Identity, Difference, and Social Technology

Abstract

This chapter explores theories of the social as they are taken up into the designs of contemporary digital technologies. Following a brief overview of thinkers and theories of the social who have been influential upon data structures, algorithms, and human-computer interaction design, the chapter proposes a general framework for thinking about future sociality. This framework has three components, each premised on a different account of the conceptual relationship between identity and difference: sociality as political relation, as analytic or mereological relation, and as mathematical or infinitesimal relation.