Response to M. Shapiro’s “digital friction surfaces and new alterity formations”

Résumé

Shapiro’s provocation piece on digital infrastructures and their impact on alterity formations offers a stimulating framework to think about contemporary subjectivities. His notion of “friction surfaces” captures well the ways in which digital interfaces mediate connections between humans and systems. The observation that these data fragments can become self-referential and even autonomous raises important questions about agency and representation in digital environments.