ABSTRACT
In this chapter we look at how the transformation that has begun to take place with the digital was already anticipated in the intellectual atmosphere of the XXth century. We show this specifically with the thought of three philosophers, each of whom identified concerns that are central to our changing worldview today: Benjamin, in his preoccupation with the loss of the aura in the object of art, and the diminishment of the mimetic faculty; Wittgenstein, in his discovery of a rhizomatic method of writing philosophy and his exploration of the phenomenon of seeing aspects; and Deleuze, in the ontology of immanence that he develops (with Guattari). The transformation in our mindset envisaged by these three thinkers involves a move away from a Parmenidean essentialist perspective towards a Heraclitean emphasis on change and process. It also makes possible a new relation of technology to loss and death, and modifies our conception of the paradoxical nature of the ontological centaur, as it brings those aspects of human experience once systematically marginalized in our over-identification with reason – sensibility, spontaneity, the emotions, etc. – to the center of our awareness, thus making possible the work anticipated by Ortega y Gasset for our contemporary age.
