which, for Levinas, is constitutive of the subject. It is constitutive of the subject in that (similarly to Adam Smith), Levinas suggests that being is located in the focus of the other’s gaze. That gaze in itself indicates that one has a presence in the world with others who are fundamentally different from oneself. This difference is encapsulated in the concept of ‘Other’ because Levinas characterises the Other as fundamentally unknowable and infinite, something that escapes any attempt at containment or categorisation available to the subject. For Levinas, our being is constituted in this encounter with something that cannot be reduced, contained or fully comprehended. In many ways, the encounter with the other is an encounter with something greater than oneself. Such an encounter interrupts 278 Vincent Miller Downloaded by [University of Kent], [Vincent Miller] at 03:30 07 November 2012 our consciousness by making us realise that we are not alone, that we share the world and that our freedoms are thus limited (Manning and Sheffler, 1993; Davis, 1996). Thus, the face-to-face encounter with the other is, for Levinas, constitutive of human existence, but this existence is also tied to an ethical responsibility for that other. It is a fundamentally ethical encounter because the physical presence of the other through ‘face’ addresses or calls the subject . . . makes demands of it One can say that the face is not ‘seen’. It is what cannot become a content which your thought would entail; it is uncontrollable, it leads you to beyond . . . but the relation to the face is straightaway ethical. The face is what one cannot kill (Levinas, 1985, p. 87). For Levinas, ‘face’ itself is transcendent, but it is ultimately tied to the presence of the bodily face, focused on ‘the face’ itself and the eyes, but also inclusive of the body as part of ‘face’ more generally. The face is the exteriority of the other and separates humans from the world of objects, and Levinas sees the face as signifying an order of responsibility for the other in the subject, not in the sense of a reciprocal responsibility (as in I feel that the other is responsible for me as well), but an unconditional one on the part of the subject The first word of the face is ‘thou shalt not kill’. It is an order. There is a commandment in the appearance of the face, as if a master spoke to me (Levinas and Nemo, 1985, p. 89). I analyse the interhuman relationship as if, in proximity with the Other— beyond the image I make of myself of the other man—his face, the expressive in the Other (and the whole human body is in this sense more or less face), were that ordains me to serve him (Levinas and Nemo 1985: 97 In this respect, this encounter, the face-to-face encounter, is the very foundation of sociality (Bergo 1999). Again, this encounter is ethical because the concrete, embodied nature of person-to-person contact comes with a choice: we can either accept this responsibility for the other or be violent towards them. Thus, it is this proximal, embedded encounter, not abstract contemplation, which inherently and necessarily creates the possibility for ethics. In short, faces matter; being together matters. Mediated Presence and the Other So what happens when we are not together? How do we encounter others when they are not physically present but present through media? This is an important question given that modernity and modern communications technology have not only brought expanded spatial relations, but have exposed us to people and worlds of which we would otherwise have no knowledge. As Silverstone (2002) suggested, through electronic media, others have a constant presence in our everyday lives, but how they appear to us, and how we encounter them, are moral and ethical questions that have been rarely asked. Those who have asked these questions have usually been concerned with the relationship between the depiction of calamities and the suffering of others in far-away lands, and audiences who experience such events through broadcast Downloaded by [University of Kent], [Vincent Miller] at 03:30 07 November 2012 On-line Culture 279 television (for examples, see Chouliaraki, 2008; Boltanski, 1999; Figenschou, 2011; Smelik, 2010). Being “a spectator of calamities taking place in another country” Sontag (2003) writes, “is a quintessential modern experience” (Sontag, 2003, p. 16; quoted in Figenschou, 2011, p. 235), yet in the main, such experiences have little impact on the majority of viewers. The question here then becomes one of how people are ethically positioned with regard to the mediated suffering of others. The general answer here seems to be as ‘spectator’, in that one is ‘present to’ the suffering, but not ‘present with’ the suffering . . . it can be ignored, rejected or turned off. Through the broadcast screen, we are exposed to, but insulated from, the actual suffering (Smelik, 2010; Boltanski, 1999). Within this literature, the phrase ‘compassion fatigue’ (Moeller, 1999) is used to describe the prevailing indifference to such mediated experiences of suffering, where overexposure to such stimulus, combined with the feeling of an inability to have an impact or influence on the suffering, creates a distance between the suffering and the spectator. As a result, there is a strong hierarchical disposition towards proximity in mediated suffering, and horizons of care in mediated suffering still have a strong bias towards one’s locality and nation, as opposed to the global or cosmopolitan outlook possible through media (Chouliaraki, 2008). Boltanski (1999) thus suggests that we suffer from a ‘crisis of pity’ when it comes to the suffering of distant others. For Bauman (1993), the lack of an embodied presence is a fundamental difference between strangers in the city and strangers on the screen.15 Recalling Levinas, he argues that strangers in the city demand a response because of their physical and material presence. They need to be acknowledged and dealt with, and thus one is, as Levinas suggested, forced to make a choice: help, flee, or perhaps be violent. By contrast, strangers on the screen lose their embodied presence and in doing so they lose their substance and moral integrity, becoming mere disembodied, aestheticised surfaces and thus are open to be experienced as “objects of enjoyment” with “no strings attached” (Bauman, 1993, p. 178; Tester, 2001). Telemediated strangers therefore lack a presence that has substance. They only present aesthetics and thus can be denied a moral compulsion and can be encountered in purely instrumental terms. They can be switched off if upsetting, ignored or enjoyed. Silverstone (2006) similarly suggested that the mediated other’s moral presence is overdetermined by their physical absence. In that respect, the mediated face is optional; it makes no demands upon us because we have the power to switch it off and withdraw. While broadcasting is said to give a sense of distant presence that one might associate with a spectator position, socially networked digital media, through their fundamental condition of interactivity and connectedness, are said to provide a more ‘direct’ encounter with others: no broadcasters, no governments, thus very few intermediaries between persons. This provides a potential closeness and an intimacy, which can generate a proximity that can overcome that spectator position where we are potentially more ‘present with’ than ‘present to’ others, and thus can expand our horizons of care beyond the local and the particular to encompass the mediated both near and far (Smith 2000). This would lead to heightened capacities of intimacy, understanding, the finding of common ground, the formation of attachments and communities among strangers and the physically absent in a way not possible with broadcast media. Downloaded by [University of Kent], [Vincent Miller] at 03:30 07 November 2012 280 Vincent Miller Silverstone (2003) and Orgad (2007), however, explicitly question the assumption within much current work on on-line relationships that such technological capabilities naturally lead on to enhanced capacities for moral and ethical behaviour. Both authors point out that ‘connectedness’ may breed forms of intimacy and closeness, but that this does not necessarily lead to a greater sense of responsibility, morality or recognition. This is seen in the work of Turkle (2011), Baron (2008) and Harper (2010). All demonstrate how social isolation can be considered endemic to contemporary experiences of social connectedness through networked digital technologies. Similarly, both Silverstone (2003) and Orgad (2007) suggest that the large body of work conceptualising ‘digital community’ derives in the main from a narcissistic discourse of the self and relationships built around the instrumental needs of the self. This is demonstrated in the use of terms such as ‘personal community’, ‘network’ and ‘the community of me’. Such conceptualisations of ‘community’ have no basis in a disposition or responsibility towards others or the Other, but, at best, rely on a premise of mutual instrumentalism through notions of ‘reciprocity’ and ‘exchange’, which are easily problematised through critical analysis. For example, Orgad’s (2005) empirical work on on-line communities of breast cancer sufferers demonstrated that camaraderie and care on these sites were based on reciprocity, as opposed to responsibility. Those within these communities who disagreed with prevailing views, or who had little to offer, were often rejected or marginalised. Such findings put into question the idea that ‘sharing’ on-line, even in seemingly intimate and emotional contexts, necessarily leads to ‘caring’ or acts of moral or ethical responsibility or obligation: fundamentally important aspects of ‘community’ as it is commonly understood. This is not to say that these cannot exist on-line, but that it is important to question if they do and how they are manifested, and not to assume that connection, interactivity and the technical ability to ‘share’ necessarily evidence (or necessarily lead to) such behaviour. Indeed, as was demonstrated in the beginning of this paper, there is a great deal happening on-line suggesting that it does not. Conclusion Modern communications technology has the ability to remove many of the restrictions related to physical distance from our social life. Yet distance is not only a material or geographical matter; it is also a social and ethical one. It takes more than technology to overcome social and moral distances (Silverstone, 2003). As we have seen, in many respects, technology can even be used to create further social and ethical distances within a context of communicative proximity. We live in a technological culture where the distinction between absence and presence is becoming increasingly complicated through the use of communications technologies. If we accept the premise that the way we behave towards each other and care for each other is in some manner affected by our presence or proximity towards each other, then a situation in which the distinction between absence and presence is undermined poses a potential ethical problem in that our spheres of influence and interaction with others or our social presences, are no longer contiguous with our horizons of care, feelings of ethical responsibility, or physical presence. In this paper, I have suggested that this problem of presence can be articulated in two ways. First, on-line life exaggerates the metaphysical conceptualisation of Downloaded by [University of Kent], [Vincent Miller] at 03:30 07 November 2012 On-line Culture 281 presence upon which modern conceptions of being-in-the-world are based. This ultimately presents the world to us in instrumental terms, which, in terms of ethics, means that beings in the world are approached nihilistically: primarily as things to be used. Our use of technology merely intensifies this process, which ultimately Enframes social life itself, objectifying and instrumentalising human relations. Secondly, I argued that the material, bodily, face-to-face presence of others is the essence of ethical social encounter and the feeling of responsibility towards others. Mediated interaction moves us into a disembodied encounter where the other loses ‘face’ and substance, and therefore an ethical or moral compulsion. In both cases, metaphysical presence encourages us to objectify others and this arguably means that our sense of moral and ethical responsibility to others is weakened in favour of a subject-centred, instrumental way of being. This creates a fundamental contradiction in contemporary culture, what I call a ‘crisis of presence’, in which we live in a world where we are increasingly connected and where our social horizons, interactions, influences and presences are less and less spatially limited, but our horizons of care or responsibility to others are still very much based on physical proximity. This disjuncture is becoming increasingly evident in a number of social problems within digital culture as society now starts to struggle with the ‘real world’ consequences of on-line behaviour and a tendency to objectify mediated others. Examples such as on-line suicides, trolling, flaming and cyberbullying were used here as illustrative of such objectifying, instrumental tendencies in on-line life.16 A critical evaluation of on-line behaviour here was intended to highlight the fact that we need to come to terms with the potential moral and ethical consequences of our changing presence if we are going to continue to invest more of our social, economic and political lives in technologies that decouple physical and social presence. As we have seen, technology and the expanding spatial scale of life in contemporary capitalism have given the ability to move us away from the ethical realm of responsibility and care into a realm of abstraction. This inevitably moves responsibility for interpersonal behaviour from embodied humans to the abstract principles of state and the law (Bauman, 1993) or other abstract systems (Giddens, 1991). In the largely unregulated, somewhat liminal, and increasingly important, sphere of on-line social life, this has generally meant a push towards more formal regulation of interpersonal behaviour. If we wish to avoid this trend, and perhaps even if we do not, the challenge for networked humanity is to recognise and resist the tendency towards abstraction and metaphysically inspired instrumentalism inherent in our cultural tendencies and use of technology. Here, two possibilities exist. On the one hand, we can, as Silverstone (2003) suggests, strive towards the creation of ‘proper distance’ in our ethical behaviour towards mediated others. To retool our horizons of care and responsibility in a way that retains the compulsion to care for the other, which emerges from a physical presence with the other. On the other hand, we can strive to change the nature of technologically mediated encounter away from mathematically reductionist interfaces to ones that better reveal humanity, expression and individuality (Lanier, 2010). Indeed, we can even attempt to increase a sense of embodied presence and proximity through the creation of more sensuous digital encounters—for example, through haptic technologies (Boothroyd, 2009). Such efforts could move some way towards re-establishing a 282 Vincent Miller link between physical and social presence and bring ethical encounter back into mediated communications. Acknowledgements Downloaded by [University of Kent], [Vincent Miller] at 03:30 07 November 2012 The author would like to thank Johnny Ilan, Anne Alwis, two anonymous referees and the hillside behind Rutherford College at the University of Kent, for assistance in the completion of this paper. Notes 1. It is important to state early on that the position put forward is not that information technologies cause unethical behaviour. Reasons for these behaviours can, and should be, seen as complex. I suggest that ethical behaviour results from certain ways of being present and that these are changed as we live more and more of our lives through the medium of communications technologies. 2. I am using the word ‘presence’ here in a similar manner to Gumbrecht (2004). He suggests that Heidegger’s use of ‘being’ and his use of ‘presence’ are interchangeable. I agree with this and use them interchangeably in this essay. 3. In the 2006 Nikki Catsouras case, Miss Catsouras died in a high-speed collision with a California highway toll booth. Grisly accident scene photographs had been leaked into the Internet, which were then posted on fake Myspace pages in her name and even sent to parents and family members via e-mail by several sources. 4. “Hostile intensions characterised by words of profanity, obscenity, and insults that inflict harm to a person or and organisation” (Alonzo and Aiken, 2004: 205). 5. For example, in 2012, a German model, Claudia Boerner, subsequent to an appearance on a reality television programme (‘The Perfect Dinner’), received a barrage of abuse via social media and e-mail to the point that she took her own life. 6. There is a big discrepancy among teens and adults in this study. For example, 20 per cent of teenagers, vs 5 per cent of adults, categorised their overall experience of behaviour on SNSs as ‘mostly unkind’. 7. The term ‘deindividuation’ is used by psychologists to describe a situation where individuals, usually involved in groups and involving a certain degree of anonymity, lose their sense of individuality and thus personal responsibility for their actions, allowing them to engage in behaviour they would not otherwise. 8. Castellà et al. (2000) found that anonymity is not the determining factor in on-line abuse that is commonly assumed and suggest that “uninhibited behaviour is not then an inevitable consequence of anonymity, but instead depends on whether or not it forms part of the group norms” (Castellà et al., 2000, p. 144). 9. That is not to say that civility, kindness, affection and many other positive human interactions do not also exist, but to suggest that these more negative aspects are largely ignored within social science research, despite such behaviour being somewhat endemic. 10. The key exceptions here are Silverstone, 2007; Ploug, 2009; and Willson, 2012. 11. Dasein is usually translated as ‘being-there’, ‘presence’ or even ‘unfolding existence’. Heidegger uses Dasein (along with being-in the-world) to describe the human condition of consciousness emerging from a living relationship with the world, while at the same time possessing an awareness of one’s own existence and the finiteness of it. 12. These potentials are of course part of the optimism behind the potential of a revival of a ‘public sphere’ on on-line contexts as well. 13. The cybersexual encounter perhaps best sums up this relationship. On the one hand, this is very much an encounter rooted in the needs of the body and may well involve stimulation of the senses through the viewing of erotic materials; on the other, several studies suggest that such encounters are primarily experienced through imagination, idealisation and self-projection (Döring, 2000; Ross, 2005; Ben Ze’ev, 2004). 14. Statements such as “UNIX expresses too large a belief in discrete abstract symbols and not enough of a belief in temporal, continuous, nonabstract reality” (Lanier, 2010, p. 11) seem an almost On-line Culture 283 Downloaded by [University of Kent], [Vincent Miller] at 03:30 07 November 2012 logical extension of Heidegger’s critique of metaphysical presence in modern philosophy into the digital age. 15. The stranger here can be used as a substitution for the other, in the sense that the stranger refers to a figure of ambiguity, one who upsets cognitive, aesthetic and moral boundaries which separate ‘us’ from ‘them’ or ‘we from ‘they’, thus strangers cannot fully be identified. The stranger is a continuous problem in modern (and particularly urban) life and produces a moral and ethical indecisiveness in our relationship to the other (Silverstone, 2006; see also Bauman, 1993). 16. 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