Augmented Ontologies: The Question Concerning Digital Technology and Projectual Humanism

Abstract

The values of Western culture are conducive to spending a considerable amount of resources on the development of computer games, digital social networks, special effects for movies, et cetera (Bolter, 2003). With the increasingly more prominent role of digital media1 in the global economy as well as their progressively saturating involvement in social processes and practices, the study and development of digital technologies of representation and communication managed to attract a growing academic interest from a wide spectrum of disciplines. The specific objective of one of such disciplines, namely ‘digital media studies’, can be generally recognized as that of being able to understand and describe the role of the digital platform as a factor of socio-cultural change. This traditional humanistic purpose can be conveniently presented in the context of this introductory chapter as a twofold endeavor: 1. the achievement of a deeper awareness of the growingly influential role the digital medium in the obtaining, shaping, storing and sharing information and knowledge, and 2. the development of a closer understanding of the creative possibilities and expressive qualities of digitally mediated simulations. As will be discussed in the next two chapters, several approaches in the fields of media theory and philosophy of technology already identified the digital medium as a specific form of technical mediation.