Silicon Simulacra: Post-humans of the Machine Worlds

Virtual versions of everyone exist inside the two giant machines of the late modern age. In the datascape, the vast array of databases in which the electronic traces of our everyday lives are stored and analyzed, we appear as data profiles. In cyberspace, the worldwide computer network in which everyone can connect with every one else, we appear as cyber-personas. This speculative essay in social theory argues that both are hybrid entities – part human and part machine – and post-human forms of humans assimilated into machines. Ellis examines the data profile and cyber-persona separately—how each comes to be, how each represents us, and the opportunities and challenges each poses—and as similar phenomena. Humans provide the raw material for both, and each changes as we change in near real time. But each machine also shapes us in its terms. The data profile is a probabilistic portrait of our future behavior, conjured up by others to inform their decision-making; it’s an informational output. The cyber-persona is a pattern of our online connections, created as we present ourselves to and interact with others; it’s a network effect. Although based on us, neither looks like the continuous, whole and bounded self of the modern tradition. Rather, these post-human entities are contingent, relative and open to others. Since these hybrids are increasingly the forms in which we appear to others, we all have a stake in how these digital doppelgangers represent us.