> My own understanding of loneliness relied on a belief in solid, separate selves that he saw as hopelessly outmoded. In his worldview, everyone was perpetually

> My own understanding of loneliness relied on a belief in solid, separate selves that he saw as hopelessly outmoded. In his worldview, everyone was perpetually slipping into each other, passing through ceaseless cycles of transformation; no longer separate, but interspersed. Social groups, cultures, parents and children, friends. All of these concepts rely on the concept of a connection between solid selves, that allow for the passage of data/information from self to self. The resulting construction is called a culture, a social group, a relationship. It only exists because there exists other conceptual constructs that serve as comparative references. > Perhaps he was right. We aren’t as solid as we once thought. We are embodied but we are also networks, living on inside machines and in other people’s heads; memories and data streams. We are being watched and we do not have control. People's memories and imaginations, these are subject to play and replay, and can result in both (il)logical and (ir)rational inference, independently or socially established. These have been philosophical questions long before they became digital.