TY - JOUR

T1 - On the Mythical Atmosphere of the Digital World

AU - Milani, Benedetta

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2022, St. Petersburg Polytechnic University of Peter the Great. All rights reserved.

PY - 2022

Y1 - 2022

N2 - Can the digital world – a world considered to be emerging and depending on the most sophisticated and modern technologies – be compared with the mythical world? And would this comparison be productive for an analysis of the forms of the digital world? In the article an affirmative answer will be given to those questions and the comparison between the mythical and the digital will be developed around two key points: the absence of contingency and the immersive character of those worlds. The exclusion of contingency resolves in a deterministic way to be in the world and is strongly connected with the social necessity – present in the mythical as in the digital world – to perform predictions and preempt the future; the immersive dimension contributes to the collapsing of the distance between the subject and her objects, taking away from the human subject the privileged role that modern thought had given it. These features, which inform the digital world, determine its mythical atmosphere and also the different positioning of the human subject within this world. Given this theoretical horizon, the article will argue that in the digital world another form of rationality is involved than the logical-scientific thinking of modernity. This digital rationality, close to mythical rationality, constitutes and thinks the subject differently from the modern perspective and shows other possibilities for constructing and understanding the real.

AB - Can the digital world – a world considered to be emerging and depending on the most sophisticated and modern technologies – be compared with the mythical world? And would this comparison be productive for an analysis of the forms of the digital world? In the article an affirmative answer will be given to those questions and the comparison between the mythical and the digital will be developed around two key points: the absence of contingency and the immersive character of those worlds. The exclusion of contingency resolves in a deterministic way to be in the world and is strongly connected with the social necessity – present in the mythical as in the digital world – to perform predictions and preempt the future; the immersive dimension contributes to the collapsing of the distance between the subject and her objects, taking away from the human subject the privileged role that modern thought had given it. These features, which inform the digital world, determine its mythical atmosphere and also the different positioning of the human subject within this world. Given this theoretical horizon, the article will argue that in the digital world another form of rationality is involved than the logical-scientific thinking of modernity. This digital rationality, close to mythical rationality, constitutes and thinks the subject differently from the modern perspective and shows other possibilities for constructing and understanding the real.

KW - Contingency

KW - Digital World

KW - Immersivity

KW - Mythical World

KW - Symbolic Form

KW - Cultural studies

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85177853912&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.48417/technolang.2022.04.03

DO - 10.48417/technolang.2022.04.03

M3 - Journal articles

AN - SCOPUS:85177853912

VL - 3

SP - 21

EP - 29

JO - Technology and Language

JF - Technology and Language

SN - 2712-9934

IS - 4

ER -