Ataya: HUMA Interdisciplinary Seminar Series

Speaker: Vito Laterza  (University of Agder, Norway) 

Simulated bodies: a postphenomenological analysis of the digital human in the era of surveillance capitalism 

Please read paper for discussion: Laterza, V. (2021) 'Human-technology relations in an age of surveillance capitalism: Towards an anthropological theory of the dialectic between analogue and digital humanity'. EtnoAntropologia, 9(2): 59-74. 

Bio: Vito Laterza is associate professor in the Department of Global Development and Planning, University of Agder, and leader of the focus area Sustainability, Digitalisation of Communication of the Centre for Digital Transformation (CeDiT) at the same university. He is currently work package leader in the Horizon Europe project ReMeD - Resilient Media for Democracy in the Digital Age (2023-2026) and sits on the international editorial board of HUMA, University of Cape Town. 

Vito is an anthropologist, development scholar and political analyst and has been studying human-technology and human-environment relations for more than fifteen years. His approach is characterised by a systemic integration of ethnography, macro-level structural analysis, and epistemological & reflexive inquiry, in the tradition of “big ideas” social science and social theory. You can read his recent work on the philosophical anthropology of human-technology relations here, here and here. His full academic profile is available here. 

Topic: In this seminar, I build upon and expand some of the key insights of the postphenomenological paradigm in science and technology studies (e.g. Ihde 1990, Rosenberger & Verbeek 2015, Van Den Eede et al. 2017) in order to understand some of the features of the body in the contemporary context of accelerated digitalisation and surveillance capitalism. While the four types of human-technology relations posited by Don Ihde (1990) in his earlier work remain relevant today (embodiment relations, hermeneutic relations, alterity relations, background relations), I propose adding one more to the mix: design relations.  

A key shift in the field of human-technology relations in recent years has been to move away from analyses that underplay or outrightly ignore the role surveillance capitalists, technology developers and their platforms play in shaping human agency – and these neglected dimensions I believe are well captured by a focus on design relations. From the social media avatars we curate to the digital versions of ourselves that are targeted by online advertisers and political campaigners, our digital doubles are co-designed by often invisible interactions between our agency and that of technology developers and platforms.  

A key phenomenon in these processes is a sort of post-Lacanian digital mirror stage, which sees the emergence of the digital double from a dual process of separation from the analogue (pre-digital and non-digital) body and identification with it. Finally, the bodies produced by this mirroring, are captured in a complex network of simulations run by technologists and platforms in order to socially engineer physical humans that will adhere, as closely as possible, to the parameters of the simulations. The main goal of this system is to produce ever more accurate predictions about human behaviour that can be bought and sold in surveillance capitalist markets (Zuboff 2019). 

A focus on simulated bodies also puts into question older understandings of agency and freedom that continue to hold sway in academic and public debates, but do not fully take into account the deep transformations in the socio-technical arrangements that sustain contemporary human life. 

How Ataya works: One presenter and their work – in exchange with the audience. Each Ataya session engages with selected work by the presenter (a text, artwork, performance, even food). The presenter introduces their work and grounds the subsequent discussion with the participants. For best engagement, we recommend participants to view the work (made available in advance on our website) before the session. More on the Ataya Series