Yuk Hui

  • YUK HUI
  • SYMPOSIUMS
    • Cybernetics for the 21st Century 2: Cybernetics to Come
    • Cybernetics for the 21st Century 1: Epistemological Reconstruction
    • Dialogues on Philosophy and Technology Research Seminars
    • Postmoderns and After? -40 Years after The Postmodern Condition
    • Towards a Techno-Ecology of Participation
    • 30 years after Les Immatériaux
    • Simondon and Digital Culture
  • TECH PROJECTS
  • ARTICLES
  • Books
    • Monographs
    • Anthologies
    • Edited Volumes
  • Media
    • Interviews
    • Press
  • English
    • English
    • 中文 (香港)

Yuk Hui

Digital Identity

June 17, 2009
Logic/Metadata/Philosophy/social network

Who am I? This is probably the first question of philosophy, to “know thyself”. This is a very complicated question, to say that I am a researcher, I am son of someone, I am an author of a particular book, I am black, it is a question of identity according to a certain social value I assign to myself or people assign to me, for example occupation, kinship, history, race. To say I am 15 years old, living in London is another thing which identifies my temporal and spatial existence in this world. Assume that you get all these information of someone, then you may have to ask what exactly is an identity of a person? Is there any ideality of identity in itself? By ideality, I mean a Platonian or Husserlian sense of the i-real abstract essence of an object. It is easy to say an identity is socially constructed, this can be true in certain aspect, but social constructivism is only possible on the fact that something is different, for example, different skin color, height, date of birth, etc. The fact, or categories of fact are what commonly understood as the essential properties of an identity. If this question is well posed, it can mean two things analytically, firstly is there any minimum number of attributes which are sufficient to be called the essence of identity, secondly is there any maximum number of attributes which are necessary to be called the essence of identity? There is a Kantian motive behind this question. In Logik, Kant specifies that the property of an object cannot be exhausted, it is infinitely derivable, and this probably finally leads to the frustrated assertion that the thing-in-itself is unknowable. If the question of identity can be described by some vocabularies is valid, and this as to be valid for now, otherwise we will face two even worse problems, firstly the insufficiency of language itself, secondly the effort of the government to exhaust all technique and technologies to determine the true “identity” of its citizen.

It is easy to have a postmodern critique on the concept of identity (being against becoming), essence (vs the problem of events), etc. But these critiques are actually very risky, since we are already in a world constituted by technological fact, which means the practice bear the constrain of quantity. This constrain of quantity also underlines the necessity of calculability. The technical tendency is not something one can choose, but one has to negotiate, while to negotiate means a limitation of negotiation space. If the postmodern critique is based on the negation of this technical tendency, it may fall into another nihilism. Heidegger is aware of this problem when he wrote “was ist metaphysik”, Heidegger wants to introduce “nothing” (das Nichits) as the foundation of metaphysics, while nothing specified by Heidegger is not the negation of being, rather it is where beings are from. This is not only a strategical critique of logic (apparently this article directs to Neo-Kantianism, or even more specifically, Logicians, that is why Carnap fired back by analyzing Heidegger’s writing in propositions to show that it is not making much sense), but also an affirmation the technical reason, something Heidegger calls destiny. (A deeper reading of Deleuze will attain another understanding of his favor of becoming, not as negation of being, but rather out of being)

This may already go too far 🙂 for the inquiry of digital identity. The current ongoing works on FOAF, VCard and other ontologies attempt to re-construct a digital identity from the fragmented “self” among the web. Consider when OpenID becomes popular (and I believe it will be), also OAuth, it is expected that it is very possible to unify the fragments by associating the unique ID with information on other websites. This is “of course” based on the assumption that the user is able to control the level of privacy, namely deciding if he/she wants to open up the his/her data to other social networking website. But the technological tendency qua innovative applications utilitizing these open stardard will finally make it mainstream. And at the time, the so called virtual reality, will collape. This is dangerous in several ways, I will try to re-interprete the notion of “virtual” in the next post.

Share this
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Whatsapp
  • Email

Recent Events

Post-West Symposium, National Taiwan University, 19 May 2025

Creativity and Organology, Taipei National University of the Arts, 15-16 May 2025

Theory Colloquium, Department of Comparative Literature, Cornell University, 18 April 2025

ICCIT Annual Lecture 2025, University of Toronto, 16 April 2025

Public Lecture, University of Glasgow, 13 March 2025

Seminar, Scottish Centre for Continental Philosophy/Dundee University, 12 March 2025

Lecture/Symposium, Congreso Futuro, Santiago de Chile, 13-18 January 2025

Public Lecture, University of Chile, 13 January 2025

Keynote Lecture, International Social Sciences Congress of the Faculty of Letters, University of Istanbul, 18-20 December 2024

Keynote Lecture, Annual Conference of East Asian Philosophy, Fukuoka University, 14-15 December 2024.

Symposium, University of Tokyo, 29-30 November 2024

Public Lecture, School of Art, Pekin University Beijing, 26 November 2024

Lectures,  Department of History of Science, Tsinghua University Beijing, 25 November 2024

Keynote Lecture, Simondon Conference, University of Lisbon, 11-13 November 2024

Symposium Derrida Studies in Asia, University of Tokyo, 28-29 September 2024

Public Lecture, Leeum Museum Seoul, 26 September 2024

Keynote Lecture, IV International City and Philosophy Congress, Jesuit University Ignatianum, 19-20 September 2024

Public Lecture, World Philosophy Congress/Filosofie sotto le stelle, 5 August 2024

Categories

Research Network for Philosophy and Technology

You might be interested in

Rhythm and Technics: On Heidegger’s Commentary on Rimbaud

Latest from Blog

Publication of Russian translation of Post-Europe (Moscow: Ad Marginem, 2025)

The Russian publisher Ad Marginem recently published the Russian translation of Yuk Hui’s Post-Europe, for more

Publication of bilingual pamphlet “Una revolució de les idees” (CCCB, 2025)

The Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) has recently published a bilingual pamphlet of Yuk

Publication of ARTE Y COSMOTÉCNICA (Caja Negra editora, 2025)

Spanish translation of Art and Cosmotechnics (ARTE Y COSMOTÉCNICA) is now published by Caja Negra editora.

Footprint’s special issue dedicated to Architecture and Cosmotechnics

Footprint—Delft Architecture Theory Journal dedicated a special issue (Vol.18 No.2) on the relation between Architecture and

Publication of Thinking at the Boundaries of Machines (在机器的边界思考)(Guangxi: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2025)

Publication of the Chinese anthology Thinking at the Boundaries of Machines (Guangxi Normal University Press 2025)

© 2020 - Digital Milieu | Yuk Hui. All Right Reserved.
Site Design by ein doughnut studio

  • YUK HUI
  • SYMPOSIUMS
    • Cybernetics for the 21st Century 2: Cybernetics to Come
    • Cybernetics for the 21st Century 1: Epistemological Reconstruction
    • Dialogues on Philosophy and Technology Research Seminars
    • Postmoderns and After? -40 Years after The Postmodern Condition
    • Towards a Techno-Ecology of Participation
    • 30 years after Les Immatériaux
    • Simondon and Digital Culture
  • TECH PROJECTS
  • ARTICLES
  • Books
    • Monographs
    • Anthologies
    • Edited Volumes
  • Media
    • Interviews
    • Press
  • English
    • English
    • 中文 (香港)

REVIEW / TRANSLATION / PUBLICATIONS / EVENTS