As we sit down to write this book, we will have lived through 26 years of the World Wide Web —that accessible information space which has made the human potential of the internet come alive for so many of us in the developed world. In that 26-year period, we have seen profound changes in the way that we experience everyday life thanks to an ever-increasing reliance on digital technologies to fulfil our daily wants and needs.
As the Web has developed, we have seen a convergence of three principal technologies (computers, the internet and mobile telephony) and a move from limited desk and text-based interactions to more sophisticated and mobile forms of perpetual contact which allow us to exchange all kinds of media from synchronous text to photographs, synchronous video and audio clips. internet use has become a ubiquitous, pervasive and sometimes invisible part of our everyday lives being accessed through all kinds of digital devices from satnavs1 and games consoles to tablet computers, mobile phones and smart watches. At the same time, our internet-enabled devices have come to play an increasing part in shaping our experience of the world around us, how we express ourselves in daily life and how we relate to one another.
As well as providing us with access to a seemingly endless source of information and entertainment media, the persistent digital connections of the internet and World Wide Web have allowed us to inhabit new digital spaces that exist alongside the physical realities of our everyday lives. We can now continue relationships across the planet via applications like Skype , social networking sites like Facebook and apps like Whatsapp, whatever time of day or night. We can connect with people we have never met before through global websites like LinkedIn , Twitter and YouTube or meet nearby strangers through apps like Tinder or Meetup. As well as the obvious technical achievements that have made this possible, we have developed new ways of behaving and representing ourselves through these technologies in order to harness the interactional potential of these online and mobile spaces. Central to this process has been a willingness to open our lives up to the public gaze of the internet and to invest in digital surrogates of ourselves in order to capitalise on these new social opportunities.
It would be wrong to suggest that everything about this digital revolution has been driven by pure and transparent intentions however. These same technologies now provide unparalleled access to our personal data for promoting the commercial interests of business and as conduits for wholesale government surveillance while at the same time providing new opportunities for Cybercrime through the misuse of that same data. Increasingly our digital surrogates are involuntary and invisible aspects of our everyday lives with our personal data being captured constantly during Web searches, digital conversations and as a result of travel and purchase decisions made with credit and store cards. This data forms the basis of new invisible digital selves which now help to define and control our view of the outside world by limiting our access to knowledge and determining potential avenues for action in the online and offline worlds. In this book, we explore just how our evolving relationship with internet-enabled digital devices has changed and is changing the experience of being ourselves and our relationships with others in the midst of everyday life.
As digital technologies become ever-present witnesses and accomplices to the intimate aspects of our lives, they influence how we develop as individuals and how our lives play out, inviting new life opportunities, risks and dilemmas. In this book, we also consider the role of digital technologies throughout our lives and ask what part they play in relation to different life stages , from childhood, through midlife to old age and death ?
Our new digital selves are not automatic, effortless reflections of our inner selves. They take a lot of upkeep, competing for our attention alongside the immediate demands of everyday life. Negotiating the simultaneous social expectations of our online and offline worlds has become a new life skill, and in order to achieve a reasonable balance, we have had to redefine some of the cultural norms of self-presentation and invent new social practices. Perhaps one of the most visible of these new practices at present is the act of taking a ‘selfie’, that is taking a photograph of yourself with a mobile phone or tablet in order to share it via social media . Selfies have evolved from being a mostly teenage activity to the new lingua franca of social media . Taking selfies is almost ubiquitous among younger people (aged from 18 to 24) with active selfie-takers sharing between 3 and 20 selfies per day (Katz and Crocker 2015). Although the reasons for taking selfies change with age, it has become a common activity for all ages in possession of a smartphone (Dhir et al. 2016).
Here, the challenges of maintaining a digital self are sometimes brought into stark relief. In a search for more authentic and appealing selfies , some teenagers are going to extreme lengths, deliberately taking photographs of themselves in dangerous and unusual situations. In June 2017, a young Indian girl called Priti Pise drowned while taking an extreme selfie from Mumbai’s breakwater when a massive wave engulfed her and carried her out to sea (Haines 2017).
At the same time, selfies are being used to convey feelings of allegiance and communal commitment through social media . In March 2014, Cancer Research UK decided to run a fund-raising campaign in which they encouraged Twitter users to show their support for the cause by posting their own selfies using the hashtag #nomakeupselfie. In the space of a week, they had raised £8 million and were able to fund ten clinical trials which would not have happened otherwise (Miranda and Steiner 2014).
A year later in March 2015, the National Gallery in London, the home of the self-portrait, decided to ban the use of selfie sticks2 because they were disrupting other people’s enjoyment of the paintings (Weaver 2015). Twenty-six years ago, this kind of behaviour was unheard of even though personal photography was well established as a pastime, so what has changed and how do we make sense of these changes? Technology and social media companies obviously promote such opportunities as boons to society while news media typically express some degree of moral panic over such activities, highlighting the addictive nature of social media practices and the narcissistic tendencies of those who engage in them (Murphy 2015). Such reports will often use psychological research to back up their views (e.g. Fox and Rooney 2015). In this book, we attempt to move beyond these good/bad judgements of new technology and towards an understanding ‘from the inside’ that acknowledges the motivations and experiences of those using these technologies and the social meanings that arise within these new mobile and online contexts.
Our Evolving Relationship with Digital Technology
The first personal computers started to arrive in people’s homes in the mid-1970s. At that time, they were mostly office machines and required some programming knowledge and direct text entry of commands in order to operate them. When graphical user interfaces were first developed in the 1980s, our opportunities for interacting with computers developed further through mouse-based ‘point and click’ options and game-based interactions. It was onl...