Nothing to disconnect from? Being singular plural in an age of machine learning

Abstract

This essay makes the claim that there is nothing to disconnect from in the digital world, and that the logic of machine learning provides the most obvious empirical case for this. Drawing on Jean-Luc Nancy’s concept of Being as always already a being-with, the argument is made that the inescapability of others does not provide the end-point for a gesture towards disconnection but an opportunity to rethink the ethics of dis/connectivity in a more productive way. I situate these claims in the scholarly discussion on digital disconnection and privacy within media studies with the purpose of contributing a critique of a discourse predominantly concerned with framing disconnection as a form of voluntary and empowered form of media refusal.