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Digitised Necrophilia: Technology and Psychosocial Orientations in the Age of ISIS and Drone Warfare

Published: 07 December 2015 Publication History

Abstract

In this paper, I draw on the work of psychoanalyst Erich Fromm and his postulation of fundamental psychosocial orientations -- necrophilia and biophilia -- to reflect on two contemporary exemplars of human-computer interaction: the use of media communications technology by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and the military use of weaponised drones. I consider the emergence of these modes of human-computer interaction located at the extremities of our social world as a key historical moment requiring urgent reflection on the interfaces of the psyche, the social, and the digital.

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OzCHI '15: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Australian Special Interest Group for Computer Human Interaction
December 2015
691 pages
ISBN:9781450336734
DOI:10.1145/2838739
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Publication History

Published: 07 December 2015

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Author Tags

  1. Digital media
  2. Drone
  3. Ethics
  4. ISIS
  5. Psychosocial
  6. Technology

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  • Short-paper
  • Research
  • Refereed limited

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OzCHI '15

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OzCHI '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 47 of 97 submissions, 48%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 362 of 729 submissions, 50%

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