Date: Wed, 20 Jul 94 16:12:20 PDT
From: RISKS Forum <risks@csl.sri.com>
Subject: RISKS DIGEST 16.26

RISKS-LIST: RISKS-FORUM Digest  Wednesday 20 July 1994  Volume 16 : Issue 26

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Date: Sat, 16 Jul 1994 14:09:31 -0700
From: Phil Agre <pagre@ucsd.edu>
Subject: The digital individual

An academic journal called _The Information Society_ has just published a
special issue (volume 10, number 2, April-June 1994) entitled "The Digital
Individual".  (I'm the issue's guest editor.)  It includes five articles whose
general theme is that people's activities increasingly cast "shadows" onto
the insides of computers.  As a result, the whole notion of a human individual
is beginning to change.  Everyone has their physical self and surroundings and
possessions, but they also have an elaborate digital aspect to their selves
which follows them around through life.  People use their digital shadows in
a variety of beneficial ways, for example in sending messages to mailing lists
like Risks, but they are often managed and controlled through their digital
shadows as well.  Since the outcome of this ambivalent situation is neither
all-good or all-bad, it helps to make distinctions and put things in contexts,
and that's what the articles in this special issue try to do.  If you would
like to see the full contents and abstracts for the special issue, send a
message that looks like this:

  To: rre-request@weber.ucsd.edu
  Subject: archive send tis-digital

Phil Agre, UCSD

    [Remember to sniff it out.  The shadow nose!  PGN]

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End of RISKS-FORUM Digest 16.26
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