Keeping up with the Cartesians: on the culture of the selfie with continual reference to Kim Kardashian

Both the analogue and the digital snapshot still belong to the industrial age in which the greatest threat to humanity was the man-machine hybrid – the Frankenstein's monster who turns on his own maker. But as the online philosopher Kim Kardashian teaches by inviting us to look at her through touching, pinching, and swiping, the man-machine paradigm is now replaced by wo/man-image. This is not only a change in the status of the image, it is also, and for the most part, a change in the status of 'man'.