Digital Identities in China: An Introduction

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Notes

1 Many experts, both of AI and of foreign policy, agree that the development of AI will be a defining struggle in the coming decades. The Age of AI: And Our Human Future (New York: Brown, Little and Company, 2021), is a great example, it was written by one foreign policy expert and two AI experts: Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, and Daniel Huttenlocher. Other books such as Kai-Fu Lee, AI Super-Powers (New York: Harper Business, 2021) and Mustafa Suleyman and Michael Bhaskar, The Coming Wave (New York: Crown, 2023) provide similar discussions.

2 For more on the impact of social media on elections and international relations see Christopher Wylie, Mindf*ck (New York: Random House, 2019) or David Sumpter, Outnumbered (New York: Bloomsbury Sigma, 2018). On his website Jonathan Haidt has collected a number of scientific studies linking the increase in social media use to metal health problems—including especially depression, anxiety, and suicide (https://jonathanhaidt.com/social-media/; for another, earlier and related study, see https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2011.300608). A more general and more lengthy analysis of the impact social media and various other AI technologies have had on nearly every aspect of our lives can be found in Shoshana Zuboff The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (New York: PublicAffairs, 2020).

3 Nicholas Carr, The Shallows (New York: WW Norton & Company, 2010); Sherry Turkle, Alone Together (New York: Hachette Book Company, 2017); Roberto Simanowski, Facebook Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018); Hans-Georg Moeller and Paul J. D’Ambrosio, You and Your Profile (New York: Columbia University Press, 2021).

4 Jill Walker-Rettberg, Seeing Ourselves Through Technology (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Sherry Turkle, Alone Together (New York: Hachette Book Company, 2017); Roberto Simanowski, Facebook Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018).

5 Moeller and D’Ambrosio, See You.

6 For a more detailed account, see, Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972) and Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013).

7 These issues have been the focus of much research, see, for example, Niklas Luhmann, Theory of Society (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013); Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000); and Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013). A shorter study is the influential paper by Zygmunt Bauman, “From Pilgrim to Tourist—or a Short History of Identity,” in Questions of Cultural Identity, ed. Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay. (New York: Sage, 1996),

8 For a more detailed discussion, see Putnam Bowling Alone or Bauman “From Pilgrim to Tourist.

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Notes on contributors

Paul J. D’Ambrosio

Paul J. D’Ambrosio is a Fellow of the Institute of Modern Chinese Thought and Culture, professor of Chinese philosophy and Dean of the Center for Intercultural Research, all at East China Normal University in Shanghai, China. He is also a fellow of the Ma Yifu academy at Zhejiang university. In addition, he is founder of the “Collaborative Learning” 四海為學 Project. Works by D’Ambrosio include 真假之间 (Kong Xuetang Press, 2020), You and Your Profile (Columbia University Press, 2021) and Genuine Pretending (Columbia University Press, 2017), both with Hans-Georg Moeller, and Encountering China (Harvard University Press, 2018) with Michael Sandel. D’Ambrosio has also authored over a hundred articles, chapters, and reviews, and is translator of over a dozen books on Chinese philosophy.