As well as being a showcase of work, the idea behind this site is to share a storied life in the digital age - my life to be precise, as that’s the one I know best.
Across millennia of recorded history, the stories behind the lives of most individuals, with all the richness and insights they contain, have largely gone undocumented and unnoticed.
And yet, there is much we could learn from one another by understanding lived experiences in detail better. Technology gives us the means to do it. For example, it woud not have been possible to create this photo montage 35 years ago, before the arrival of the hard drive and Adobe Photoshop.
Global connectivity, online publishing and social media have created the opportunity to change that. But they’ve brought risks with them as well, the atomisation of the self - who we are fundamentally as individuals is up for grabs. Our activities, even our sense of self and who we are, are scattered across multiple apps and platforms today. The risk is that human lives become lived as digital operatives, with less mindful, coherent personal growth and shared visions and values that enrich us as a global community.
Various facets of human interaction are increasingly becoming fragmented. Human identity is becoming compartmentalised and converted into data, data that we don't necessarily own. Access to information is becoming dependent upon online subscriptions, hidden behind paywalls or simply not made available to ‘consumers’.
I feel strongly that human individuality and its uniqueness is not just an important point of difference for us as humans in the context of emerging AI, it’s our greatest asset and something to nourish and protect.
In the long arc of history, I believe this point in time when we are transitioning from ‘analogue’ to ‘digital’ by design and that’s playing out now across nearly every area of life, will be seen as pivotal.
When historians look back, how will they gather a sense of how human existence has been affected by this? How will we ever fully understand again, in a purely organic way, what it means to be human?
This is a narrative I am seeking to understand and to document.