Imagining the Self Through Cultural Technologies

The aim of this chapter is to understand how the imagination of the self is mediated by cultural technologies, showing how major new inventions (such as language, writing, digitization) qualitatively change the ways in which we imagine ourselves. First, the authors look at how technology can support cognition in general and imagination specifically, examining traditional technologies such as narrative (stories, novels, and films), which have long facilitated humans’ imagination of themselves and others. Second, the authors explore how digital technologies, especially online avatars, are used to open up spaces for imagining alternative lives and virtual selves. Finally, the authors focus on future possibilities for moving human imagination out of fixed narratives and off the screen into dynamic real-world avatars and cyborg bodies. They argue that cultural technologies are becoming increasingly powerful, enabling humans not only to imagine diverse potential selves but also to institute these potential selves in practice

Aesthetics · Art · Cognitive science · Digitization · Emerging technologies · Literature · Narrative · Sociology · Computer Science · Digital Games and Media · Innovative Human-Technology Interaction · Psychology · Virtual Reality Applications and Impacts · Culture · Essays · Imagination · Kultur · Kulturpsychologie · Psychological aspects

• Streams of fun and cringe

  Open Access•Erik Carlquist, Lin Prøitz et al.•Subjectivity•2019

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