Phatic systems in digital society

Abstract

In our contemporary society, phatic technologies routinely establish, develop and maintain personal and emotional relationships across time and space. This phenomenon is reminiscent of Giddens’ 1990 concept of abstract systems made of symbolic tokens and expert systems that dis-embed and re-embed public and professional life. In this paper, we develop social theory that aims to provide a better understanding of the prominent role of phatic technologies in society. We proceed in three stages: first, we critique and revise Giddens’ vague concept of symbolic tokens and its implications for time space distanciation by introducing novel concepts from measurement science. This focuses on forms of information that are relatively precise and communal. Secondly, building on our new formulation of abstract systems, we propose new sociological concepts, phatic systems and symbolic indicators, to enable social theory to explore and analyse the rise of phatic technologies. The concepts focus on the personal and emotional. Thirdly, reflecting on the fact that our digital society is held together by software, we introduce concepts from theoretical computer science to relate the abstract sociological idea of phatic systems and symbolic indicators to the concrete nature of digital data