ABSTRACT
Introduction is nal chapter is concerned with a world that has been irrevocably changed by the arrival of the Internet and the massive amounts of data its aordances have generated. It speaks to issues that are of fundamental concern for all of us who are thinking about where we are coming from and where we are going, given that we nd ourselves in a present that experiences unprecedented changes in the material and symbolic environments in which we live, facing an uncertain future, and, signicantly, coming from a more or less unexamined past that goes back several million years. What do these versions of the world have to do with each other? Why are we “we” and “here,” and not “something other” or “somewhere else”?
