Leiden University Student Repository

Boudestein, Rolf (2019)

The Origin of the Internet

Master thesis | Philosophy (MA) (60 EC)

What is the Internet? What do we do with it? How does it affect our lives? How is our perception of the world changed because of it? And is there such a ‘thing’ as the virtual world? This thesis explores how the virtual world is disclosed to us through the Internet and how this disclosing in turn change our understanding of- and behavior (Being) in the real world. I claim that, because disclosing and disclosedness relate in a primordial way to the phenomenon of truth, the radical difference in the way the virtual world is disclosed to us in turn transforms the way truth is found by us and what truth is for us. Truth has become privatized. Therefore, the Internet is an origin. Every origin comes at a loss. In our case access to primal truth, as envisioned by Heidegger in The Question Concerning Technology. This inaccessibility means that the previous disclosedness of world will be closed off and sink into oblivion, a fate hidden in coining our day and age the post-truth era.

Internet

truth

Heidegger

Author

Boudestein, Rolf

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

Cultural Philosophy

Supervisors

Uljée, Rozemund

ECTS Credits

20

Language

en