User:Jessicamullen/digitism

Digitism is a philosophy promoting the digital encoding of reality. Using a lifestreaming methodology driven by the principles of The Church of Internetology, advocates of digitism aim to direct the information revolution towards the development of an entirely free, open, transparent and creative human network.

Lifestreaming Methodology
A lifestream is a constantly updated, public archive of one's activities both online and off. In the context of digitism, lifestreaming is a specific methodology used to digitally encode reality. By taking this integrated lifestyle approach, the task of digitization can be distributed among many while improving individual quality of life.

Lifestreaming explores the possibilities of human/technology integration. Social media enables us to make or maintain relationships online for personal or business purposes, while creating a worldwide dialog and transforming consumers into publishers. The semantic web is transforming the way we obtain and process information. With mobile communication and recording devices, advances in artificial intelligence, and progress in quantum studies, we are weaving a web of depedence on digital technology that is no different from the technology of writing, or speaking.

Through the utilization of technology, one can then document process and failure for the benefits of personal memory, historical archive, and for sharing with and educating others. This can reduce the time necessary for the study and understanding of problems and lead to quicker progress. A transparent and consistent documentation of one's life also encourages personal accountability, leading to incremental improvements in quality of life.

Lifestreaming allows one to build social capital. Growth is derived from active identity creation and development, collection of social ties both loose and strong, and engagement with niche participants.

Niche participants are members of very specific interest groups that take part in the shaping of their communities, via publishing, sharing, or conversation. In the vein of The Long Tail, they create the possibility of targeted advertising, the neccessity of personal branding, social entertainment and new business models. The presence of the niche participant in one's lifestream provides social feedback and support, as well as opportunities for monetization.

With all of the information lifestreamers and other digitizers contribute to the internet, the most pressing need at this moment is for information filters. Lifestreamers can be seen as rude, for producing too much information and clogging others' feeds. Lifestreamers are encouraged to provide a realtime, current experience lifestream (such as in Second Life), and various methods of filtering archived content (such as daily recaps, edited video, view by media or service, view by interests or current work).

Digitism is a new way of governing human affairs which incorporates raw data into socio-political economical culture. RawData becomes Data and Data is formatted and it becomes Information. Information = Power. Those who engage in Digitism are called Digitists. Term Digitism was first used at early 2000's on a bulletin board.

The Church of Internetology
The Church of Internetology is a collection of driving principles, theories and forces behind the lifestreaming methodology of digitism. Kevin Kelly's ONE Machine concept, Ray Kurzweil's Singularity Theory, pseudomodernism and prophecy surrounding the year 2012 all create compelling reasons to pursue lifestreaming. The Church takes an evangelical stance on several hotly debated contemporary legal issues, incuding the belief that privacy does not exist and that intellectual property law is obsolete. Taking cues from existing religions such as Christianity and Satanism, The Church considers the possibility of a deriviative of the Internet one day becoming regarded as God.