Theses and Dissertations Collection

A plethora of web-enabled technologies have become essential for users wanting to participate in the Information Age. However, this participation puts the agency of individual user into question. Firstly, utilizing Martin Heidegger’s concepts of authenticity, the spectrum of individual agency can be explored via a memetic process of: copying the original, transforming it, and a recombination of both. Secondly, the technology itself conceals many layers of agency, the participants involved, and their motivations. By examining how web-enabled technologies are used; these layers become visible. Thirdly, these technologies are a prosthetic to augment incomplete lives. This prosthetic is examined in both digital and physical forms. The digital is examined as the design of the code, the content in the database, and the logic of algorithms. The physical prosthetic is the user interface to the technologies. Each new web-enabled product or service, promises technology even greater conveniences, community, and gained authenticity. This examination reminds users, to pause, and then consider their own role before willingly relinquishing more of their digital identities and individual agency.