Abstract Our engagement with social media, smart and mobile technologies is ambiguous and raises existential questions about the naturalness and desirability of hyper-connectivity. On the one hand, we benefit from using these technologies in organizing and socializing our everyday life. On the other hand, they further complicate our lives. Hence, in recent years, more and more people choose to abstain from digital media by taking on a so-called ‘digital detox,’ a period of living without these technologies. In this article, we look at ‘digital detoxing’ from an existential perspective by introducing Kierkegaard’s existential categories of repetition and recollection to tackle the question whether ‘dropping out’ is a meaningful act or a temporary respite. What would it mean, so we ask, to find a proper balance in a world that demands constant connectivity?

Abstract This descriptive bibliography deals with Kierkegaard literature published between 2005 and 2013, with focus on books written in Western European languages.

AbstractSurprisingly little has been written about Kierkegaard’s thought in relation to the Internet in general, and Social Networking Services in particular. Scholarly discussion about Kierkegaard and the Internet has focused nearly solely on his 1846 Literary Review of Two Ages, in relation to his view on the press and the public. In this article, Kierkegaard’s category of recollection is taken into the contemporary discussion in media studies, philosophy of technology and sociology regarding the question of what it means to exist online. Recollection is presented here as a way of existing online and is discussed in relation to everyday existential encounters such as death, breakups, dating, hookups, and identity construction. The aim of this article is to offer a reading of Kierkegaard’s thought in relation to the Internet through the lens of his category of recollection

This paper questions the shifting meaning of the ethical categories of proximity and alterity in the light of the technological and social changes that virtual social worlds went through. It takes Roger Silverstone’s key theme of “proper distance” as a point of departure, and discusses the significance of this concept by linking it up with the more media-theoretical approaches on virtual communication as developed in McLuhan’s and Baudrillard’s body of thought. It is argued that today’s virtual realities ask for both a philosophical and media-sociological reconsideration of the traditional ethical category of alterity. As such, it links up with Feenberg’s idea that “online groups are indeed a qualitatively new medium” (A. Feenberg and M. Bakardjieva, “Virtual Community: No ‘Killer Implication,’” New Media & Society 6(1) (2004): 37–43, 41), but at the same time challenges Feenberg’s reservations about a theory of media centrism.