1) The document summarizes a research project studying digital experiences among those over 65, using diary entries and grounded theory analysis to understand how digital interactions express philosophical concepts like Whitehead's "infomateriality." 2) Early results show that participants are concerned about privacy and blue light screens but find digital tools useful for connecting with family. 3) The researcher aims to compare theories generated from data to Whitehead's process philosophy to understand if digital interactions reveal an "infomaterial" reality.

1. INFOMATERIALITY
WHITEHEAD AND DIGITAL EXPERIENCE AMONGST
THE OVER 65S
Photo: Northumberland National Park, NE England

2. PROJECT
• British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship : 1.1.18 - 31.12.18
• “Understanding Digital Events: A philosophical and sociological study of
virtual experience in the everyday”
A. Sociological research
B. Colloquium - essay collection to be published by Routledge
C. Monograph
• www.concrescence.org.uk/

3. SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH
• Spring/Summer 2018
• Four week Diary studies, three entries per week - using a bespoke app - Six ‘research cases’:
1. Silver Surfers: digitally literate over 65s who are engaged with several digital devices on a day-to-
day basis and confident in their use
2. Senior Explorers: over 65s with the means to engage who are gaining experience in paying bills,
talking to their grandchildren on Skype, getting recipes off the web, etc
3. Senior Leapers: over 65s attempting to cross the digital divide, acquiring the means to do so and
learning the skills to engage
4. Digital Young Professionals: student 18-25s doing IT/IS related courses at University, immersed in
and training to become professionals in the digital economy
5. Digital Natives: student 18-25s doing non-IT related courses at University, using learning
technologies and social media on a day-to-day basis as part of their studies and social lives
6. Digital Naturals: non-student 18-25s whose engagement with the digital is almost entirely through
their smartphone
• nVivo, Grounded Theory coding and themes; RA and PI separately; then together.

4. WHITEHEAD
• Events rather than things
• Non-bifurcated concept of
nature - blurring dualities
• Fallacy of misplaced
concreteness / abstractions
• Four-dimensional geometry
- the process of
concrescence of Actual
Occasions into Objective
Data
Achnabreck, Kilmartin, Argyll & Bute, Scotland
Alfred North Whitehead 1861-1947 British Mathematician and Philosopher

5. INFOMATERIALITY
• More durational than ‘sociomateriality’
• Philosophic assemblage rather than system : importance/matter-of-fact :
how we select, categorise and conceive significance : “Interest, involving
that intensity of individual feeling which leads to publicity of expression”
• The activity of finitude impressing itself on its environment : unity/multiplicity
: wherever there is a region of nature (a body, a tree) which is itself the
primary field of the expressions issuing from each of its parts, that region is
alive [a molecule enters and exits the body…]
• Understanding understanding is a hopeless task : never a completed static
state of mind : There are snippets of understanding, and there are snippets
of connections between these snippets : confusion and order both exist
• “As we think, we live. This is why the assemblage of philosophic ideas is
more than a specialist study. It moulds our type of civilisation”
• Digital virtuality / infomateriality / cyberspace - exemplary of Whitehead’s
non-bifurcated view of reality : we express ourselves in bytes and pixels;
this defines our era
• Latour references Whitehead repeatedly
Importance
Expression
Understanding
Infomateriality

6. GROUNDED THEORY
• The aim of the sociological research is
to generate theory that is grounded in
the data
• The monograph will then compare the
process philosophy approach with the
theory generated from the data :
inductive/deductive interweaving in
keeping with Whitehead
• Do people’s interactions with the digital
express / reveal / imply the infomaterial
picture that arises from Whitehead’s
ideas?
The Ringing Stone, Isle of Tiree, Scotland

7. FIELDWORK: FIRST RESULTS
• “Usually at weekends I try to stay away from
my smartphone, laptop, tv etc. Those blue
light screens are quite tiring”
• “I use what is immediately to hand - desktop
laptop iPad iPhone”
• “it is inevitable that our data will be used to
assist marketing… it’s fake news and lies that
I object to”
• “I used WhatsApp and received pictures of
my granddaughters which made me happy”
• “Eventbrite gave me a lot of grief”
• “how emails are located when they’re in a
reply chain”

8. TENTATIVE FIRST FINDINGS
• importance of expression of personal connection to
increase understanding through communication
• embeddedness in sharing networks
• concerns about privacy are little more than talk about
closing the stable door
• silos blinker us to multiplicity, but boundary blurring can
crush diversity into a soup of union, rather than unity

9. THANKS
WWW.CONCRESCENCE.ORG.UK
DR DAVID KREPS
D.G.KREPS@SALFORD.AC.UK
DAVID.KREPS.ORG
JESSICA MUIRHEAD
J.MUIRHEAD@EDU.SALFORD.AC.UK
IMAGERY:
ALL PHOTOS, TAKEN BY DAVID KREPS, OF NEOLITHIC MARKED
STONES IN THE UK
- SHOWING HOW INFORMATION EMBEDDED IN MATERIALITY IS
ONE OF THE EARLIEST SIGNS OF HUMAN ENGAGEMENT WITH
THE ENVIRONMENT
Long Meg, Penrith, NW England