Navigators or fishing spiders?

The paper proposes some considerations about how the new digital technologies influence our way of thinking, learning and communicating. The virtual reality determines a considerable modification of the quality of presence, which manifest itself through new ways of representing reality and establishing relationships. The author compares the Web to a "collective mind" and wonders about the vicissitudes of individual’s imaginative process in this actual age. Particular attention is given to the peculiarities of the relationships established through Facebook, and more generally to communication in a digital age, pointing out it’s lights and shadows. The central aspect highlighted, with special reference to new emerging pathologies, is the absence of the body in virtual relationships. The ability of returning to the body, embodying what has been experienced in the Web, causes that reflective moment which appears to be essential for the "soul-making" process. Only through integration of mind and body can we experience the Web as a living image of the collective unconscious that spreads out in the contemporary age, giving shape and meaning to what we experience in virtual reality.

Keywords: Digital, Web, image, body, Facebook, new pathologies, virtual relationships

Francesca Passerone, Navigatori o ragni pescatori? in "STUDI JUNGHIANI" 35-36/2012, pp 59-73, DOI: 10.3280/JUN2012-035004