Year: 2026
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Based on Hannah Arendt's concepts, this paper investigates how cyberspace, as a modern technique, promotes and intensifies processes of alienation already identified in modernity, by subverting the fundamental activities of the Vita Activa: labor, work, and action.The starting point is the contrast between the optimism generated at the beginning of the World Wide Web, which was seen as a utopian space where people could live in peace and harmony with complete freedom, and the present moment, where what persists on the web is disinformation, isolation, and the dominance of large corporations.The theoretical basis lies in the Arendtian notion of vita activa, composed of labor, work, and action.In modernity, according to Arendt, a displacement of these activities occurs, with the valorization of labor to the detriment of work and action.This process is linked to the so-called "world alienation," characterized by man's flight into himself, and to "earth alienation," man's flight from his natural environment.According to the research, cyberspace is an artificial world that replaces concrete reality and acts as a mediator of human experience.Cyberspace, in this sense, not only reproduces but deepens alienation, functioning as a new "Archimedean point" from which human beings observe and reorganize the world in a distanced manner, mediated by devices.By analyzing concepts such as cyberculture, interconnection, virtual communities, and collective intelligence, the paper also dialogues with contemporary authors to show how digital life reconfigures social relations and human practices.The conclusion indicates that cyberspace subverts the fundamental activities of the human condition, weakening political action and threatening to lead humanity into an era of totalitarianism governed by machines.
Author: Adriano Martins das Dores Costa
Language: Portuguese
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7171483432