ABSTRACT
Digital technologies play a fundamental, indeed ubiquitous, role in coordinating online communications and software-driven information connections across the planet. In the critiques developed by media critics who lament that digital technologies are sabotaging social relationships, one can find an inadequate account of the relation between identity and the social organization of communication. The individual self appears as largely passive in relation to digital technologies – hiding behind email, tweets or Facebook posts. In order to consider the kinds of institutional transformation created by the advent of digital technologies and artificial intelligence, it is helpful at the outset to note that communications are of many sorts. These range from personal conversations and conversing at small gatherings to letters and postcards to radio and television to SMS, email and social media. A key aspect of all social interaction is learning how to project a self-image which is more or less appropriate to both the expectations of others and the contextual experience.
