The Digital and the Human: A Prospectus for Digital Anthropology

Abstract

The digital should and can be a highly effective means for reflecting upon what it means to be human, the ultimate task of anthropology as a discipline. To date, most of the literature on the revolutionary impact and potential of the digital has tended to follow Hart in focusing upon the abstract end of the equation. The digital extends the possibilities previously unleashed by money, equally the positive and the negative. A critical contribution of digital technologies is the way they exacerbate but also reveal those contradictions. Anthropologists need to be involved right across this spectrum, from J. Karanovic’s analysis of those involved in the creation of digital technology to F. Ginsburg’s work on those who place emphasis upon their consequences. The digital came into its own at the tail end of a fashion in academia for the term postmodern, which celebrated resistance to authority of all kinds but especially the authority of discourse.

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