The Displaced Self

This book identities several varieties of digital displacement, focussing on the impact of these developments on our quality of life, our sense of wellbeing. During the course of the 21st century we have seen a profound change in human behaviour and experience through the intervening and changing effects of evolving digital technologies. This development is characterised by our psychologically spending more and more of our waking lives in places other than where our bodies are physically located. Prior to these changes, personhood was tied to being in a particular body, in a particular place, at a particular time.

The book examines this development and explores its ramifications for individual and social experiences, and for the sense of self, of being a person displaced into cyberspace. Because we retain our sense of being in our own body, although relocated to another place, when we feel technologically disembodied it is as if we have left our body behind, perhaps sitting in a train, a café, an armchair, or behind a familiar desk. We might be walking down a street, engaged with our mobile phone while following the stream of other pedestrians, with almost no attention devoted to our physical location. With the increased prevalence of various forms of VR, it is as if we have travelled, bodily as well as psychologically, to a different distant place, and even into a different body. This provides a unique perspective for understanding the impact and importance of technology-mediated change on our psychological and social lives.

John Waterworth is a consultant, writer and researcher. A central concern of his recent work is the actual and potential impact of information technology on quality of life, health and wellbeing. He holds a PhD in Experimental Psychology and is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Informatics, Umeå University, Sweden.