Digital Stockholm Syndrome in the Post-Ontological Age
Digital Stockholm Syndrome in the Post-Ontological Age (2016) examines the relationship between contemporary post-humanist or in-humanist theory and the discourses that promote digital technologies and data-centric practices. Jarzombek situates both domains within a broader intellectual context that questions traditional conceptions of the human and that draws on ideas associated with the ontological turn. Jarzombek hypothesizes that this convergence has produced a shared commitment to an ontologically diminished human subject and has encouraged the rise of what Jarzombek characterizes as a new mode of being formed within an algorithmic and computational milieu. [6]
The book proposes that ubiquitous digital systems have reshaped understandings of self-hood by converting individual activity into continuous data streams. He refers to these streams as an individual’s “ontic exhaust,” a term intended to describe the traces generated by routine digital interaction. In this account, practices such as commercial data collection, algorithmic modelling, and global positioning give rise to an environment in which data about the individual becomes indistinguishable from the individual as such. Jarzombek connects this development to what he calls an “animated ontology,” in which distinctions between subject and object weaken under conditions of pervasive computational mediation. [6]
He contends that constant location tracking, satellite navigation, and mobile connectivity shape a form of self-hood he calls the “being-global.” This form of being is defined by a worldwide system that records and redistributes digital traces. The resulting conditions, he argues, influence both popular and scholarly approaches to ontology and contribute to the adoption of computational methods across the humanities. [6]
