Archive / Volume 6, Issue 3, July 2016

New Media and the Loss of Individual Sovereignty

Manahari Adhikari 1 *

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Abstract

This article explores the impact of new media on authentic existence. It argues that technology has reshaped humanity in inconceivable ways, but it is taking away individual sovereignty by facilitating and enhancing power for regimes both democratic and dictatorial. With its design and sophistication that make it possible to listen in on, record, and funnel content produced in the digital realm to locations of power,new media may lead contemporary society towards an era of centralized control and coercion. The likelihood of new media being used as an instrument of power, a devicefor monitoring the masses, begets an atmosphere of fear, which compromises cognitive habits, inhibits the capacity to engage society on a critical level,and gives birth to a culture of singularity. With our ontology reconstituted by the technological and with our growing reliance on new media,we are losing our authenticity assovereign individuals.

Keywords

(in) authentic existence identity monkey mind singularity subjectivity technoregime and techno-totalitarianism

License

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Article Type: Research Article

https://doi.org/10.29333/ojcmt/2561

Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies, Volume 6, Issue 3, July 2016, pp. 121-133

Published Online: 26 Jul 2016

Article Views: 955

Article Downloads: 469

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