No abstract

Increasingly, the lines of our lives are prescribed, mediated, drawn and knotted together by digital technologies. It has been argued that ‘digital footprints’, as a trail of user data points collected from online communities and networks, can assist in better understanding human behaviour and social interaction, initially focused on mainly real-time and retrospective analysis. In our attempts at sense-making of togetherness in a COVID-19/post-COVID-19 world, we believe it may be an oversimplification to conceptualise our daily data trails as ‘digital footprints’. The nature of our interaction with these technologies as well as their interaction with us have changed deeply ever since the rapid growth of digital connectivity. The character of these symbiotic relationships has been accentuated even more by our global experience of ‘connected disconnection’ during the pandemic’s lockdowns. Against this background, we expand the concept of ‘geno-digital spores’ as a more appropriate metaphor for the manner within which data and technology combine in new ways to create (or fracture) lines of togetherness.

Giselle Baillie was born in Bloemfontein in 1971. She graduated with a Masters in Fine Arts degree from Rhodes University, and has initiated and worked on projects focused on change and development in the public and private sectors. One of her areas of interest and work is her current involvement at the Unit for Institutional Change and Social Justice at the University of the Free State (UFS). As per Wittgenstein, she has attempted to live a good life.