The situated self

At the end of the 1990s Philips, a consumer electronics company from the Netherlands, presented it technological vision of tomorrow`s world, called `Ambient Intelligence`. In this vision, networks of technology will be embedded into our everyday surroundings – hidden from view in our homes, our offices and even in public spaces. These networks will provide us with personalized services and information, adjusted to our individual wishes and needs, based on the context in which we find ourselves. What`s more, they will act proactively – they will not simply respond to a user`s wishes, but can `read` our needs and wants, and therefore even serve us with exactly the right information even before we knew we needed it. In this book Bibi van den Berg, a philosopher of technology, analyzes the Ambient Intelligence vision and its early manifestations, as these are coming into being today, and investigates what the impact of these technologies would be on the ways in which individuals interact with one another and with the technologies themselves. She describes the way in which Ambient Intelligence technologies will shape and change our identities – the ways in which we construct a sense of self, and express and experience that sense of self. About the author: Bibi van den Berg (1975) holds an MA and a PhD in philosophy of technology and works at the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Society (TILT) of Tilburg University. Her research interests include: the construction and expression of identities in relation to new technologies; privacy and identity in online environments and web 2.0; and social, legal and ethical issues raised by the advent of robotics.