Thesis (Ph.D.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Arts - Department of English

The arrival of social media technology in the hands of the people has caused tremendous change in the meaning of cultural production. It is an indivisible part of the wider technological revolution in means of communication the world is currently witnessing. This research investigates the coworking of the new medium with user in terms of their production of new configurations of major philosophical paradigms like form and content, time, the body and the real. The latter are undergoing major changes as human reality and existence are being intercepted by the virtual medium. To explore this cultural turning-point, the study delves back in the epistemological context of origin of today{u2019}s new technologies, namely cybernetics, to examine their techno-epistemic raison-d{u2019}être. They grew out of a world that found Cartesian structures of thought to be existentially lacking. They dreamt an alternative body free of the confinements of its biology and its spatio-temporal existence. This transcendental way of ordering the world today culminates in the forms of social media we prod-use. The research, in its analyses of the new configurations of digital form and content, time, the body and overall reality, proceeds by investigating a selection of culinary posts, memes and photo-posing in viral pictures as examples of contemporary cultural forms navigating speeded screen culture

Issued also as CD