Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology ISSN: 2691-5928 27:2 (2023): 149–152 DOI: 10.5840/techne2023272180 Ian Werkheiser, Department of Philosophy, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, 1201 W University Dr, Edinburg, TX 78539; ian.werkheiser@utrgv.edu. Michael Butler, Department of Philosophy, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, 1201 W University Dr, Edinburg, TX 78539; michael.butler@utrgv.edu. Reality, Atenton, and Sociality: Towards a Philosophy of Digital Worlds Ian Werkheiser Michael Butler This special issue seeks to investigate the mediation of the world by digital tech- nologies. The idea for this issue grew out of an annual workshop that we have organized for the past three years. When we started the Digital Worlds Workshop three years ago, we began from two seemingly self-evident observations. First, something about our world is changing. Digital devices like smartphones, laptops, and tablets, which had previ- ously served as tools in a zone of experience proper to them, were fnding their way into new areas of our lives—permeating and mediating social interactions, work relationships, intimate, and professional life. Increasingly, we noticed in our own lives and in the lives of our colleagues and students, what happened on the internet was mixing, bleeding into, what happened in the increasingly quaint- seeming “real world.” Second, this shift in environment has implications for human life. It means something different to be human in a new environment. Just as Marx, writing at the height of the industrial revolution, noticed that the reorganization of humanity into discrete classes according to their role in production had implications for the mental life of the members of those classes, we too seem to be at the precipice of a new reorganization of our built environments, bringing along with it equally revolutionary changes in human consciousness. We believe that philosophy ought to address this historical shift in human ways of existing in and interacting with the world. If it is true that our world is changing, then those changes must be investigated before we can meaningfully offer prescriptions at social or even individual levels. While books for popular Generated for EBSCO inc. 2023/9/15 ｩ 2023 Philosophy Documentation Center http://www.pdcnet.org