Internet and Decorporation: Sensory Reconfigurations of the Body in the Techno-Realist Age
Anamaria Filimon-Benea, Ioana Vid
Religions December 19, 2025 DOI: 10.3390/rel17010002 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that Internet technologies reconfigure sensory experience by amplifying vision and hearing while anesthetizing touch and kinesthesia, and that prolonged physical stasis before screens induces "decorporation," a dualistic experience of consciousness as detached from the body. The author contends transhumanist philosophies that reduce personhood to information reinforce this, and proposes a "techno-realist" Christian theological anthropology that affirms embodied existence and calls for technological asceticism. |
Abstract
This article examines how Internet technologies reconfigure human sensory experience and induce decorporation—the experiential dissociation of consciousness from the physical body. Drawing on Marshall McLuhan’s media theory and theological anthropology, the study demonstrates that digital immersion amplifies certain senses (vision, hearing) while anesthetizing others (touch, kinesthesia), disrupting the sensory balance essential to integrated human perception. This sensory reconfiguration, combined with prolonged physical stasis before screens, produces a dualistic self-experience wherein consciousness appears detached from bodily existence. The analysis identifies ideological support for this phenomenon in transhumanist philosophies that reconceptualize personhood as information rather than embodied reality. Against these neo-gnostic visions, the article proposes a techno-realist framework grounded in Christian theological anthropology that affirms both technology’s formative power and the irreducible significance of embodied existence, calling for technological asceticism and practices preserving psychosomatic unity.