Ontic Communities

This dissertation is about the digital design community, those who build cultural and artistic works primarily using digital media. This dissertation, however, is also centered around a larger argument, of which the digital arts and design community serves as a case study. In short, the larger argument is a call to examine more closely the social relationships of material objects (including, but not limited to, humans and things) and idea objects (including, but not limited to, broad cultural and social forces) that constitute the world. This dissertation forwards three major arguments: 1.) That it is often the case, particularly in the social sciences, that scholars look not at non-human objects, but instead at the ways those objects are perceived and labeled by humans/society. Scholars of materiality, then, often miss the mark, and study the conceptualizations of objects at the expense of the objects in of themselves. 2.) That it is theoretically and empirically possible to examine objects in of themselves, and that it is important to do so, as both material and non-material objects contain causal powers that impact history and society independent of the human recognition or conceptualization of these powers. 3.) That objects are also subjects, and engage in intersubjective meaning-making both with humans and other objects. Objects, then, should not be theorized as having various mechanical impacts upon human communities that they interact with, but should instead be theorized as members of the community in of themselves. Non-human entities, in other words, are themselves social beings.